Benner Runs On Issues, Against Odds

He may not have the support of rich donors, his state party leader, or even his high school art students.

But Mark Benner hopes his run for the U.S. Senate will help promote issues he feels are being ignored by the other two candidates in the race – such as creating a universal health care plan for America, impeaching President Bush and other administration officials, and stopping military and utility privatization.

"If I got elected, that would be great,” Benner said, when asked about his goals for the campaign. “But if people start talking about these issues and having a substantive conversation, that would be fine.”

A state Democratic executive committee member and a former state senator, Benner, 54, currently teaches art at a school in rural Washington County. He announced on Saturday that he would enter the Democratic primary against Second District U.S. Rep. Mark Udall.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer is running unopposed in the Republican primary for the seat, which is being vacated by current U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican.

Benner, who has talked about entering the race for weeks, plans to file his candidacy with Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s office by Friday.

He also has notified the Secretary of the State Senate by mail, though his letter has so far been unanswered.

“That letter may still be out there floating around,” he said. “These are the kind of things that I’ve never been very successful with -- handling paperwork.”

Benner’s entrance in the race has been controversial from the start.

Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak has urged Benner not to enter the primary, so that Udall can focus his message and money against Schaffer.

Waak did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

“What Pat said to me, basically, was that I really needed to think about what this (decision to run) might do to the Democratic Party,” Benner said. “She thought there might be other avenues to the issues I support, and she urged me to think about that.”

Benner said he doesn’t plan to do much public campaigning – instead, he’s going to focus on lobbying caucus members to support him.

“If I don’t make the threshold at the state assembly ...I’m not going to petition to be on the ballot,” he said.

In contrast to Udall, who has raised more than $3 million so far, Benner said he plans to do little fundraising.

But unlike his 2002 state Senate campaign, Benner said he won’t automatically refuse donations from political action committees.

“I would have to look very carefully at what the PAC was,” he said. “I really don’t want money to be an issue -- and I don’t think it’s going to be one. But who knows?”

Benner said he thinks that his candidacy is the only way to promote issues that he said both Udall and Schaffer oppose, such as:

• Creating a single-payer health care system in America:

“The leading Democrats (in the presidential race) are calling their proposals universal health care, but they’re really not because anything that leaves private companies in the system means that some people will still be shut out of the system,” Benner said. “A single-payer system, I think, takes care of that”;

•  Investigating President Bush and administration officials , possibly as a precursor to impeachment proceedings”

“This administration has violated numerous laws, they violated our constitution on several levels,” Benner said. “It is incumbent on every member of Congress to uphold the oath they took to defend this”;

•  Curbing utility companies’ “lack of accountability”:

“What I would like to do, I guess, is either if there’s no way to end the privitization of these power plants, is we increase the accountability and the regulation of these power plants so we know the power plants are responsible to the public,” he said. 

Calls to the campaign offices of Udall and Schaffer were not returned Tuesday.

Benner said while he’s received “quite a few e-mails” asking him to enter the Senate race, he knows his chances of beating both Udall and Schaffer are slim – especially since he'd be vulnerable against Republican attacks, he said.

“I would probably be a lot easier to vilify by the Schaffer campaign and (Colorado GOP Chair) Dick Wadhams,” Benner said. “They accused Mark Udall of being a socialist and a ‘Boulder liberal.’”

Throwing out such vague labels instead of debating the issues, he said, is part of the reason he’s running.

“They (Republicans) toss out a label like ‘Boulder liberal,’ and they don’t really explain what that means, why that’s bad,” Benner said.

But Benner’s already finding it hard to win support, even from potential voters in his classroom.

“I live in a highly Republican area and I know that the three seniors –we have a graduating class of three – are all voting Republican,” he said.

“It’s an interesting experience, let’s put it that way.”