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A.G. Suthers -- What goes around, comes around
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Candidate
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| Contributor | COSDem |
| Last Edited | COSDem May 29, 2010 03:40pm |
| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | May 29, 2010 03:40pm |
| Description | Poor John Suthers. Colorado's Republican Attorney General started out trying to emulate South Carolina's secessionist firebrand John C. Calhoun. But he ended up being linked in the public mind to an even more notorious scofflaw - Willie Horton.
Suthers was appointed attorney general in 2004 after the elected incumbent, Democrat Ken Salazar, was elected to the U.S. Senate. Suthers promptly demonstrated his skills as a career politician by assuring that his appointment wouldn't officially take effect until he was confirmed by the Colorado Senate in early 2005. That meant he would be officially in office less than two years of Salazar's term, meaning he would be eligible for two full four-year terms in his own right under Colorado's term limit law.
Suthers won the state's second most powerful office in 2006 in what proved to be a surprisingly close race against a woefully underfinanced challenger, Fern O'Brien. Despite that modest electoral showing, he was generally assumed to be headed to a second term in spring 2010 - aided by the fact that he had no announced challenger. He also benefitted from having, on the whole, a reasonably credible record generally in line with the nonpartisan stance Coloradans have expected from their top state law enforcement officer going back to the legendary Duke Wellington Dunbar, who held the office from 1951 through 1973.
Then Suthers suffered two misfortunes - one of his own making and one reflecting the axiom that whom the gods would destroy, they first cozen into signing off on plea bargains. As a result, Suthers not only aces a formidable Democratic opponent - Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett - but is rated as an underdog by such political observers as Coloradopols.com, a blog where I often hang out with other ne'er- do-wells when not musing here at the Blackacre Journal. |
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