Norton says Buck reveals himself off script

By {screen_name}
Monday, July 26, 2010

U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck is a different person on script than off the cuff, his Republican opponent, Jane Norton, said today.

Norton took the microphones this afternoon after Buck, in a conversation taped by a Democratic operative last month, referred to tea-party activists as “dumbasses” because they were raising questions about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“The Ken Buck ‘off camera’ seems to be a very different person than the Ken Buck ‘caught on’ camera,” Norton said in a press conference at the state capitol this afternoon.

Buck’s comments were made during an appearance in Crowley in June and were secretly recorded by a Democrat observer assigned to track Buck.

Buck said later that he shouldn’t have described tea-party activists in that way.

Norton said Buck was showing a pattern of disparaging people when he didn’t know when a microphone was on.

After inviting former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo to share a stage with him in early July, Buck was later taped saying, “I can’t believe that guy (Tancredo) opened his mouth.”

Last week, a videotape of Buck surfaced, in which he told a conservative supporter that she should vote for him “Because I do not wear high heels.”

Buck “childish insults about tea partiers once more raise the question: exactly who is Ken Buck and can we really trust him?” Norton said, questioning whether he has the temperament to be a U.S. senator.

Buck and Norton are battling in the Aug. 10 primary election for a spot on the ballot against one of two Democrats, Sen. Michael Bennet or former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.