The eight Republicans running for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat shared the stage for the first time on a snowy night in Fort Lupton for a mostly cordial opportunity to pitch themselves to conservative voters as the candidate best-suited to take on Sen. Michael Bennet, the two-term Democratic incumbent.

The Feb. 3 forum, sponsored by the Republican Women of Weld, treated an audience of roughly 160 to a mostly cordial discussion led by former 18th Judicial District Attorney and conservative talk radio host George Brauchler, who lobbed questions at the hopefuls on energy, agriculture, small business, tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and whether they think the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Candidates participating were Joe O’Dea, a construction company owner; Gino Campana, a real estate developer and former Fort Collins council member; Eli Bremer, a 2008 Olympian and former El Paso County GOP chair; Ron Hanks, a state representative from Cañon City and recently retired career Air Force intelligence analyst; Deborah Flora, a former actress and talk radio host; Greg Moore, a Colorado Christian University political science professor; Peter Yu, a business consultant and one-time 2nd Congressional District nominee; and, Pueblo small business owner Daniel Hendricks.

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While the candidates have met in various combinations at other forums in recent weeks, the Fort Lupton confab has so far been the only one to feature them all.

The candidates all agreed that President Joe Biden and his loyal ally, Bennet, can be blamed for most of what’s ailing America, from rising gas prices and surging inflation to increasing crime and an emboldened Russia, though only Hanks and Hendricks said unequivocally that they believe Trump won the 2020 election.

O’Dea said he learned about accountability when his policeman father and stay-at-home mother pulled him from public school and sent him to an all-boys Catholic school after he “got in a little trouble” and his grades slipped when he was in his early teens — and required him to pay for it with a weekend job.

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“And I learned later in my life, accountability is actually an act of love,” he said. “When career politicians like Michael Bennet don’t keep their word and put their party over their country, it’s our job to hold them accountable. Bennet is Joe Biden’s senator, and we need to hold him accountable.” Describing himself as an outsider who’s “worked hard for everything I’ve done in my life,” O’Dea said he’s irked that Bennet has used his privileged background and good fortune to promote his party rather than the people of Colorado, adding, “He needs accountability.”

Hanks, who drew the evening’s loudest cheers when he flatly declared, “Trump won this,” said he’s “the only candidate that will stand front and center” on election integrity, adding that that’s why he went to the protests outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and decided to sue Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, alleging the state’s voting system is insecure.

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“I am fighting right now for Second Amendment rights. I’m fighting for education tax credits for parents putting their kids through school, and with this COVID thing, anything we can get to the parents that have been put out and students is important,” he said. “I have election integrity bills in the legislature right now. I’m running for Senate because it’s a national security concern. Joe Biden is a disgrace and I believe he’s unelected. And I think we are in serious trouble.”

Invoking his immigrant parents’ journey to the United States from Italy after World War II, Campana said the reason he’s running boils down to “two words, common words: American dream. We put them together, known throughout the world. They’re the two words that allow ordinary people in this country to do extraordinary things.” Campana said he was inspired to start his own company by how his father — who started a business and became a renowned stonemason — lived the American dream.

“D.C., Joe Biden, Michael Bennet — they don’t understand the American dream,” he said. “They think it’s something that you can merely package up and put on the shelf, use it whenever you want. That’s not what our forefathers wanted. That’s not the gift that they gave us. They gave us the gift of endless opportunities in this country. As your U.S. senator, I will go to the Capitol and I’ll fight every day.”

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Yu, a first-generation immigrant, said his parents and their seven children immigrated from China, penniless, in the late 1960s. “Because we live in a land of opportunity, I was able to ascend from a meager beginning to executive roles in some of the largest corporations in the world,” he said. “I only have one goal. That’s to make sure that the United States of America remains a place where dreams come true. A place where your children can wake up and know that freedom is a right and that if you’re willing to work hard, anything is possible.”

Bremer, an Air Force Academy graduate, said his 14 years in uniform and chance to compete in the modern pentathlon in the 2008 Olympic Games gave him the opportunity to travel the world, visiting dozens of countries.

“You know what, I learned?” he said. “America is the greatest country on the face of planet Earth. We have freedom, we have freedom to do what we want, we have the opportunity to raise our kids, to live our lives and grow our businesses. And we’ve enjoyed physical security like no other country. But the Biden administration, with the support of Michael Bennet — they’re tearing that down. Now we have inflation, we have border insecurity. And we don’t have the same kind of opportunities for our kids that we once had.”

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After 14 years teaching political science in China, Moore said he returned stateside in 2020 “to find this country in disarray, really — George Floyd, contested elections, COVID nightmares, Jan. 6, all this crazy stuff,” including “socialist thinking taking over, seducing our young.” Moore said he decided “we have to inoculate people against it,” adding that he’s also worried about national security.

“I think we’re not hawkish enough about China; the Chinese Communist Party is very dangerous,” Moore said. “And I think we need people in Washington who understands that.” 

Flora said she grew up at Lowry Air Force Base, the daughter of a lieutenant colonel, and is married to an 82nd Airborne veteran.

“I say he’s 6-foot-2 on the outside, I’m 6-foot-2 on the inside, so we’re a good team,” she said, though she noted she had “complete clarity” during her reign as Miss Colorado when she traveled to the Soviet Union during the 1991 coup attempt.

“You don’t know freedom until you see the lack of freedom, and that is what I witnessed,” she said. “And it was at that moment that I decided when the day came, I would stand and fight for individual liberty, just like my father who served in Vietnam. Well, I think we all know, today is that day. And that’s why I’m running.”

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Hendricks, who spoke last, alternately stunned and amused the audience with a series of seeming non-sequiturs unlike anything ever uttered on a political stage in Colorado.

“I’m kind of a moron, I’m an ox and a moron,” he began before veering into his background — he was vice president of the Young Republicans club at Bennington College, he said — and then proclaimed: “I’m wearing my inheritance. My daddy died three years ago. Everybody dies, like 100%. One hundred. Everybody dies. I sold life insurance for 25 freaking years, folks. I’m not broke. I’m debt free. This country is screwed.” Without slowing down, he continued, “I sold my weed for 100 bucks an ounce back then, $25 a day for an ounce, so I could buy some beer. That’s right. I sold it. I admit it, 100%. It was 25 freaking years ago.”

After asking Republicans for donations, he added, “I need your money. I don’t have squat. I’m only a millionaire.”

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Colorado Democratic Party spokesman Nico Delgado took aim at Hanks and Campana in a statement to Colorado Politics.

“Hanks and his election conspiracy theories continue to be the center of gravity,” Delgado said after the forum, adding that it appears the first-term state lawmaker has “transformed the Republican primary into an audition for Trump’s approval.”

Delgado accused Campana of trying to “prove himself” to Republicans by flaunting endorsements from former Trump aides and “masquerading as a conservative who attacks government spending but shamelessly takes PPP loans and doesn’t pay them back,” referring to a Colorado Sun report that Campana’s companies had received $710,000 in pandemic relic funds under the Paycheck Protection Program.