Banking on the Brewer: in Colorado, Republican hopes rest on Pete Coors

National Review, Oct 11, 2004 by John J. Miller

Yet Schaffer and his supporters, for all of their attacking, performed a helpful service: They made Coors a better candidate, less prone to mistakes that will hurt more if they're committed in October. When Coors spoke to a gun club in September, he knew how to turn his personal story into a political pitch. "My dad taught me how to shoot pigeons off the grain elevator at the brewery when I was six years old," he said. It was just what the gun owners wanted to hear.

One thing about Coors's presentation hasn't changed since he started: His two favorite subjects on the stump are taxes and lawyers, and he doesn't especially care for either. Attorney General Salazar is a lawyer, of course--though his top campaign message seems to be that he's really a farmer. He discusses this background about as often as John Kerry mentions his service in Vietnam. "If you look at my hands, you will see the calluses and cuts of a proud farmer," he says.

It's not an act: Salazar grew up in a house without electricity, in the rural town of Manassa. His family still farms there. Salazar is only 49 years old, but he looks at least a decade older--and very much like retired senator Phil Gramm, albeit in a cowboy hat and bolo tie. He speaks with the slight inflections of old-time Spanish Americans whose ancestors have lived in what is now the United States for centuries. And just about everybody believes he is on the verge of becoming a major force not just in Colorado politics, but perhaps nationally as well. If he wins this year, he may find his way onto veep lists for Democrats in 2008. "We have to beat him now so we don't have to deal with him in the future," says Owens.

That won't be easy. Salazar has won a pair of statewide races, including a reelection two years ago when he carried an impressive 58 percent of the vote in what was otherwise a good year for Republicans. A Coors victory will almost certainly require some of these Salazar backers to switch their allegiance.

The defectors probably won't be Democrats, as Salazar knows how to excite partisan crowds. Many of them start out disliking the Coors family because they know its political sentiments; they also resent company efforts to resist unionization. But they especially enjoy Salazar's class-warfare riff of a humble farmer taking on a Republican child of privilege. "Pete, you and I come from different worlds," he said at a debate in Grand Junction on September 11. A few minutes later, he gestured at Coors and announced: "Don't give tax cuts to the wealthy." His comments are much sharper when he speaks to groups of Democrats. At a small gathering in Rifle, he concluded his remarks by condemning "the forces of evil that Karl Rove and others are behind." That afternoon, at the headquarters of the Mesa County Democrats, Salazar spoke in the same mode as he attacked those who "try to do great harm and great evil to this state and this nation."

Salazar led in the polls through the summer, but more recent surveys have shown the race tightening to just a few points. Republicans have every reason to believe their man will eventually come out on top, from the fact that they outnumber Democrats in Colorado to the sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort they dispatched two years ago to help Sen. Wayne Allard win a close race. No matter what else happens on Election Day, a Coors victory will give conservatives something to toast on the night of November 2.