Today on Kyle Clark’s political broadcast Next, Dan Baer officially announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate in 2020. If you do not know who Dan Baer is, we cannot blame you – we cannot find any evidence of this guy actually living in Colorado as an adult until 2017 – the same year he decided to run for Congress.
Baer ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, briefly, and hauled in more than $300,000 in donations before he quit the race after Congressman Ed Perlmutter declared his bid for re-election to the 7th Congressional District after a short-lived campaign for governor. A vast majority of these contributions came from outside Colorado.
While other contenders quickly withdrew their candidacy in deference to the state’s most popular Democratic politician, Baer took weeks before ultimately deciding to quit the race – apparently unaware of the political landscape that he thrust himself into.
Another interesting fact from Baer’s foolish Congressional run is that even after quitting the race, he did not have the decency to refund the donations that he collected. Instead, he kept most of that cash in the bank, with the “Dan for Colorado” committee reporting almost $250,000 cash on hand at the end of 2018. What was he holding onto all this money for? Of course, his next opportunistic political endeavor.
Baer is no stranger to politics, serving as Obama’s Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (whatever that is), as well as about eight months as an appointee in the Hickenlooper administration. He valued that Colorado state job so much that he declared his run for federal office less than three months after his appointment. Real serious guy.
Baer also held an assortment academic positions as a student and instructor – all at pretty impressive institutions. Funny thing is that Ivy League thing doesn’t play in Colorado like it does inside the Beltway – someone may want to clue him in on that one as well.
Baer joins a field of two moderately successful Democrat politicians, Andrew Romanoff and Michael Johnston, and will have an exceedingly difficult time carving out a following in a Democrat primary against this pair, both of whom have banked many years doing the hard work of building relationships with the people who matter the most in these sorts of things – Democratic donors.