By the following Tuesday, July 26, 1994, the Bird campaign staff believed it had a real campaign going despite Bruce Benson's great advantage in terms of television and direct mail advertising. The "Mr. TV-Head" television advertisement had received good play in the newspapers, and wherever Mike Bird spoke and met the public his supporters would mention that they had seen the ad while watching television. Most important, the "phony polling" and "dirty tricks" charges against Bruce Benson had played big in the newspapers all weekend, and some of the newspaper stories had filtered on to local television news reports.

Mike Bird hardly needed this memo from his staff to spur him on. He had been attacking Bruce Benson with great spirit for months, mainly on the issue of missing so many candidate debates but also for not knowing very much about what goes on in Colorado state government. With primary election day now only two weeks away, there would never be a better moment than this one to directly confront Benson and charge that he lacked the necessary qualities, and qualifications, to be governor.

Chuck Baker's On The Carpet show on KVOR-AM radio was something of a community institution in Colorado Springs. KVOR-AM had put a phone-in talk radio program on the air for more than 30 years, long before talk radio had become so popular. Under Chuck Baker's guidance, the show in the years prior to 1994 had become a popular venue for conservative guests and conservative callers alike. The listening audience for the show was quite large, even though it could only be heard in the Colorado Springs metropolitan area. Chuck Baker's show reportedly had the largest percentage of listeners in its audience area of any radio show in Colorado.

Ordinarily a candidate forum on a Colorado Springs radio station (and in the afternoon at that) would not attract very much attention. Because Bruce Benson had designated this as one of his "official" three debates with Mike Bird and Dick Sargent, however, several members of the Denver press corps drove down to Colorado Springs and listened to the debate in an adjoining room in the radio station. The best-known news reporter present was John Sanko of the Rocky Mountain News.

The Chuck Baker Show got off to a routine start that Tuesday afternoon. Each candidate gave an opening statement, after which there was general discussion among the candidates interspersed with telephone calls from listeners with questions. The only thing unusual about the early part of the show was that, as encouraged to do by his staff, Mike Bird concluded his opening statement with a lengthy criticism of Benson for his "dirty tricks."

During a commercial break in the talk show, Bruce Benson, Mike Bird, Dick Sargent, Chuck Baker, and Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph photographer Stuart Wong were still in the studio. Just at that moment the chicken appeared one more time at the window. Bruce Benson turned to Mike Bird and said sarcastically: "There goes your brother again."

Bruce Benson decided not to wait for the Gazette Telegraph photographer to spread the word that Mike Bird had threatened to punch him "right in the nose." He walked to a nearby room, poked his head in the door, and told his wife, Marcy Benson, and his press assistant, Greg Sparrow, about what had happened. The news of Bird's angry comment was quickly spread to the reporters present, all of whom now sensed the rising personal rancor between Bird and Benson.

As the talk show went back on the air, Dick Sargent, who was seated between Bird and Benson, commented humorously on the Bird-Benson confrontation: "If this keeps up, may I move? I want to get the heck out of here (the middle seat)!"

Bruce Benson then gave a defense of political polling in general: "When you are polling, you ask questions. You ask about your opponents, and you want to find out where their weaknesses and strengths are."

"That's a bunch of garbage," Mike Bird shot back. "We had some action here when the listeners weren't listening. I think they deserve to know everything that went on here.... Bruce has continually said the chicken was planted by me. He's been making cracks...and I got fed up with it! I told him if he said it again, I was going to punch him right in the nose, and I meant it."

A few minutes later Benson said in a frustrated voice: "I didn't come down here to have you guys sit and take pokes at me all afternoon." He then said the three candidates should spend most of their time attacking incumbent Democratic governor Roy Romer rather than each other.

But Bird refused to let Benson off the hook. "Don't express those platitudes," Bird said, "and then come down here and...[do] some kind of phony sham survey. That is rotten!... Everybody says, 'Oh Mike Bird, he's such a nice guy, a nice guy, etc., etc.' It takes a lot, but this really makes me angry!"

When the radio broadcast was over, Benson chatted briefly with reporters as he left the station, expressing surprise at Bird's sharp reaction to Benson's accusations concerning the chicken. "Am I going to get into a fist-fight?" Benson asked. "Over a chicken?"

Ironically, the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph missed getting the story the first day. Angela Dire, the state capitol reporter for the Gazette based in Denver, thought the KVOR radio debate was going to be covered by a local reporter in Colorado Springs. The Gazette editors thought the debate was going to be covered by Angela Dire. Thus, although the Gazette was the one newspaper that had one of its people (photographer Stuart Wong) present when Mike Bird made his now-famous "punch you right in the nose" comment, the Gazette was a day late with the story.

When the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph did run the story, however, it added some hard-nosed political analysis. The Gazette interviewed a Denver political consultant, Floyd Ciruli, about what effect Mike Bird's remarks might have on his chances for winning the primary election. "Voters in general are not going to be very impressed by this spat within the Republican Party," Ciruli said. "While people like to see their candidate with fire and enthusiasm, there's also a problem of turning this into a circus."

Mike Bird believed that, on balance, the "punch you right in the nose" comment helped his campaign. He received a large number of favorable telephone calls and a number of financial contributions as a result of the incident. One big donor said: "Anyone who can call Bruce Benson a son of a bitch ought to be governor."

The feathers had hardly settled from the dustup over the chicken at KVOR-AM when Bird, Benson, and Sargent met again on Mike Rosen's morning radio talk show on KOA-AM in Denver on Thursday, July 28, 1994. Benson began the show with something of an apology, saying that he had only been "kidding" when he suggested at KVOR-AM that the chicken was Mike Bird's brother. "The chicken did identify himself to my daughter [Ann]...as working for you," Benson explained. "If the chicken lied to her, I apologize to you. I think the chicken is kind of funny myself."

"I'm getting tired of these attacks...the slash-and-trash," Benson said in a heightened voice. "I was really offended when your campaign compared [Kathy Arnold] to Tonya Harding. Kathy Arnold is one of the most upstanding people in the community. When that letter went out at the state assembly, I was horrified."

Mike Bird was quick to answer back, sharply pointing out that the Tonya Harding comparison was made only after Benson tried to sabotage the Republican State Assembly. It was a party assembly, Bird reminded the radio program's listeners, that Benson "did not have the courage to attend."

Mike Bird also homed in on Benson's use of the words "slash-and-trash." Bird reminded Benson that, early in the campaign, Benson campaign manager Katy Atkinson had issued a letter saying Benson would not debate Bird and Sargent because of their "slash-and-trash" campaign tactics. Bird said it was the first and only time in his 20-year political career that his integrity had been questioned.

"Mike, did we actually question your integrity?" Benson asked with a great deal of sarcasm in his voice. "Gee Mike, I'm sorry the words are too, too hard for you...."

At this moment Dick Sargent decided to offer some comic relief. Referring to his supporters and friends who might be listening, Sargent said: "They're nervous about my health and condition. I just want them all to know, I'm the guy sitting closest to the door. If it gets any heavier than this, I'm out the door!"

Peter Blake of the Rocky devoted most of his Friday, July 29, 1994, column to summing up both the chicken and the confrontive candidate behavior it had inspired. Blake began by humorously describing the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign as "FULL CONTACT POLITICS." Then, in his customary satiric style, Blake theorized that no fight had broken out at the KOA-AM radio debate "because so many reporters, photographers and television cameramen were squeezed into Mike Rosen's tiny studio...that the candidates seated at the table had no room to wind up and swing."

Blake next mildly criticized Mike Bird for taking Benson's remarks about the chicken so seriously. He wrote:

"Bird still professes to be very offended by Benson's earlier suggestion that just maybe he, Bird, had something to do with the chicken."

"Bird denies it, which is too bad. If he didn't think up the chicken act, he should have. When Benson made the accusation, he could have responded with a smile and a shrug...."

Peter Blake was not the only political writer in Colorado who decided the "chicken" was worth an entire column. Raymond McCaffrey, author of a thrice-weekly column of general commentary in the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, decided to relate the chicken incident to the age-old question of which came first - the chicken or the egg?

"Was it the appearance of a person in a chicken suit at a recent radio debate that caused the candidates to appear like they had egg on their faces?" McCaffrey asked. "Or was the egg there long before the chicken appeared - a product of a fractious campaign that some believe is blemishing the [Colorado Republican] party?"

There was one person who was directly affected by the hullabaloo over the chicken and its apparent negative effects on all the candidates for the Republican nomination for governor. That was the person in the chicken suit! Although there was still two weeks of the primary campaign left to go when the chicken made its appearance outside the windows at radio station KVOR-AM, that was the last anyone ever saw of the chicken. It was probably a wise decision. It the person in a chicken suit had reappeared at another major campaign event, he or she would have been instantly chased, tackled, and unmasked by a pack of determined news reporters.

THE BIRD RESPONSE

In one sense the chicken incident was everything the Bird for Governor campaign could have hoped for. The story was playing all over the news media all throughout the state, giving the Bird campaign the thing it needed most - free media coverage. Although Mike Bird could be given low marks for "losing control" and "hurling a schoolboy taunt," he could be given very high marks for countering Bruce Benson's big advertising budgets with lively coverage of the campaign in the daily newspapers and on television.

The big question for the Bird campaign was: What should be done next? There were two schools of thought on the Bird campaign staff. One school argued the campaign had achieved its main goal - getting the 1994 Republican gubernatorial primary to be a big story in the newspapers - and that the campaign should work at making it an even bigger story. One idea was to try to make it appear that Mike's threat to punch Bruce Benson "right in the nose" was planned rather than a loss of personal control. The way to do this would be to have Mike Bird constantly repeat the statement: "Once all the Republicans in Colorado hear about all the dirty tricks Bruce Benson has been pulling, they'll want to punch him in the nose too!"

It also was argued that the "chicken" story, which had garnered so much publicity for the Bird campaign, should be kept alive. The way to do this was to replace the "chicken," a symbol which the Bird campaign had nothing to do with creating, with a "duck," a symbol which the Bird campaign could claim as its own. The "duck" idea was nicely summarized in a Bird campaign memorandum humorously entitled: "ONCE A CHICKEN, NOW A DUCK!" The memo read:

"The Republicans are not going to beat Roy Romer by ducking every punch. So far, Bruce Benson has ducked every punch that has come his way. He ducked competing for delegates at the precinct caucuses. He ducked competing for the votes of the Republican Party faithful at the Republican State [Assembly]. He ducked more than 30 candidate debates and forums. He ducked meeting the voters one-on-one and ran TV ads instead."

"Ducking and hiding like that is not the way to win elections. It certainly will not beat Roy Romer in November."

One of the major arguments for adopting the "duck" was its relationship to the word "punch," as in "ducking a punch." News reporters and other close observers of the primary election might conclude that Mike Bird had made his "punch in the nose" comment intentionally so as to pave the way for introducing the "duck" into the campaign. If the "duck" idea was adopted, at future debates at which Benson did not appear Bird could place a large stuffed duck on the empty chair with the "Benson" sign on it.

The "duck" suggestion obviously represented high-risk politics. The press might regard it as "more silliness" and make a joke of it rather than take it seriously. On the other hand, it was now only nine days or so before primary election day, and the responsibility of keeping the election "big in the newspapers" rested firmly on the shoulders of the Bird campaign. The news media had certainly covered the "chicken." Maybe they would give equal attention to the "duck."

After the "duck" memo had circulated throughout Bird for Governor headquarters, Mike Bird met with his campaign staff to resolve the question of where the campaign should go during the final ten days before election day. After a lengthy discussion, Bird decided not to act on the suggestion that he replace the "chicken" with a "duck." It was Bird's feeling that the fireworks from the previous week were generating questions at candidate forums and on talk shows that gave him the opportunity to quietly repeat his "dirty tricks" charges against Bruce Benson in a "gubernatorial" way. He felt it was better to go after Benson in this manner rather than using the previous strategy of hurling "charges" and "challenges" at Benson at candidate forums backed up with scathing press releases.

This decision had an immediate impact on the newspaper and television coverage of the campaign. Except for criticizing Benson for spending so much money in his effort to win the governorship, Bird laid off on Benson during the taping of a Colorado PBS (Public Broadcasting System) television debate on Friday, July 29, 1994. Adding to the pressure for Bird not to attack Benson was Don Kinney, the host of the television debate, who specifically asked that the candidates refrain from any attacks on each other.

The "chicken" and the "punch in the nose" thus were quickly forgotten by the Colorado news media. The political reporters and columnists turned their attention to a new subject - the large amount of money that was being spent in the Republican gubernatorial primary.