Colorado Secretary of State Candidates

Summary

Bernie Buescher has been the Secretary of State for the last two years and has continued in the Mike Coffman approach (previous SoS, a Republican) of running the office effectively and in a bi-partisan manner.

Scott Gessler did not have any real opposition in the primary and so received the nomination without much campaigning. The one weird part of his campaign was he spent 86% of what he raised even though he had no real opposition. Not a good sign for him in the general.

Bernie Buescher [D]

The best guide to the job Bernie has done is the dog that didn't bark - there's been no complaints. And with the recent last-minute efforts by the Republican party to replace Dan Maes, Bernie (who is a Democrat) held up the final certification of the ballots longer than the law required to give the GOP additional time. Bernie Beuscher Interview.

Bernie has been decent at both professionally running the office and doing so in a completely non-partisan manner. I say decent and not well because he has left business registration information totally open to allow anyone to mis-use it, and it this lack of sceurity has led to millions of dollars of fraud.

Scott Gessler [R]

Scott has spent a lot of his professional career working for very partisan Republican groups including Coloradans for Change, Colorado Conservative Voters, and the list goes on... Now this is not proof that he would be partisan in the SoS office, after all this is a partisan elected position. But odds are he will be very partisan. My hope is he will credibly address this concern in future interviews (I have requested an interview).

If you are a Republican and want the SoS office used to Republican advantage, Scott is definitely who you want to vote for. If you prefer a Republican in the SoS office but want one who is fair, like Mike Coffman was, then you want to wait to hear more from Scott.

• Please go to The Choices for the Colorado State Races for more.