October 26, 2015 10:35 AM UTC

Robert Blaha Getting Serious About Senate Bid, Hiring Staff

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you’ve been wondering what’s happening with the promised Senate campaign of Colorado Springs Republican Robert Blaha, the National Journal has you covered [Pols warning: This link also contains the world’s largest picture of Robert Blaha. Seriously. We’re not kidding.] From Andrea Drusch:

Robert Blaha, who pledged to join the race after Ben­net sup­por­ted the Ir­a­ni­an nuc­le­ar-arms deal, has lined up Re­pub­lic­an strategist Jordan Gehrke, ad-maker Fred Dav­is, and poll­ster Gene Ulm to run his po­ten­tial cam­paign. And after spend­ing nearly $1 mil­lion of his own money in a failed 2012 con­gres­sion­al bid, he’s vow­ing to make an­oth­er siz­able in­vest­ment—one his still-un­of­fi­cial polit­ic­al ad­visers hope will ward off po­ten­tial Re­pub­lic­an chal­lengers.

“There’s really no oth­er top-tier can­did­ate in the race, from our per­spect­ive,” said Gehrke, who most re­cently served as gen­er­al con­sult­ant for Sen. Ben Sas­se’s cam­paign in Neb­raska. “Robert is go­ing to seed the cam­paign in a very sig­ni­fic­ant way right up front with a siz­able in­vest­ment per­son­ally just to demon­strate how ser­i­ous he is about this. The way this primary is set­ting up, there’s nobody who is go­ing to be more con­ser­vat­ive than him, and there’s nobody who’s go­ing to out­raise him.”

You may recall that Blaha “announced” back in September that he would “announce” his campaign for Senate in October. Blaha tells the National Journal that he may hold off on a formal kickoff of his candidacy until “after the holidays,” which may also mean, after the PAC supporting my candidacy is ready to roll:

“We con­tin­ue to as­sim­il­ate the team and to pre­pare for 2016,” Blaha said. “I can’t really think of any­body jump­ing in that would de­ter us at all at this point. … We’re not talk­ing about timeline be­cause we’re go­ing to let a little time pass. … The most im­port­ant thing we can do to really get our strategy, our pro­cess, our team.”

Be­cause he doesn’t hold fed­er­al of­fice, Blaha can raise money for a sup­port­ing su­per PAC be­fore join­ing the race. It was a tac­tic em­ployed by pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Jeb Bush this year and mim­icked by at least one oth­er Sen­ate can­did­ate this cycle.

Col­or­ado Re­pub­lic­an con­sult­ant Patrick Dav­is, who ad­vises Blaha, has said he would likely run the su­per PAC.

Blaha is President of something called Human Capital Associates, which may or may not employ George Costanza, and spent about $800k of his own money in his failed 2012 bid to defeat incumbent Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn in CD-5. Blaha’s team isn’t saying how much money he may invest in his Senate campaign, but Jordan Gehrke tells the Journal that Blaha was “not going to lose because of a lack of money.”

Well, then…Bla-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! [read in spooky voice, because of Halloween and all]