Ken Buck '81 Isn't Bucking Around

On Tuesday night, Ken Buck '81 won the Republican nomination for senator in Colorado. Graduating from the U. with a degree in politics, he earned his J.D. from the University of Wyoming School of Law in 1985. Most importantly, the bucking bronco is Wyoming's official symbol. Coincidence? Absolutely not.

After a fiercely contested primary, Buck bucked his way to Colorado Republican primacy. The primary saw his transformation from a political nobody into the mascot for anti-establishment conservatives nationwide.

Though Democrats are trying to cast him as a conservative extremist along the lines of Nevada's Sharron Angle and Kentucky's Rand Paul, two other Republican Senate candidates whose prospects are looking grim after some Democratic image handiwork, Buck is trying to distance himself from these images.

So don't call this Tea Partier a Tea Partier, he prefers to be described as a "grassroots" candidate. "It is a much broader group than just tea parties," he said. "What I'm saying to everyone in the media is, don't put labels on me."