17 August 2010

Maes Chooses Tambor Williams As Running Mate

GOP nominee for Governor Dan Maes has chosen Tambor Williams to share the ticket as his Lieutenant Governor. As Westword explains, Tambor Williams, a private sector lawyer who is a former state legislator and state cabinet member, is a low profile, smart, conservative woman.

In short, she is more qualified in almost every way to be Governor of Colorado than Dan Maes, although she has not previously had the kind of A-list name recognition that would normally be expected from candidates running for statewide office.

The decision comes on the last day that Maes is allowed to choose a running mate, and carries special weight, because Williams now becomes the obvious heir apparent to the GOP nomination if Maes can be convinced to drop out of the race for the sake of his party. If she shows competence on the statewide campaign trail, a Tambor Williams candidacy could even conceivably cause Tom Tancredo to drop out of the race, given the GOP a ghost of a chance in the general election.

Her ideological commitments are to issues that have big tent support in the Republican party without being hot buttons in the general election, like support for smaller government.

Even if campaign of Dan Maes to be Governor of Colorado crashes and burns, as everyone expects that it will if nothing radical changes in this race, Tambor Williams may be one of the few Republicans who will come out ahead in the bargain, reincarnated as a rising political star who came on board the Maes campaign out of duty, rather than being tainted as so many GOP politicians have been this cycle as part of the wacky far right, simply by association, as his earlier supporters might have been. This makes her a force to be reckoned with when the dust settles in 2012.

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