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If Republican Ken Buck seems too establishment for you, perhaps you’ll take a closer look at Maclyn Stringer, an Aurora contractor who appears to have won the Libertarian Party’s primary for U.S. Senate (via The Denver Post).
But the big news on the right side of the spectrum is the victory—by more than three percent—of Buck’s anti-insider campaign.
The Weld County district attorney challenged and defeated former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton, who had been an early favorite to win and had the backing of her party’s apparatus.
But Buck, who survived a couple cowboy-boot-in-mouth moments during his campaign (from offending birthers to his “high heels” remark), didn’t dwell much on his victory last night. Instead, he focused on the task at hand: defeating Democrat Michael Bennet, who was appointed to his Senate seat last year by Governor Bill Ritter.
“We are going to reach out our hand for those independent voters and Democrats who are also fed up with Washington, D.C., ignoring them,” Buck told supporters at his headquarters at the Embassy Suites in Loveland. “We have a great opportunity in November to give voice to those Americans who haven’t given up on our country’s experiment in self-government” (via Fox 31).
Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli says Buck “was perfectly positioned to be adopted by the Tea Party and to also articulate their mood. He was a credible candidate, but he was not, in any way, shape, or form, associated with the decision-making of the last decade” (via The Greeley Tribune).