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August 21, 2015 10:56 AM UTC

Bruce Ben$on's GOP Debate Raises Interesting Questions

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
CU President Bruce Ben$on.
CU President Bruce Ben$on.

As the Boulder Daily Camera’s Sarah Kuta reports:

University of Colorado officials are working to finalize details ahead of the Republican presidential debate to be held on the Boulder campus in October…

Several campus officials, including members of the CU police force, traveled to Cleveland earlier this month to observe the logistics, security plans and media coordination efforts for the debates at the Quicken Loans Arena.

The decision to host a Republican presidential primary debate on the traditionally liberal University of Colorado Boulder campus might seem strange to outsiders, but that’s only because they don’t know CU’s arch-Republican President Bruce Benson. Benson, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate and longtime top funder of GOP candidates and campaigns, helps a Boulder GOP presidential debate make sense.

Even so, this is still the Boulder you hippies know and love we’re talking about:

CU is also preparing for protesters, who may use the debate to hold demonstrations about marijuana, tuition costs and policing, [CU police chief Melissa] Zak said.

“We will have our intelligence arm trying to look for that,” she said.

We fully expect that the presence of the entire gaggle of Republican presidential candidates, or at least the ones who make CNBC’s cut, will bring out a colorful range of demonstrators on a variety of topics. That will make for great establishing shots outside the debate venue, which the networks ought to love.

But what about inside?

No ticketing information has been made available yet by the debate hosts…

The question of who gets to attend the CU presidential debate will have a significant impact on the tenor of the debate, and how it’s perceived by the public. There’s no word as of this writing what the breakdown of distribution of tickets to the debate will be, but insofar as CU’s brand is being enlisted to give this GOP debate credibility, we’d say the CU student body should comprise a significant percentage of the audience.

It’s true, this might also have the effect of demonstrating that the gap between at least some of these candidates and reality as CU students experience it is, well, quite large! How Donald Trump would fare under that lens is, we admit, potentially problematic–but it could give Republicans interested in appealing to socially well-adjusted young voters a chance to shine.

Honestly, that might be reason enough right there for “Ben$on” to let it happen. Or…not.

Either way, we’ll be very curious to see what happens here.

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13 thoughts on “Bruce Ben$on’s GOP Debate Raises Interesting Questions”

  3. I certainly don't have any inside information about how or why the Boulder debate was scheduled, but could it be the Republican candidates and the party wanted to hold a debate in one of the most competitive swing states, which Colorado qualifies as?

    Also, this thread seems to bash Bruce Benson because he was once an active Republican who was once chair of the Colorado Republican Party, the Republican candidate for governor in 1994, and one of the best fundraisers for the party in the past. Once he became president of CU, he promised to stay out of party politics because his position is nonpartisan and he has kept that promise. Anyone who knows Bruce, also knows, he has no more use for the right-wing Republicans than the rest of us. He should be praised for his tenure as CU President.

    2. Bruce Benson may be nonpartisan – I can't speak to that. But he certainly is true to his roots as an oil and gas man. He allowed research to go out in CU's Leeds School of Business name that is academically worthless. It predicts 210,000 jobs lost "if" Colorado banned fracking. Hickenlooper spread this nonsense around Colorado, and repetition made it "common wisdom", which was used to sideline oil and gas local control initiatives.

      Since Colorado has never banned fracking statewide, I question the value of this expensive and fraudulent "research".  There has also been some good research on health effects coming from the medical side of CU; but CU and Benson should be ashamed of what's coming from the business school, which resides in the new "entrepeneurship" center paid for by arch-conservative nutball Jake Jabs

      There are certainly serious questions about Benson's actions to defund the university, about his election to the Presidency of CU, about his refusal or non-support of fossil fuel divestment efforts at CU.

      1. You're assuming Benson controls what research is done at CU. He doesn't. I don't know whether the research done at Leeds is good or bad but I do know the research on the medical side has come under heavy criticism and not just from the oil and gas industry. If Benson controls the research at CU as your comment assumes, why in the world would he have allowed the medical-health departments to issue research that is critical of the oil and gas industry?

  4. What does it mean that the chief of the CU police says that she'll be "[having her] intelligence arm trying to look for that"?

    Does that mean they plan on stifling protests on campus because of the debate? Will they be infiltrating progressive groups? Sounds like a liberal public university campus to me – very democratic and free speech-y.

    1. It probably means the chief of campus police is all puffed up with self-importance. With that many candidates all in one place, I'm sure the Secret Service will be lurking about and will inevitably trip over the campus police. This could be entertaining.

  6. Every time I see a picture of Bruce Benson, I can't help but think of Blake Carrington from the campy '80's night-time soap opera, Dynasty.  Denver oil & gas man turned Colorado Republican pol who ran for governor after he ditched his first wife in a messy divorce and married something younger.

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