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Tuesday, January 8, 2008
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Mark Udall's primary opponent, Mark Benner, is the subject of this article from The Denver Post. They write:
Slotted modestly between a slide show on single-payer health care and a raucous, interactive game during which audience members competed to identify the most felonies committed by President Bush, Democrat Mark Benner announced his decision to run for Colorado's open Senate seat. The scene in a Denver vegetarian cafe this weekend underscored the unabashedly left-wing character of Benner's nomination challenge to Mark Udall, the five-term congressman from Boulder County whose campaign has already raised more than $3.5 million. But it was a threadbare announcement that suggested this will be something less than a substantial primary run -- or that Udall will have to spend much of that war chest to win the nomination. Benner doesn't plan to hire campaign staff. He won't spend a lot of time fundraising. The art teacher from Anton doesn't even own a cellphone. "It's going to be a weekend campaign," he said. "I can't really compromise my job to do this." Instead, Benner is hoping to wage a low-budget political insurgency designed to force Udall to the left on two key issues cherished by progressives -- single-payer health care and the impeachment of Bush...
Experts say chances of a resource-lean, grassroots campaign like Benner's catching fire this year are slim -- not the least because his much more experienced competitor is already solidly liberal. Benner "is a person with strong views who is using this process for his own purposes, but it won't result in any change in Udall's position as the presumptive nominee," said pollster Floyd Ciruli. "He's exercising a political right in this country, which is to be a gadfly."
Category: Denver November 2008 Election
6:57:43 AM 
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© Copyright 2008 John Orr.
Last update: 2/1/08; 7:21:46 AM.
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