On Saturday, October 1, 1994, Roy Romer set about a typical day of campaigning for reelection as governor of Colorado. He drove himself, by himself, to Kepner Hall on the University of Northern Colorado campus in Greeley to debate Bruce Benson. As he entered the hall, the governor was informed by the debate organizers they had received a suspicious telephone call inquiring about Romer's whereabouts. It was decided to have a state policeman pick Romer up in a state patrol car and drive him to his next campaign event, which was in Fort Collins, some 25 miles from Greeley.

As Romer and his driver, Trooper Steve Stevenson, drove past the outskirts of Greeley, they suddenly noticed a red Chevrolet following them. It was possibly a Chevy Cavalier, a 1988 to 1991 model, occupied by two white men between the ages of 20 and 30. Suspicious because of the earlier warning to the governor, Trooper Stevenson maneuvered to get away from the red car. He explained: "I tried at that point to use some evasive actions - changing lanes and speeds. It was apparent that the car was paralleling all our actions." Trooper Stevenson also switched on the unmarked patrol car's flashing red-and-blue lights, which were mounted on its rear deck and bumper.

The governor and the trooper were heading west on U.S. Highway 34, a major road. The speed of the patrol car was hitting 90 miles-per-hour, but the red car was sticking close behind. Fearing the pursuers might be armed and start firing weapons at him, Governor Romer crouched down in the passenger seat to protect himself. Trooper Stevenson was armed with a Smith and Wesson 9-millimeter revolver.

The state patrol car, all lights flashing, roared up to the interchange at U.S. Highway 34 and Interstate Highway 25. Trooper Stevenson headed north on I-25 toward Fort Collins, hitting speeds of 110 miles-per-hour on the superhighway and continuing to try to "ditch" the governor's pursuers. This time the weaving in and out of traffic worked and the tailing vehicle started to drop back. After getting some large tractor-trailer trucks between the governor's car and the red Chevy, the state trooper took one of the exits off the interstate into Fort Collins. The two men in the following vehicle continued north on I-25 and were lost from sight.

Trooper Stevenson had radioed the State Patrol for help at the beginning of the high-speed case. Additional state police cars did not get to the scene in time to chase the red car and attempt to stop it. Governor Romer and Trooper Stevenson had only been able to get part of the car's license number.

Roy Romer was able to complete the remainder of the day's campaigning, making his scheduled appearance in Fort Collins, stopping by to speak at a north Denver restaurant, and attending a fund-raiser at the Red Lion Inn in Denver. He appeared to be more mystified than frightened by the incident. He explained:

The "Great Governor Chase" stirred up a significant amount of publicity for Roy Romer, but the story died almost as quickly as it had come up. Similar to the identity of the person who dressed in a chicken suit and bedeviled Bruce Benson during the Republican primary campaign, the identities of the two young persons in the red Chevy were never learned.

NO MORE DEBATES - AGAIN

On October 6, 1994, Bruce Benson canceled his eight remaining debates with Roy Romer.

Up to that time the two candidates had debated six times. These debates were lively confrontations with a full discussion of some important state issues. The debates were well-covered by the news media, but no reporters or commentators had publicly stated that either Romer or Benson was "winning" the debates. Benson had not done well in a debate in Greeley the previous Saturday but was regarded as having done a competent job in several of the other face-to-face confrontations between the two candidates.

In other words, there was no obvious reason for Bruce Benson to so arbitrarily cancel the eight remaining debates.

Bruce Benson dropped out of the previously-negotiated debate schedule with flair. He called a news conference at which he stated frankly that Roy Romer was a "better debater." He unveiled a three-foot high "championship debater trophy" for the press to ogle. He then had the trophy delivered to Romer's office. The trophy was inscribed: "Roy Romer, Master Debater, 1958-1994."

"No more debates," Benson forthrightly told the Colorado political press corps. The Republican gubernatorial candidate explained: "After six of them, we know the governor's a better debater. So what. This thing isn't about winning debates.... We let Roy Romer sucker us into playing his game on his field by his rules. We're going back to the people. We're getting back on the bus."

Benson argued that Romer had bamboozled him into "getting away from our roots...away from the people." The debates, Benson said, were interfering with his campaign plans to talk directly with the voters of Colorado. That's why the bus campaigning, which had worked so well in the Republican primary, was being reinstituted. "We want to go back on our game plan," Benson said, "and play by our rules."

Furthermore, Benson concluded, the debates wasted time on issues that were not "the prime ones in this campaign." He explained: "Someone's always asking me a question about something I've never heard of. I was once asked about sugar beet subsidies."

Sugar beets are grown in many sections of rural Colorado and can be processed into table sugar. Unable to compete with inexpensive cane sugar from the Caribbean, Colorado sugar beets require a U.S. Government subsidy to be a profitable agricultural crop. Although the vast majority of Coloradans, who live in cities and suburbs, do not care about sugar beet subsidies, it is an issue of considerable importance in much of rural Colorado. Benson probably lost some votes by making light of sugar beet subsidies.

Just as Benson's refusal to debate his opponents had stirred up a storm of discussion and criticism in the Republican primary, his refusal to debate Romer stirred up an even larger storm in the general election. The severest criticism, of course, came from Roy Romer, who noted that Benson "didn't keep his word," made during a solo appearance on a Colorado Springs radio talk-show, to debate the issues. Romer said he fully intended to appear at all the remaining debates by himself.

Furthermore, the incumbent governor argued, Benson's refusal to debate raised questions about Benson's ability to be governor. The voters deserved to make side-by-side comparisons of the two candidates, Romer said, because governor's have to "stand up" on issues and "stand up" to adversaries. Romer explained:

"If you're going to be governor, a good part of your job is to - in public, with adversaries - advocate a point of view, answer questions about your point of view and defend your point of view."

The Colorado political consultants had their moment analyzing Bruce Benson's latest surprise maneuver. "This [Benson] campaign is just mondo bizarro [a bizarre world]," said Democratic consultant Steve Welchert. It is "lurching from one crisis to another."

It was clear that Bruce Benson intended to spend the last month before general election day emphasizing television and radio advertising, television and radio talk-show appearances, and direct mail. His voter contact would be limited to meetings with the small groups of citizens, most of them committed Republicans, who would turn out to see him at his various "bus stops." After debating Roy Romer face-to-face six times, Bruce Benson decided to turn back to the two techniques that had so handily won him the Republican primary: "no debates" and "ride that bus!"

But the Roy Romer forces made Bruce Benson "pay the price." Immediately following Benson's announcement that there would be no more debates, Alan Salazar, Romer's campaign manager, said: "I can't believe Bruce Benson is ducking out of the debates. We should have a duck follow him."

At a political rally in Pueblo, the Romer campaign handed out toy ducks to further highlight the "ducking debates" issue.

"BAD NEWS" BENSON

By mid-October of 1994 the Benson for Governor campaign was in a tailspin. The latest Denver Post/KCNC-TV Channel 4 poll showed Benson still running more than 20 percentage points behind Roy Romer. Even in Colorado Springs, the most enthusiastically Republican spot in the entire state, the word around El Paso County Republican headquarters was that Bruce Benson was "a goner." The Republican organization in Colorado Springs began gearing itself to try to limit the damage which Benson's "negative coattails" would have on Republican candidates in local races.

Fred Brown, a political columnist for the Denver Post, acknowledged that some of Bruce Benson's severest problems were initiated by the news media. The voter poll predictions that were hurting him so badly were coming from the newspapers and the television stations. It also was true that Benson's divorce file, by far the toughest hit he had taken in the news media, came under public scrutiny only after television Channel 9 successfully sued to open the file.

"But some of it Benson did to himself," Brown wrote. "His revelation of two drunk-driving arrests in the early '80s, his being the first to debut a negative attack ad [the ad on taxes], and his decision to stop debating Romer.... It's hard to put a positive spin on these facts. They are all negative by nature."

THE DENVER SCHOOL TEACHERS STRIKE

On Monday, October 10, 1994, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association went on strike against the Denver Public Schools. In Colorado public schools are mainly a matter of local rather than state concern, so the organization with primary responsibility for settling the strike was the locally-elected Denver School Board. The school board tried to keep the public schools open and operating by hiring substitute teachers, but many parents kept their children home during the strike. Children who attended school found both discipline and teaching at a low ebb due to so many substitute teachers being on the job.

When the strike was in its third day, the Denver District Court upheld the teachers' right to strike. At that moment incumbent Democratic governor Roy Romer stepped publicly into the fray. No matter that this was strictly an issue between a local school board and a local teachers union and that the governor had no legal jurisdiction or authority whatsoever. Roy Romer called the Denver School Board and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association to his offices at the state Capitol for closed-door meetings to try to end the strike.

The Denver school strike once again illustrated Roy Romer's consummate skills at using his position as governor of Colorado to simultaneously accomplish good purposes and draw attention to himself. At a critical time in his reelection campaign in 1994, he had been able to mount the "bully pulpit" and call loudly to other Coloradans (the school board and the school teachers) to do what was best for their state. For one full week of the 1994 gubernatorial election campaign, with but three weeks to go before election day, it had been as if Republican candidate Bruce Benson had not existed at all.

CHARGE AND COUNTERCHARGE

In late October of 1994 the Benson for Governor campaign was given one last chance to develop some real negatives about Democratic opponent Roy Romer. The Rocky Mountain News sent a reporter out to check the activity records of the Colorado State Patrol officers who guard Governor Roy Romer and his family. The Rocky did a big exposé when it found state troopers had dropped off Romer family cars for repairs, picked up Romer family members at the airport, gotten the governor personal cash at cash machines, and on three occasions helped the governor's youngest daughter move to and from her college in Connecticut. In addition, state police officers had taken the governor's favorite leather jacket to be repaired, made deliveries to the governor's mother-in-law at a nursing home, and helped repair the plumbing at the Romer family's mountain vacation home in Bailey, Colorado.

When asked to comment on these revelations about Roy Romer's and his family's misuse of the state patrol, Bruce Benson described them as evidence of Romer's "arrogance." The GOP candidate explained:

"He's supposed to be fixing problems, not living off taxpayers and using the patrol to do things they shouldn't be doing.... I was pretty shocked. It think it comes down to this whole thing about incumbency. When you've been around a long time, you get arrogant.... It's just that old 'feeding-at-the-trough' mentality.... Somebody even asked me today, 'Is this criminal?' Maybe it is."

The Benson campaign was quick to work the issue of inappropriate use of state troopers into its radio and television advertising. A widely-distributed radio ad faulted Romer for traveling outside the state too much, for paroling too many criminals, and for no convicted murderers being executed in Colorado. The ad then said:

In an effort to help Bruce Benson draw more attention to Roy Romer's problems with the state patrol, Don Bain, the state chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, called for an official investigation of the matter. Bain said:

Continuing the policy of answering any Benson action with an action of their own, the Romer for Governor campaign staff called for a grand jury investigation of Bruce Benson's campaign techniques. The Romer camp charged that Benson was circulating an unacknowledged flyer which condemned Roy Romer for supporting gay and lesbian rights in Colorado. The Romerites also accused the Bensonites of using "push-polls" to anonymously give negative facts to the voters about Roy Romer, specifically facts about the large number of days Romer spent outside the state while he was governor. Benson openly admitted he was once again using the controversial push-polls that had generated so much criticism of him during the Republican primary.

JUST BEFORE ELECTION DAY

Roy Romer and Bruce Benson each undertook a flurry of personal campaigning as election day neared. Benson, as he promised when he cancelled the remaining debates, got back on his bus and campaigned around the state. Romer, refusing to be outdone despite the fact the polls showed him well in the lead, embarked on a 30-city bus and airplane tour of his own. Romer also purchased additional television and radio advertising to try to offset a last-minute advertising blitz by Bruce Benson. Therefore it was in an atmosphere of charge and countercharge that Colorado voters headed to the polls on Tuesday, November 8, 1994. The path to election day had been a long and tortuous one, beginning almost two years earlier when Mike Bird first told the news media he was going to run for governor. The effort had been a costly one for all concerned. Campaign finance reports filed the week before election day revealed that Roy Romer and Bruce Benson, up to that point in time, had spent a total of $8.7 million in the 1994 gubernatorial election, making it the most expensive election in Colorado history. More than $3.6 million of the $8.7 million total spent by the week before election day was Bruce Benson's own money