Earlier I promised that I would try to share some of the dumb things that the Republican Party's nominee for governor did. So if you're not at all interested in reading a long message about Colorado politics, hit the delete button now. OK, here goes. "Dumb things! Dumb thi-i-n-g-s! Dumb things done by that guy in Colorado!" (Pretend Paul Shaeffer is singing.) In August, the GOP nominated Bruce Benson to be its candidate for governor. Benson made his fortune in the oil business, was once head of the Colorado GOP, and has raised a lot of money for a variety of worthwhile charitable causes in Colorado. To get on the primary ballot, Benson completely bypassed the GOP's state convention and submitted a bunch of petitions instead. The Republican voters made him their nominee by a comfortable margin. Shortly after his primary victory, Benson did Dumb Thing Number One. He agreed to hold an unusually large number of public debates (thirty, I believe) with his Democratic opponent, Gov. Roy Romer. Romer is a skilled orator and not to be trifled with. While having so many debates would have been great for the public, it was a strategic blunder for Benson, who had never run for public office before. During one of the first debates, Benson did something smart. He revealed that he had been arrested and convicted twice for drunk driving some years back. Thus he got this off his chest without having some enterprising reporter reveal it first. However, soon after, Benson did Dumb Thing No. 2. In a debate he charged that welfare kids were responsible for disruptions at school. When pressed for an explanation of this statement, he said that he couldn't produce any study that demonstrated this but that he had been told this. (Shades of Reagan's shoe box.) He even suggested to reporters that they go search for proof of his outrageous claim. Benson's later debate performances were better but not outstanding, and the polls began to show him falling far behind Romer. So he did Dumb Thing No. 3. He canceled all of the rest of the debates! He even held a news conference where he displayed a big sporting trophy with the inscription of "Roy Romer, Debate Champion" (or something like that). Meanwhile, some enterprising TV reporters were trying to obtain the decree from Benson's divorce, while his lawyers were trying to get the decree sealed. A number of public figures in the Denver area have had the divorce decrees sealed, including a former newspaper editor and a former television anchor, I believe. But Benson was not so lucky. The judge ruled in the reporters' favor and Benson decided not to appeal so that the decree would be revealed early in the race and not in late October. The decree offered evidence of a rather painful divorce, including one point where he had verbally threatened to harm his wife. Polls showed that most Coloradoans thought the reporters should not have sought Benson's divorce decree and that its revelations were not going to influence their vote. Nevertheless, Benson responded with a full page newspaper ad that looked like a letter oriented diagonally on the newspaper page. In the letter, Benson acknowledged his past difficulties, indicated he was not a professional politician, and that he had wanted to talk about the issues (even though he had backed out of the debates). This was Dumb Thing No. 4. Then came Dumb Things Numbers 5, 6, and 7: the television ads. One featured Benson's daughter introducing him at a campaign rally. She talked about how great her Dad is and how he encouraged her to run in races in grade school even when she was small and couldn't run as fast as the bigger kids. The next ad pictured Benson in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, walking along side a mountain stream. Ads featuring the outdoors are very popular in Colorado and are used to promote Coors' Beer and the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club. However, they do not usually feature the spokesperson WITH HIS OR HER BACK TO THE CAMERA! People started commenting on how his wallet had nearly worn a hole through his back pocket. Even worse was Benson's voice over, in which he stressed that throughout his troubles he had kept his integrity "intatct." One of the last ads was shot in black and white and featured a variety of Benson supporters taking shots against Romer. During the course of the campaign, it was revealed that state troopers had done odd errands for Romer, such as fix the plumbing in his mountain cabin and drive his daughter to college in Connecticut. But Benson's ads came across as a desperate, last-chance attempt. The ad ended with a Benson supporter screeching, "State troopers did his plumbing!?!" There was more--the last TV ad that charged that Romer was arrogant and vengeful in his political dealings; revelations that Benson had once made a contribution to both sides of a political campaign and that he had served on some committee related to the Grand Opening party thrown for our still not open Denver International Airport, even though he had run an ad criticizing Romer for his support of the bungled project; and the weird Benson crowds who would campaign outside local sporting events, such as Colorado Buffaloes and Denver Broncos football games. But I am running long, as it is. On Election Night, Benson waited some three hours to concede a race he lost by some twenty points, and his bodyguards violently pushed some reporters to the side as he made his way to the podium. So there you have it. At first I thought this story might cheer people up. But it is sort of sad, actually. Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED]
