GOP's hilarious Colorado meltdown continues

Dan Maes, now in third place in the race for governor, says screw the feds, retracts "undercover" police work lie

Published September 14, 2010 2:40PM (EDT)

Repbublican gubernatorial candidate  Dan Maes listens during a debate with his opponents at a television station in Denver, on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010. Dan Maes rejected calls Thursday that he leave the race after key backers pulled their support for him and others expressed skepticism about his murky past in law enforcement.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)  (AP)
Repbublican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes listens during a debate with his opponents at a television station in Denver, on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010. Dan Maes rejected calls Thursday that he leave the race after key backers pulled their support for him and others expressed skepticism about his murky past in law enforcement.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski) (AP)

Republican candidate for Colorado governor and UN bike-share mind-control plot uncoverer Dan Maes is merrily charging ahead with his campaign over the objections of nearly every Republican official in the state. The way Maes tells it, the fact that the party is begging him to drop out is just one more reason he needs to keep running. And he has a message for the federal government, too. That message is: "screw them."

With that statement, Maes was promising to enforce some draconian anti-undocumented immigrant law, even if Uncle Sam doesn't like it. "We're going to do what's best for the people of Colorado," he said -- excepting, I guess, the non-citizen people of Colorado.

Maes told his audience that he keeps going to what he thinks are fundraisers, only to find himself being told by various congressmen and senators to quit the gubernatorial race (these are also called "interventions," Dan). Longtime immigrant-hater Tom Tancredo is so fed up with Maes that he's entered the race on the Constitution Party ticket. And Tancredo is now polling in second place, more or less guaranteeing that Democrat John Hickenlooper will be the next governor of Colorado.

The Colorado Independent called county GOP chairs, and a consensus seems to be forming that this whole Maes mess happened because the state party did everything in its power to avoid a contested primary involving more than one viable candidate -- and then their preferred candidate crashed and burned.

Maes used to tell a great story about working "undercover" battling gambling and drugs -- until he was dismissed from the police force because he "got too close to some significant people in the community who were involved in these activities." This supposedly happened in a town improbably named Liberal, Kansas. Except that it didn't ever happen, as he was eventually forced to admit that he made the story up.


By 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

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