Cole Buerger, a fifth-generation Coloradan with much deeper roots in Silt than former resident and Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, said his experience fighting for democracy overseas and his reaction to the U.S. Capitol riot in 2021 converged to get him into politics in 2021.
“On Jan. 6th … when I watched it on my television, it broke my heart and it pissed me off, because it became very clear that we could not take our democracy for granted,” said Buerger, who’s now a Glenwood Springs resident running for state Senate District 5 (SD5).
“People like Lauren Boebert are directly attacking our institutions, and my prescription for this moment is that we need leaders at every single level of government, from dog catcher to president, who are focused on solving everyday issues, and bringing down the temperature and making sure that democracy works for people, that our representative government works for people,” said Buerger, a Democrat. “Without that, we don’t rebuild trust in our institutions.”
Buerger initially sought the Democratic nomination to take on Boebert in the 3rd Congressional District that encompasses most of southern Colorado and the state’s Western Slope. Eventual Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, who’s running again, lost to Boebert by just 546 votes in 2022, which drove Boebert off to a safer GOP district on the state’s Eastern Plains.
Buerger then set his sights on the statehouse where he is in a tight race for a state Senate seat that could give Democrats a supermajority in that chamber, facing state Rep. Marc Catlin of Montrose in the Nov. 5 election. At a Club 20 debate in Grand Junction on Sept. 21, Buerger called out Catlin on the topic of Jan. 6 – a deadly attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump seeking to keep him in power.
“Well, time and time again we have seen representative [Catlin] vote alongside his party and not with the interest of SD5 or the people of SD5,” Buerger said. “Another example of this — voting to thank Jan. 6th insurrectionists in the state House of Representatives. That is not the values that the people of SD5 need; we need independent, fresh leadership in the state senate.”
Catlin did not respond during the debate, nor did he or anyone in his campaign respond to numerous emails seeking comment on his vote in January of 2022 for an amendment that would have thanked J6 attendees. In a survey this summer conducted by dozens of news organizations around Colorado, voters said they want candidates focused on good government and democracy.
Focus on Catlin’s vote for an amendment formally thanking state Rep. Ron Hanks and others who joined him at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, comes on the heels of Special Counsel Jack Smith offering a slew of new details in a motion Wednesday outlining Trump’s alleged incitement of the attack that led to the death of five police offers and the injury of 140 others. Trump is facing multiple federal felony indictments for seeking to overturn the free, fair, legally vetted election of President Joe Biden, who won Colorado by 13 percentage points in 2020.
Hanks, who said he did not enter the Capitol that day, has become one of Colorado’s most prominent 2020 election deniers, rejecting the nearly complete presidency of Biden. Hanks lost by a wide margin to Grand Junction Republican Jeff Hurd in June’s 3rd Congressional District primary.
According to a 2022 Denver Post story: “A majority of House Republicans also voted to ‘call into question’ whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected; to urge the decertification of 2020 election results in an effort to reinstall former President Donald Trump; to support embattled Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters … Each of these proposals came as amendments to HR22-1004, a resolution brought by Colorado Democrats who want to urge Congress to adopt voting rights legislation. Democrats control the House and easily defeated each Republican amendment.”
Peters on Thursday was sentenced to nine years in jail for breaching her own election systems to try to prove Trump’s “Big Lie”. Trump and Boebert both won by wide margins in Mesa County in 2020.
Buerger, who owns a policy design and communications consulting business in Glenwood Springs, said he watched parts of Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate where Trump running mate JD Vance refused to say Biden won in 2020, which Democratic VP candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called a “damning non-answer.” Trump cast off his former Vice President, Mike Pence, because Pence refused to block Biden’s certification despite the mob’s death threats, and now Pence refuses to endorse Trump in this election.
In 2020, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s now running to replace Biden as president, won by 74 electoral votes and more than 7 million popular votes.
“First of all, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 presidential election after all of the challenges were made by the Trump campaign and dismissed,” Buerger said. “But this Jan. 6 vote, which both Marc Catlin has made and other Republicans running — primarily in support of former state Rep. Ron Hanks since he was there, is an excellent demonstration of bad judgment. If you cannot discern what happened on Jan. 6 – and, unfortunately, the [Republican] Party is so enraptured with the falsehoods that have been created around that — but if you can’t discern what happened that day, then really, where is your judgment?”
Buerger left the family ranch near Silt, which his parents still operate, and went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he earned a degree in international affairs and a minor in Chinese. His first job was with the National Endowment for Democracy and the International Republican Institute, which was chaired by the late Republican U.S. Senator John McCain at that time. Buerger says he still has “deep admiration and respect for” McCain.
It was McCain, in fact, who actually saved Obamacare – a now-popular law keeping many Western Slope residents insured – not Trump, who tried for years to kill the law and will likely do so again if elected.
Buerger worked on the Closed Society Portfolio in Asia, coordinating with Burmese freedom fighters and labor union activists and “those who were stirring up good trouble against the military junta” there that had imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi and overthrown the Democratically elected government in 1989. He also worked in Seoul with North Korean defectors.
“I’ve worked in other countries around the globe as well … but it was my favorite job I’ve ever had because I got to talk about the power of democracy and representative government,” Buerger said. “And at that point I enjoyed holding up the United States for all of its flaws as an example of where people govern themselves and choose their own leaders and make consequential decisions.”
Asked about an exchange during the Club 20 debate in which Catlin declined to condemn a state Republican Party anti-LGBTQ email attacking him personally, Buerger said it’s clear the Colorado GOP can’t stick to the issues in SD5 because Buerger is winning on policy.
Here’s the excerpt from the Club 20 debate:
Buerger: “Speaking of voting with your party, the state party earlier this year sent out an email attacking me not on the issues, but me personally. [State] Sen. [Cleave] Simpson condemned a similar email about his opponent but you remained silent on this one.”
Catlin: “No, I didn’t …”
Buerger: “Why should the people of SD5 trust you to stand up for everybody in this district?”
Catlin: “Because I spoke to you personally, sir, and I talked to you about that issue and told you that was not how I feel, and that I don’t care who you love. You and I agreed it was not an issue in this campaign, now it is.”
Buerger: “Well, you stayed silent publicly, you let them send it out, and you took dollars that resulted from that email being sent out.”
Catlin: “But you and I had spoken about it personally and it was discussed and we agreed that that was not the issue in this campaign.”
Buerger: “This is your party and you’ve got to stand up to your party more often. This is the problem in this race actually.”
Moderator: “Candidate, let’s make sure that the questions are pertinent to the office.”
Catlin: “Yeah.”
Buerger, who is married, said there was never an agreement with Catlin on the issue but that they discussed the email at a candidate meet and greet prior to the Club 20 debate.
“I went up to him and I said, that … was a pretty chicken-shit, email, Marc,” Buerger said. “And he said, ‘Well, I don’t feel that way [about the content] and I didn’t send that.’ And I said, ‘Well, your party did and I think it’s pretty embarrassing.’ So when he said at Club 20 that we had had that discussion, well, he had certainly made clear where he stood, but private condemnation or regret does not public leadership make.”