Who is Ken Buck?

At a town hall meeting at the Southwest Weld County Services Complex, on March 25, 2017, a woman, older, clearly liberal, and clearly upset, confronted Buck about a $10,000 contribution from a Koch brothers backed PAC.
Buck smoothly denied receiving money from the Kochs, at least at first. Then he referred the matter to his assistant, who did not recall. The constituent, ready for the riposte, later produced screen captures of two $5000 contributions seeming to show a money trail back to Koch industries.

Of course, taking campaign contributions is not illegal. So why did Buck deny it?

That was an easy one. Bet you guessed it. Buck could not be linked to the Koch brothers, Oil and Gas billionaires and Republican policy dictators, because in in a little more than two weeks, on April 11, 2017, Buck would release his new, if ghost-written book, Drain The Swamp. Having been critical of candidate Trump, that book was Buck’s bid to re-align himself with the new administration. And because in real life he favors the oil and gas industry above all others, he could not afford to be seen as being in the pay of the Kochs: legal or not. That would be, well, swampy. Not the right tone for a man desperate to rehabilitate himself with the unpredictable and unprincipled cabal now occupying the White House.

We’re not here psychoanalyzing Mr. Buck for the fun of it, though. This is a more serious exercise than that. It’s serious because here we are, at the very beginning this man’s two-year term in Congress at a very perilous time in the history of this nation. And Ken Buck does not represent us. Large numbers of us vote for him anyway. To understand how and why this could happen, we set out to examine the public record of Mr. Buck’s career.

Let’s look at the record: Buck first sought national office opposing Michael Bennet for US Senate in 2010. He lost that race, but four years later he ran for the Congressional Seat in CD4 that Cory Gardner was vacating. And he won. It’s in the public record.

We looked at Buck’s positions as documented by two reputable nonprofit, nonpartisan groups, OnTheIssues.org (1) and VoteSmart.org (2). Both sites agree on Buck’s positions as inferred from his public statements. Both sites also provide candidates with questionnaires and the opportunity to publish position papers, but Buck always declined.

There’s no light showing between the Republican platform and Ken Buck’s electoral and legislative history. We did our homework, but this record describes Buck’s party, not his mind.

The table makes it clear that Buck is not representing us. He must know that this makes him vulnerable. His job title is Representative. If not us, who does Buck represent. And why?

Energy and Jobs

We acknowledge there was a time when developing the fossil fuel resources of Northeastern Colorado made sense. The US was not yet energy independent. Renewable energy sources were undeveloped or prohibitively expensive to use. The economic collapse produced record unemployment in Colorado and across the country. Buck could make that argument during his failed Senate bid.

Today, everything has changed. Renewable wind and solar generation are both cheaper now than natural gas. They don’t pollute the water or the air. Renewable energy development creates jobs, while growth in oil and gas development has slowed. Yet Mr. Buck and his lovely wife Perry are all for oil and gas. In their votes in the Federal and State legislatures, respectively, they always protect developers above citizens, and never the reverse, as Oil and gas developers hurry to extract Colorado’s fossil fuels before they’re too expensive to mine.

In supporting oil and gas over newer sources of energy and jobs, Buck supports the established, moneyed interests. Whether he does this because he’s bought,or because he truly believes that the powerful deserve his representation more than the citizenry, he does it. And it’s wrong for CD4, wrong for Colorado.

Health Care

Something else is going on with Health Care. Sure, the Republican idea of health reform begins with reversing the new taxes on incomes over $200K/annum that pay for the Obamacare subsidies and the Medicaid expansion. An ideology that presumes the rich and powerful are more deserving than the rank and file supports that. And yet…

At that same March 25 Town Hall, the very first questioner, a WTF member as it happens, asked Buck whether he considered access to health care to be a privilege or a right. Neither, allowed Mr. Buck. Health care is a commodity, on the market, like any other, available to those who can buy. Then came the rant.

“I will never support universal health care,” Buck raved, his anger visible. “Able-bodied men shouldn’t get squat.” Two months later, in an interview with e-zine Colorado Pols, [30 May 2017] Buck elaborated further. “It is clear we have healthy, able-bodied men and women who can join the workforce who are not in the workforce, and we have got to cut benefits and incentivize employment in this country.”

This is fanaticism. This is zealotry. Neither the insurance industry nor health care providers want this. They want the revenue that comes from more customers. What they want from government is eliminating risk, not eliminating patients. Who Buck represents when he takes these extreme positions we cannot know.

What We Know

It is not a secret. We don’t have to tolerate this disrespect and belittlement. The beauty of Democracy is that we have a chance to change our leadership. We have the ability to elect someone who can think for himself, and for Colorado. We have the privilege and authority to tell Buck it’s time for our Representative to stop toadying, to stop judging, and to start representing. Us.

It’s time for us to ask WTF? And to vote.

Originally published in The Weathervane No 5 on June 23, 2017. [Subscribe]