With Dan Maes in Colorado governor race, can GOP just get along? Nope.
(Read article summary)Insurgent candidates are causing intraparty battles nationwide this election season. But the case of Dan Maes and the Colorado governor race is unique. Republicans are unendorsing him.
Dan Maes apparently is still the Republican nominee for governor in Colorado, despite the fact that lots of state Republicans want him to withdraw.
The close of business on Friday is the deadline for pulling out, and Mr. Maes says he is not going anywhere. People are “sick and tired of power brokers trying to dictate the results of this race. We’re not going anywhere,” Maes said Thursday.
This contretemps is only the latest turn in one of the midterm election’s juiciest sub-plots: candidates who are estranged from their own parties. But Maes may be the toughest of these cases. In Florida, the GOP is pulling behind gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott, despite all the nasty things he said about them. Likewise in Alaska, where outsider Joe Miller and all those establishment Republicans who backed his opponent, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, now seem to be getting along.
Businessman Maes beat former Rep. Scott McInnis in Colorado’s August primary despite – or maybe because of – his status as a political neophyte. At the time, Maes predicted that the state party hierarchy would fall in behind him as the general election got closer.
