SALON

Monday, Jul 26, 2010 8:45 PM UTC

Tom Tancredo running for Colorado governor

The anti-immigration zealot launches a third-party campaign, will probably hand election to Democrats

By

Topics: 2010 Elections, War Room, Immigration, Tom Tancredo,

Tom Tancredo running for Colorado governorU.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

Nativist loon Tom Tancredo will run for governor of Colorado, because for some reason the two Republicans currently running for that job displease him.

Well, Scott McInnis has a plagiarism problem, and Dan Maes had some campaign finance problems. Tancredo’s real problem is probably that he looked around one day, realized that any Republican with name recognition has a good shot at winning a race this year, and was dismayed to learn that it was too late for him to get on the Colorado Republican primary ballot.

Tancredo’s original gambit was to call on both Maes and McInnis to promise to drop out the race after the primary, so that the party could name someone else for the November ballot. (That someone else would presumably be Tancredo.) But McInnis and Maes wouldn’t go for that, surprisingly. So now Tancredo is a the Constitution Party’s candidate for governor.

And then Tom Tancredo and the head of the Colorado GOP yelled at each other on the radio for a while.

Will the Tea Partiers — who are, after all, just independent, concerned citizens, and not simply angry White Republicans — vote for Tom Tancredo on a third party line? He does share their concern about the single biggest threat facing America today:

The greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life, everything we believe in, the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the Founding Fathers is the guy that is in the White House today.

Tancredo loves attention almost as much as he hates Mexicans and people he suspects of being Mexican, so the fact that he’s hurting the Colorado GOP is probably not keeping him up at night.

With Tancredo splitting the extremist vote and GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck’s live-mic problems, Colorado could be another state where Tea Party enthusiasm doesn’t translate to electoral success. But we’ll see! I might be eating those words when Governor Tancredo bans all public use of the Spanish language and declares himself Governor of “Red.”

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 23 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations