The race for the GOP nomination for Michael Bennet’s seat in the U.S. Senate gained a new and powerful contestant Thursday when former state Sen. Tom Wiens of Douglas County formally announced his candidacy.

Wiens, whose state Senate district included northern El Paso County and Teller County, joins a crowded Republican field headed by former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton and the Weld County District Attorney, Ken Buck.

“Real people in Main Street Colorado have just been forgotten by Washington,” he said Thursday. “They’re fed up with the fact that Washington has such little respect for the people of Colorado that they don’t even read the bills before they vote to waste a trillion dollars of our money.”

Wiens will have some work to do if he wants to catch Bennet, a Democrat who was appointed in January by Gov. Bill Ritter to complete the term of Ken Salazar, who took a post in the Obama Cabinet. Bennet has the power of incumbency and reported a campaign war chest of $3.6 million at the end of September.

But Wiens’ first hurdle will be the Republican primary.

Norton entered the race in mid-September and by the end of the month reported raising $510,000. But Wiens, who owns a ranch in Sedalia, has deep pockets of his own, as well as good connections in Colorado Republican circles. He boasted to the Colorado Statesman last month that he would “put my Rolodex up against those Washington insiders any day of the week.”

He told The Gazette Thursday that the National Republican Senatorial Committee had been raising money for Norton. A “Washington approach to Colorado politics” would fail, Wiens said.

“They raised a lot of money in D.C.,” he said of the Norton campaign. “None of those people have a vote” in Colorado, he added.

“The people of Colorado have voted for change in the last two election cycles, and were right to do that,” Wiens said. “But we’re going to have to vote for change again, and this time we’ve got to get it right.”

Wiens, Norton and Buck are scheduled to appear on Tuesday at a candidate forum in Colorado Christian University in Lakewood.

—

Contact the writer at 476-1654

Broncos coach Josh McDaniels Photo by MARK REIS, THE GAZETTE

MARK REIS