Bruce Benson's life story was one of those tales that reaffirms the collective faith in the free enterprise economic system. Striking out on his own as a very young man, he piled up a major fortune in the oil and gas industry and then used his wealth to finance various philanthropic and political endeavors. He was a Colorado miniversion of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, men who became wealthy but who used their money - and their time - to accomplish important public purposes.

Similar to early 20th Century entertainer George M. Cohan, Bruce Benson was born on the Fourth of July. It was July 4, 1938, to be exact, thus making Benson 55 years old at the time he announced his intention to run for the Colorado governorship.

Benson was raised in Palatine, Illinois, where his father was a farmer and the owner of a water softener franchise. Benson started going to college at Cornell University in upstate New York, but he soon dropped out and headed west, hitchhiking to Wyoming and getting jobs as a ditch digger and a lumber jack before becoming a roustabout on an oil drilling rig.

Benson studied geology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964. He was working on a Master's degree at the University of Kansas when, in 1965, he decided to leave graduate school. He and his first wife, Nancy, and their baby son moved to Coffeyville, Kansas, in the heart of the Kansas oil country.

After getting a mineral lease on some farm acreage, Bruce Benson acquired an old portable drilling rig and, as luck would have it, struck oil on his first well. Nine of the first ten wells he drilled were gushers, thus earning Benson a substantial profit on a relatively small investment. Out of this humble "wildcat" beginning Bruce Benson built his multimillion dollar Benson Mineral Group.

Bruce Benson proved adept at working with government as well as running a free enterprise business firm. He expanded his operations to Oklahoma, where he won a government contract to plug abandoned wells that constituted safety and environmental hazards. He also showed great skill in shepherding his business through the classic ups and downs of the oil and gas industry. At one time his operations were $30 million in debt, but within five years Benson had them back to solid profitability.

In 1980 Bruce Benson moved his business to Denver. In 1990 he purchased about 10 percent of the stock in a failing Denver savings and loan association and participated actively in its reorganization and revival. Two years later the stock's value had risen from $1 per share to more than $15 per share. Benson sold out, making a handsome profit that added more millions to the millions he already had. He always pointed out that, at a time when other savings and loans were going under and costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to bail them out, Benson rescued his savings and loan with no help from the government and at zero cost to the taxpayers.

Bruce Benson became a prominent civic leader in Denver during the 1980s and early 1990s. He served as president of the Denver Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and as executive vice president of the Denver Zoo Board of Trustees. He also served on the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, a volunteer government board set up to coordinate college and university policy in Colorado. His most important qualification as a candidate for governor was his service as state chairman of the Colorado Republican Party from 1986 to 1991. While doing that job, Benson became famous for his generous political contributions to Republican candidates for office throughout the state of Colorado.

In 1993 Bruce Benson and Nancy Benson were divorced. He subsequently married Marcy Head of Washington, D.C. The two met when Bruce Benson served on the board of the White House Fellows, a program which brings promising young scholars and business executives to Washington to intern in the executive branch of the U.S. Government for a year. Marcy Head was director of the program.

THE BENSON CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

Bruce Benson's strategy for getting elected governor of Colorado contrasted almost completely with Mike Bird's and Dick Sargent's. Instead of reaching out to voters on a person-to-person basis, Benson would make his appeal primarily on television and over the radio. There also would be a heavy emphasis on direct mail. Instead of listening to voters personally at campaign events, Benson would conduct public opinion polls, and he would use those poll results to identify the issues to emphasize in his TV and radio advertising and in his direct mail pieces.

Mike Bird and Dick Sargent had carefully lined up longtime Colorado political operatives as their campaign advisers and consultants. Bruce Benson, on the other hand, turned to nationally known political consultants to structure his campaign and select his campaign issues. Principal among those campaign consultants was Ed Rollins, a personal friend of Benson's and a former colleague at the Ronald Reagan White House of Benson's new wife.

Ed Rollins, based on the East Coast, gained national prominence in 1984 when he conceived President Ronald Reagan's highly successful "It's Morning in America" reelection campaign. Rollins became even more famous in 1992 when he briefly served as campaign consultant to Texas billionaire Ross Perot's independent (and unsuccessful) candidacy for president of the United States.

Ed Rollins was not the only out-of-state political professional hired by Bruce Benson to hype his campaign for the Colorado governorship. Benson's polling was going to be handled by the Tarrance Group, of Washington, D.C. Advertising and media consultants Russo Marsh + Associates, of Washington, D.C., and Sacramento, California, would design and produce the TV and radio ads.

The decision-making team for the Bruce Benson for Governor campaign thus was mainly composed of national consultants rather than persons with Colorado experience. According to Katy Atkinson, Benson's campaign manager, the most influential voices at Benson campaign strategy sessions were Tony Marsh and Sal Russo of Russo Marsh + Associates, Ed Goeas and Dave Sackett of the Tarrance Group, and Ed Rollins of Rollins Strategy Group. There was some Colorado input, Atkinson explained, but it came mainly from volunteers who only occasionally attended strategy sessions.

What was unusual about Bruce Benson was the openness and frankness with which he stated his intention to mainly use TV and radio advertising. He also was completely honest and forthright about his willingness to finance these expensive campaign techniques with his own money. Benson placed the need to do this squarely on Roy Romer. It was because Romer was an entrenched incumbent with the capability of raising millions of dollars, Benson repeatedly explained, that the Republicans had to run a candidate who either had - or could raise - millions of dollars of his or her own. The rationale for Benson's candidacy came down to one simple phrase: "Only Bruce Benson has the money to beat Roy Romer!"

PETITIONING ON TO THE BALLOT

Because Colorado law provides for petitioning on to the primary election ballot, Benson decided to bypass the precinct caucuses, the county assemblies, and the state assembly and petition on to the ballot instead. There was one particular factor, unique to the 1994 election, encouraging him to do this.

That factor was the dismal showing made by Republican candidate John Andrews when he lost to Democrat Roy Romer in the 1990 governor's race. To petition on the primary ballot, a candidate needs the number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the votes cast for the party's candidate in the most recent gubernatorial election. Since Republican Andrews received only 358,403 votes in 1990, an historic low, Benson needed only 7,169 signatures to get his name on the Republican ballot in 1994. That was 3,000 signatures less than the 10,000 plus signatures ordinarily required to petition on to the ballot in a statewide race in Colorado.

Another reason to petition on the ballot was the difficulty of telling ahead of time what might happen at the Republican State Assembly. If Benson put his name in at the state assembly, there would be four candidates competing for votes, i.e. Benson, Bird, Klingsmith, and Sargent. But a candidate only gets his or her name on the primary ballot if he or she gets more than 30 percent of the vote at the assembly. With four candidates competing, it was likely that only two of the four would get 30 percent or more of the vote and qualify. Why should Benson run the risk of being "knocked out" at the state assembly when he could gather 7,000 plus petition signatures and be guaranteed of a place on the Republican primary ballot?

According to Katy Atkinson, Bruce Benson's campaign manager, there was a considerable debate in the Benson camp over whether to petition on to the ballot or go the caucus/assembly route. Those in favor of "petitioning on" argued that the average Colorado Republican voter knew nothing of the "caucus/assembly" process. It was just "a bunch of fat guys with cigars." Furthermore, the caucus/assembly process took too long - so long that it often discouraged good people from becoming candidates for statewide office. In addition, well-organized factions, rather than the average Republican voter, tended to dominate the precinct caucuses, the county assemblies, and the state assembly.

On the other hand, Atkinson pointed out, some members of the Benson campaign organization "really cringed at the thought of going around the caucus/assembly system." They continually asked the question of whether it would be "worth the grief of the party activists" who would be offended when Bruce Benson bypassed the traditional caucus/assembly nominating process.

THE BENSON EARLY ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

Although Bruce Benson was bypassing the caucus/assembly nominating process, he did not ignore that process. He timed the major events in his "petition signing campaign" to correspond with the major events in the caucus/assembly process, endeavoring thereby to steal some of the limelight from the three candidates going through the caucus/assembly process. Thus it was that, one week before the April 6, 1994, precinct caucuses, Bruce Benson launched a major television advertising campaign.

There were a number of TV ads, all of them with a slick, professional appearance. One was designed just to acquaint Republican voters with who Bruce Benson was and what he had done over the years for Colorado. With a background shot of a working oil drilling rig playing on the screen, the ad told of how Benson started with nothing and built a million dollar oil business. Then Benson was shown talking with a group of bright and eager young college students, during which time the names of the many philanthropic institutions to which Benson had contributed "scrolled" down the screen. The ad concluded with Benson telling the voters that Colorado state government was in trouble and that Bruce Benson was the man to "fix it."

A second ad endeavored to link Bruce Benson in a favorable way to what polls showed had become the most compelling issue of the day for most voters - youth crime. In the TV ad Benson talked directly to the voters, telling them his heartfelt concern for what he called "kid crime." He particularly emphasized the growing problem of youth gangs, and the ad concluded with the idea that it was time, with Bruce Benson, to "just fix it."

Bruce Benson's "buy" of television ads the week before the precinct caucuses was so "heavy" that some persons estimated it cost more than $1 million. Suffice it to say, everyone concerned with politics in Colorado was seeing the TV ads and talking about them. There was a crystal clear message from this barrage of television ads - this act of political conspicuous consumption. The message was that this was the kind of television advertising competition Roy Romer would face in November if Bruce Benson were his Republican opponent.

THE BENSON DIRECT MAIL CAMPAIGN

The same week that all these Benson television ads were playing, every activist Republican in Colorado received a giant envelope in the mail. The return address on the envelope was the "Benson for Governor" logo. Beneath the address label was printed, in large capital letters, the words: "IMPORTANT: Precinct Caucus & Official Petition Enclosed." Included on the mailing list to receive this envelope were all the Republican precinct committeepersons in the state, the people who would be conducting the precinct caucuses in their home precincts.

Inside the envelope was a Benson brochure summarizing his life history and his reasons for running for governor. Also included was a letter urging the recipient to, number one, go to his or her precinct caucus and talk up the candidacy of Bruce Benson. Number two, start getting signatures on the enclosed petition to put Benson's name on the August primary election ballot.

Bruce Benson's mailing the week before the Republican precinct caucuses was impressive. The envelope was large, the contents were heavy, and the art work was colorful and attractive. The Benson brochure included what Peter Blake of the Rocky Mountain News called the "obligatory cliche: a picture of the shirtsleeved candidate carrying his jacket over his shoulder with his index finger hooked in the collar." Peter Blake also noted that the postage alone for each envelope cost $1.21, and the packets were sent to so many overlapping mailing lists that some Republican stalwarts received as many as four.

THE BENSON ANNOUNCEMENT LUNCHEON

After a reasonable amount of time had passed for eating, the lights dimmed and the no-longer-hungry GOP multitude was shown a five-minute video about Bruce Benson and his various accomplishments. He was shown in a hard hat next to an oil drilling rig. He was shown riding a horse. He also was shown discussing his campaign plans with his new wife, Marcy.

The Benson announcement luncheon concluded with a short speech by Bruce Benson. He said crime, education, and welfare reform would be the top issues in the campaign and his top priorities as governor of Colorado. He also made a reference to the Colorado economy, which had experienced healthy growth during Roy Romer's governorship. "The economy is good now," Benson said, "but will it stay good?" Benson said he would support a system of taxation for the state "that rewards work."

Benson received a long round of applause when he said he would, as governor, appoint tougher judges to Colorado criminal courts. "Most people are trying to pass along real values to their children," Benson noted, "but how do you teach a child personal responsibility when violent juvenile criminals are treated like victims?"

THE BENSON BUS TOURS

Because he was not putting his name in contention at the precinct caucuses, the county assemblies, and the state assembly, Bruce Benson and his advisers felt the need to come up with a new and more imaginative way of meeting Republican voters in Colorado. The result was the Bruce Benson for Governor bus tours - having Bruce Benson and his staff ride around the state on a bus and stop and have coffee and conversation with Republican voters along the route.

The traveling team on the Benson bus varied from trip to trip but usually consisted of Bruce Benson himself, his wife Marcy, his daughter Ann, and either campaign manager Katy Atkinson or campaign press assistant Greg Sparrow. Local Republican politicians and members of the local press were invited to ride the Benson bus from town to town if they wished to do so.

The bus chosen for this operation was not a spectacular one. It was a Blue Bird bus, the kind that is customarily painted yellow and used to haul children to public school. This particular bus was painted white and rented from Colorado Charter Lines. It was appropriately decorated with Benson banners and signs. A colorful mailing, complete with a humorous cartoon of the bus and Bruce Benson making their way across Colorado, was sent to activist Republicans as the bus bore down on their particular community. The mailing told when the Benson bus was scheduled to pull into town and where Bruce Benson would be holding his confab with the local GOP faithful.

The Benson bus tour began the week after the precinct caucuses and started in the Arkansas River valley in southeastern Colorado. On Wednesday evening, April 15, 1994, the bus rolled into Lamar, a county seat located just west of the Colorado-Kansas border. Because there is extensive irrigated farming in the Arkansas River valley, Lamar is mainly an agricultural center.

About 50 people crowded into a small meeting room in Lamar to hear Benson take potshots at Roy Romer and defend his decision to bypass the caucus/assembly nominating system. Benson said he was using the petition process to attract the support of the large number of Colorado Republicans who do not go to precinct caucuses and attend county assemblies. He said his campaign was particularly targeting unhappy Democrats and Ross Perot supporters, in short, the kind of people who do not ordinarily think of themselves as the Republican faithful.

"This is not the easy way," Benson told his audience in Lamar. "I could get the 30 percent (the amount of GOP support needed to make the primary [at the assembly]) if I wanted to."

The Benson bus tour worked its way westward from Lamar, making brief stops in the towns of Las Animas and La Junta, both located further up the Arkansas River valley from Lamar. By Thursday, April 14, 1994, Benson's Blue Bird bus was pulling into Pueblo, the largest Colorado city on the Arkansas River. As in Lamar, about 50 people, most but not all of them Republicans, gathered at Pueblo's former railroad depot to hear what Benson had to say.

In Pueblo Bruce Benson expounded a strongly anti-government theme. "I'm tired of how the government works," said Benson. "I don't think it works for our benefit. We have a governor going to Washington, D.C., to solve education problems. I think the place to solve problems of education is in Pueblo, Colorado."

Benson also attacked hard on the welfare issue. He said the time had come to break what he called "the welfare trap." He explained: "We need to make the fathers responsible for these children they're making with these teen-aged girls. Train 'em, teach 'em, and get' em out on their own."

Benson said the welfare system was "out of control" and "lacks accountability." If elected, he pledged to "get really tough on welfare. We have to - it's killing us."

Benson then amused his audience by telling them what he was "for" and what he was "against." He was "for" the death penalty, vouchers for schools, term limitations, and "privatizing anything that can be privatized."

He was "against" President Bill Clinton's health care plan, gun control, and government involvement in funding abortions.

Benson's bus tours were sporadic rather than constant. After his swing through southeastern Colorado along the Arkansas River valley, he took a few days off before heading west from Denver into the Rocky Mountains. About 30 people showed up to drink Benson's coffee and eat Benson's donuts in Evergreen, one of the more Republican Denver suburban communities. Only five women showed up, however, at Marion's of the Rockies, a restaurant in Idaho Springs, an old Colorado mining camp which is a more distant Denver suburb. Up in Leadville, one of the most famous of Colorado's silver mining towns, a crowd of only eight turned out to hear Benson at the Golden Burro Restaurant.

Speaking to the five women in Idaho Springs, Benson once again stoutly defended his plan to petition on to the Republican primary ballot. He said: "I chaired the [Republican] party for six years, and I know how the system works. I know how to get 30 percent (of delegates to the state GOP convention). But that won't win you a general election.... We're plotting a strategy to November."

Bruce Benson's bus tours of rural Colorado were only partly successful. Relatively small crowds turned out to hear Benson speak and to sign his petitions for getting on the primary ballot. There also were no more than two or three stories in the Denver and Colorado Springs newspapers about Benson's forays into the Colorado hinterlands.

The bus tours were a big success as a talking point, however. They enabled Bruce Benson and his staff to argue, throughout the remainder of the election campaign, that Benson had gone to the people of Colorado, shaken their hands, told them his ideas and his values, and answered their questions and listened to their problems. Whenever anyone criticized Benson for relying too heavily on television and radio advertising, he could honestly reply that his bus tours had exposed him, on a direct personal level, to the hearts and minds of thousands of Colorado residents.

THE BENSON SURGE

From the very first moment he hinted he was going to run for governor, Bruce Benson was cast by the Colorado news media as the "front-runner" for the Republican nomination. This happened despite the fact that Mike Bird, Phil Klingsmith, and Dick Sargent had been campaigning for more than a year. As soon as Bruce Benson said he was in the race and was going to spend $5 million to get elected, political reporters and political columnists immediately presented him to the public as the candidate to beat for the GOP nomination.

The press was well aware of the impact that Benson's money was having on the race for the Republican nomination for governor in Colorado in 1994. Simply because he had many more dollars than anyone else, Benson was attracting attention while the other three candidates were rapidly fading. Rocky Mountain News political columnist Peter Blake summed up the situation this way: "Benson is already flooding the airwaves with ads while collecting signatures. Rivals [Dick] Sargent, Phil Klingsmith, and state Senator Mike Bird are invisible in comparison."

The Bruce Benson candidacy was most damaging to Dick Sargent and his low-budget effort to win the Republican nomination for governor. Sargent explained: