Ken Buck’s disappointing loss in Colorado’s 2010 U.S. Senate race has been widely chalked up to a massive gender gap that favored his opponent, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). And that gender gap has been widely attributed to Buck’s draconian positions on reproductive issues.
So Buck, testing his luck with another Senate bid this year, is trying to insulate himself from anticipated Democratic attacks and make an appeal to the large majority of female voters who voted for Bennet four years ago.
Part of that effort is a two-minute video — featuring a testimonial from a woman who was brutally abused by her husband — that highlights Buck’s role in closing a loophole that allowed perpetrators of domestic violence to continue to contact their children.
The other part of that effort, apparently, is to ignore the reasons he failed to win over women in the first place.
In a mostly credulous piece by The Daily Caller’s Matt K. Lewis that attempts to showcase Buck’s “kinder, gentler side,” the Republican insisted that Democrats mischaracterized him in his last race.
“It was this guy who didn’t like people, didn’t care about people, didn’t have a heart for people,” Buck said. “And I decided if I was going to run again, I was going to make sure that I portrayed myself that was honest and allowed people to make a judgment — hopefully on the issues — and not on some personality that the Democrats create.”
Democrats will no doubt be eager to discuss Buck’s positions on the issues this year, just as they were in 2010. So damaging was his initial support for the so-called “personhood” amendment — a measure that would have defined life as beginning at conception — that Buck was forced to moderate his position in the late stages of the campaign.
Buck also went from pledging to sponsor a constitutional amendment banning abortion even in cases of rape or incest to insisting that the issue wouldn’t be a high priority for him as a senator.
Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected the “personhood” amendment at the polls in 2010.
Meanwhile, none of those issues were mentioned once in the profile by Lewis.
Polls have thus far shown that Buck can hold his own against Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) in this year’s race, although he still appears to be suffering from a gender gap. A Quinnipiac University survey earlier this month found Buck running neck-and-neck with Udall, while facing a 21-point deficit among women.
