May 18, 2016 05:32 PM UTC

Robert Blaha Campaign Manager Quits

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• by: Colorado Pols

The 2016 Republican race for U.S. Senate may go down as one of the all-time biggest disasters in Colorado political history.

Surely you are aware by now of the crater that was once Jon Keyser’s campaign for U.S. Senate, but Keyser isn’t the only GOP candidate with problems. Ryan Frazier is still waiting to find out if any potential votes he receives will actually be counted. Jack Graham is clearly nervous about his personnel file from his time as Athletic Director at Colorado State University — a topic that came up in Tuesday’s Denver Post debate — and now Robert Blaha has problems of his own.

As John Frank reports for the Denver Post:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Robert Blaha’s team is experiencing a staff shakeup after his campaign manager quit.

Katey Price, a veteran political operative, resigned her post at the top of the campaign amid disagreements about political strategy. It’s unclear whether Blaha’s consultant, Jordan Gehrke, is still working for the campaign.

The turnover puts Blaha in a tough position at a crucial point in the campaign, as the candidate looks to regain footing from  a prolonged fight to make the ballot just weeks before mail ballots are sent to voters in the June 28 primary.

And it’s just the latest bit of drama in a race  full of it.

A spokesperson for Blaha’s campaign tried to downplay the departure of Price as part of the natural “ebb and flow” of high-profile political campaigns, but losing your campaign manager just weeks before ballots are sent to voters is far from common.

Nevertheless, Blaha maintains at least one advantage over the rest of the field (sans Jack Graham); as a candidate with the ability to self-fund, Blaha will be up on television with a new advertisement on Thursday. While outside soft money groups may play a role in the Senate Primary, campaign finance reports indicate that only Blaha and Graham — who is also personally wealthy — have any real money with which to pay for TV ads.

Blaha losing his campaign manager just weeks before voting begins is absolutely a strange development…or it would be if the GOP Senate race was at all a normal undertaking in 2016.