Wasn’t Maes the Colorado Tea Party favorite?
Going into the future, the various TP entities need to do a much better job of vetting, prior to handing out endorsements.
Resources and methods do exist.
“Wasn’t Maes the Colorado Tea Party favorite? Going into the future, the various TP entities need to do a much better job of vetting, prior to handing out endorsements.”
Yes, he was. But Maes problems started coming out before the primary. The difficulty was that the party establishment had already sprinkled holy water (and a lot of money) on RINO Scott McGinnis for governor and had cleared out Josh Penry (a conservative) so that McGinnis could run for the nomination unopposed by any serious candidate. Before the primary, the polls suggested CO R voters were going to hold their noses and vote for McGinnis.
Then McGinnis had horrible ethics PR come out shortly before the primary (pretty clear plagiarism). So R primary voters had noone to vote for. A lot of them were pissed-off at the party establishment and voted Maes because he was the ethically challenged candidate who was NOT supported by the party establishment.
McGinnis was probably the more strategic choice because he could have been convinced to step down and have his position filled by a vacancy committee.
Whether a McGinnis nomination and subsequent vacancy committee nomination would have avoided the third party problem, though, is speculative. I cannot imagine a vacancy committee (composed of party insiders) nominating Tancredo. Party insiders have hated him for years because he upset their “don’t ever talk about illegal immigration” apple cart (George Bush would not appear on stage with Tancredo at rallies, for example, even though Tancredo was a sitting R congressman). All of their instincts would have told them to nominate another RINO—that’s what the party establishment in CO does. So Tancredo would likely have run anyway.