One Brother Lies Low as Another Faces Tight Race in Colorado

The Salazar family name has been a leading political brand in Colorado for years. It has also been shorthand for a big-thought Democratic Party strategy of carrying the West that the Salazar brothers, John and Ken, helped invent and articulate as shoulder-to-shoulder voices of deep-country Colorado, where they grew up and where John still runs the family potato farm. The Salazar formula: rural and urban coalitions around centrist, libertarian-tinged politics, mixing support for gun rights with an ability to look natural in a cowboy hat. But this year the chemistry is different. John Salazar, seeking a fourth term in Congress in Colorado’s Third District, is facing a Republican challenger, Scott Tipton, who lost by a large margin to Mr. Salazar in 2006 but is now running neck and neck heading toward November. Ken Salazar, meanwhile, resigned from the Senate last year to become secretary of the interior in the Obama administration, which is not held in high regard with many voters in John’s huge, conservative district. The result: brothers in arms now at arm’s length...more