Interview: Ken Buck Talks Colorado Senate Race and Tea Party

DENVER, Colo. -- The prevailing wisdom on Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck is that he is one of the runaway locomotives on the Tea Party Express, a creation of the grassroots who challenged the entire Colorado Republican establishment -- and is now an even-money choice in the general election against incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.

The story line is mostly accurate. Ken Buck is definitely a darling of the tea party set, it's true that the GOP hierarchy preferred former lieutenant governor Jane Norton over Buck in the Republican senatorial primary, and public opinion polls do indeed show him running neck and neck with Bennet on the eve of the election. But among the Denver GOP establishment, there was one prominent Buck believer, and he was a guy who knew a thing or two about electing Republicans in Colorado.

His name is Walt Klein and he's helped any number of the state's most prominent Republicans get elected – and govern – in stints in Denver and D.C. Watching Buck in action, Klein perceived a charisma and a passion in the prosecutor from Northern Colorado that others may have missed. Buck's energy was obvious – this was the spring of 2009 and he was doing forums all over the state night after night – and after watching him perform one day, Klein told Buck, "You're a good candidate, but you could be a whole lot better."

The ensuing partnership rattled the cages in Colorado – and put Michael Bennet on notice that holding onto his seat was going to be a challenge.

From the start, the Democrats' strategy has been to relentlessly label Buck "an extremist," particularly in ads aimed at female voters. It seemed a risky gambit in a state where jobs and the environment are foremost on voters' minds to see ads about abortion, a constitutional issue decided by the Supreme Court that a junior senator from Colorado has little to do with. There was a method to the Democrats' strategy, however, and it became clear when a liberal online news site published a story of a woman who wanted authorities to charge her ex-boyfriend with rape, but Buck declined to prosecute, telling the woman the case was not winnable – but also mentioning to her that she'd previously gotten pregnant by her boyfriend and had an abortion.

That story did not appear to alter the shape of the close race with Bennet, partly because it turned out that Buck had sent the file to prosecutors in Boulder for a second opinion, and they had concurred with him. Two weeks ago, however, after defending that decision in a debate on "Meet the Press," Buck was asked whether he considered homosexuality "a choice" and he answered, "I do."

In Walt Klein's capable hands, Buck has cut down the frequency of such remarks. But Buck conservatism is real, and in the era of You Tube, it's not easy to escape impolitic or immoderate statements – whenever they were made. In the primary season, while running as a grassroots favorite, Buck proudly proclaimed his affinity for the tea party, discussed abolishing the federal Department of Education, made sympathetic noises about another dubious tea party hobby horse -- repealing the 17^th Amendment -- suggested that veterans' medical care might be better handled by the private sector, and voiced support for the flat tax and a constitutional amendment that would effectively negate Roe v. Wade. And he once questioned whether the concept of separation of church and state is really in the Constitution.

All the same, the peril in portraying Buck as an "extremist," which Bennet does personally, was manifest in their televised debates. Buck, who was a college football star at Princeton who went to the University of Wyoming law school, came across as polite, intelligent, genuine, normal, and fundamentally decent. He seemed this way in his interview with Politics Daily, too (highlight video above, full interview here), making no gaffes and forgetting no talking points. And if Buck can accurately be accused of wooing his party's activist base in the primary and tacking toward the middle in the general election, well, he's not the first to employ this strategy and he won't be the last.