Conservative senate candidate who is good with the gotchas
...Schaffer obviously has some debating skills. Whether they will translate into a victory is still a close call at this point. The undecideds in this race are very high for being this close to election day. What that probably indicates is that both sides have been effective at driving up the others' negatives.
Mr. Udall, 58, has never trailed in the race, but his early double-digit lead has slipped in recent polls. The latest Denver Post poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research and released Sunday, showed Mr. Udall leading Mr. Schaffer by 43 percent to 38 percent.
...If Mr. Schaffer can't make up that ground with relentless trap-springing and opposition research, it won't be for lack of trying. The latest example came last week, when he announced that he supported a tax holiday for U.S. firms overseas.
Mr. Udall, who has long hammered at Mr. Schaffer for voting for tax cuts for oil companies, took the bait, blasting his opponent for favoring yet another tax break for big corporations.
Uh-oh. It turned out that Mr. Udall backed that same idea four years ago when he came out in favor of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. The Udall campaign tried to recover by saying that the congressman had tried to strip that particular provision out of the bill.
Again, big mistake. The Schaffer campaign promptly whipped out Mr. Udall's floor statement on the bill, in which the congressman specifically lauded the tax-holiday provision.
"I will vote for [the act] because it includes provisions to encourage American corporations doing business abroad to repatriate their overseas earnings for investment here at home," Mr. Udall said in the 2004 floor statement.
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What makes Mr. Schaffer unique is the setup, the way he lures his unwitting opponents into making assertions that he knows he can refute immediately. Asked to comment, Mr. Schaffer demurred.
"You make it sound like something remarkable, but I'm just stating the facts," he said. "For most politicians, these wouldn't be gotcha moments, but they are for Mark Udall."
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Mr. Schaffer set the tone early in the campaign at a July 14 debate sponsored by KUSA-TV, the local NBC affiliate. Asked to justify U.S. involvement in Iraq, Mr. Schaffer read a list of reasons defending the war, then asked those who agreed to raise their hands.
He then noted that nobody on Mr. Udall's side of the aisle had done so, and announced, "What I just read was Mark Udall's resolution supporting a declaration of war in Iraq."
Then there was the July 28 debate sponsored by KDVR-TV, the local Fox affiliate, in which Mr. Schaffer predicted House Democrats would vote to adjourn instead of taking up an energy bill. Mr. Udall insisted that he would vote to stay in session.
Three days later, however, Mr. Udall, bedeviled by a busy campaign schedule, missed the vote by minutes, and the adjournment passed 213-212, meaning that his vote would have kept the House in session.
It wasn't long before the National Republican Senatorial Committee had launched ads accusing Mr. Udall of breaking his promise and missing "a critical vote that could have led to lower gas prices."
Mr. Schaffer again was in full pounce mode at the Sept. 28 candidates debate on "Meet the Press." During a discussion on the financial crisis, Mr. Udall, as expected, criticized Mr. Schaffer for favoring less government regulation.
Mr. Schaffer responded by pulling out three 2005 House bills that would have increased restrictions on federal home-loan banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then noted that Mr. Udall had opposed all three.
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Schaffer has apparently been able to make the race close by focusing on the Democrats' anti energy policy. He should be hammering that point. Colorado's economy would benefit from exploitation of the shale oil which it has in abundance and which the Democrats want to keep off the market.
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