“I had not been plotting and planning to run for the Senate,” says Bob Schaffer, a former Republican congressman from Colorado. “When I retired from the House in January of last year, I thought that politics was possibly a thing of the past for me.”
Then GOP Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection this year–and it seemed like there weren’t any Republicans interested in trying to succeed him. In a state where GOP politicians do well, this was even more surprising than Campbell’s unexpected decision to quit.
First, Governor Bill Owens said he wouldn’t run. Next the entire GOP congressional delegation bowed out, from Bob Beauprez to Marilyn Musgrave to Tom Tancredo. State treasurer Mike Coffman declared that he wasn’t getting in. Lieutenant governor Jane Norton thought it over and declined, too. On Monday, businessman David Liniger–who had been urged by Owens to consider a race and spent part of last week in Washington, D.C.–took himself out of contention.
Meanwhile, a number of GOP luminaries were backing Schaffer (rhymes with “safer”). Senator Wayne Allard endorsed him; so did former senators Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown. “I support him as well,” Owens told NRO on Tuesday.
As a member of the Colorado state legislature and then the House of Representatives, Schaffer has built an extensive record as a champion of limited government, school choice, and pro-life causes. The only remaining question is how well he’ll perform against the likely Democratic nominee, Attorney General Ken Salazar, who is considered to be a formidable candidate.
Conservatives are certain to take a keen interest in the race. Replacing the moderate Campbell (a Democrat who switched parties a decade ago) with Schaffer won’t just help the GOP keep its majority in the Senate, it will make the Republican caucus more conservative.
In the House, Schaffer helped draft the No Child Left Behind Act–and then he pulled his support after Democrats watered it down. “The school-choice provisions were removed very early,” he says. “I was on the floor trying to improve the legislation with amendments, but the final product became too similar to bills I had opposed during the Clinton administration.”
When he returned home last year, Schaffer joined the Colorado Alliance for Reform in Education and helped pass a statewide school-choice law that Owens signed into law (and which is now tied up in court).
Assuming Republicans make Schaffer their nominee in August and Coloradoans make him their senator in November, they’ll have not only a man devoted to education reform but also a leading expert on the Ukraine.
“When I came to Congress, Rep. Frank Wolf suggested that I find a country that nobody else knows much about and focus on it,” says Schaffer. “When I told him my mother was Ukrainian, he said, ‘That’s it!’”
Schaffer formed the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus with Democrat Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and others. Since then, he has become an expert on everything from the general challenges of fostering civil society in a former totalitarian state to the particular matter of making sure Ukrainian nuclear scientists and payload specialists don’t find employment in Iran.
“I will continue to focus on Ukrainian issues in the Senate,” he says.
That promise isn’t likely to make it into any future “Schaffer for Senate” commercials, but it does demonstrate that the former congressman is a serious man with much to offer. Indeed, when I asked him what book he was currently reading, he didn’t give a predictable answer, like David McCullough’s best-selling biography of John Adams (weighty yet populist) or the work of some Colorado mystery novelist (a potential pander). Instead, he said: Against the Dead Hand, by Brink Lindsey.
There’s no hidden subtext: It means that Schaffer supports free trade and is interested in reading thought-provoking books about globalization. “I love books that reinforce what I know and also give stats to help me with the next debate,” he says. Schaffer went on to explain that he once bought a box of Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital for the cabinet of Ghana. (De Soto was just named the winner of the Cato Institute’s biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, which is worth half a million dollars.)
Clearly, Republicans could do a lot worse than rallying behind this man. A recent in the Rocky Mountain News had him trailing Salazar, 49 percent to 34 percent, but then the attorney general has run for statewide office twice and Schaffer isn’t well known in some of Colorado’s Republican strongholds. That will certainly change–and this year’s Senate race in the Rockies could be a nail-biter.
For his part, Schaffer isn’t letting these newfound political aspirations go to his head. “I saw The Passion a couple of weeks ago and it really put me in the right frame of mind for launching a campaign,” says the former congressman, who is Catholic. “It taught me that there’s no way I can lose.”
Losing, of course, is not on Schaffer’s agenda. It shouldn’t be on the GOP’s, either.