Banking on the Brewer: in Colorado, Republican hopes rest on Pete Coors.

Grand Junction, Colo.

ON April 4, Pete Coors was on his way to church with his wife, Marilyn, when conversation turned to Colorado's Senate race. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the GOP incumbent, had issued the surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection, and Republicans were scrambling to come up with a new candidate. All of the likely aspirants--the governor, lieutenant governor, and five GOP members of Congress--had declined to get in. The Democrats, meanwhile, had no such trouble: They quickly rallied behind attorney general Ken Salazar, who was widely seen as a formidable contender no matter which Republican stepped forward.

"Hickenlooper told me I should run," said Coors to his wife, referring to Denver's Democratic mayor, John Hickenlooper. "He said Colorado could use another brewer in public office." Hickenlooper owns a microbrewery, and the macrobrewer Coors suspected that his friend was just joking. But he took the idea seriously, and so did Marilyn. For years, Coors had expressed a desire to enter politics at some point. "If not now, when?" she asked him. Over the next two days, Coors talked to his children and state GOP leaders. On Wednesday, April 7, Gov. Bill Owens informed the press that his party finally had a candidate. "I think Pete Coors would make an outstanding senator," he said.

When Owens spoke these words, many Republicans in Colorado and Washington breathed a deep sigh of relief. If Coors hadn't decided to enter the race, the GOP probably would have nominated former congressman Bob Schaffer--a solid conservative, but also a man Owens and others thought Salazar would easily beat in November. "Bob's the kind of guy you appoint to fill a vacancy," says one top Colorado Republican. "He's not someone you nominate for a general election." On August 10, Coors overwhelmed Schaffer in the primary, 61 percent to 39 percent.

The 58-year-old Coors brings not only a strong brand name to the table, but also a familiar image: For more than a decade, Americans have watched him wander around the Rockies and talk about beer during timeouts in televised football games. The real Pete Coors is much like the plainspoken guy he plays in his company's commercials, with ruddy good looks and hair that's as silver as a can of Coors Light. He is the great-grandson of Adolph Coors, the man who founded the Golden, Colo.-based company that is now America's third-largest brewer.

Coors is a favorite brand name among conservatives, too. The candidate's father, the late Joe Coors, was a member of Ronald Reagan's "kitchen cabinet." His work as a philanthropist was even more important: In 1972, he wrote a $250,000 check that helped establish the conservative movement's preeminent think tank. "There wouldn't be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors," says president Ed Feulner. (Pete's mother, Holly, continues to sit on the Heritage board.) Many other right-of-center organizations have benefited from Coors-family largesse, either directly from individual members or indirectly from the family-run Castle Rock Foundation.

Before this year, Pete Coors had attended only one GOP convention: in 1976, as a Reagan delegate. "My father told me, 'I'll do the politics and you do the beer,'" he says. And so the son did the beer, working at the brewery and rising to become chairman of the board. All the while, he pondered politics, even telling the company's CEO to expect his sudden departure when the right opportunity presented itself. And this spring, when Colorado appeared to lack a Republican both willing and able to defend a Senate seat, Coors saw his unexpected chance and seized it.

The Coors name has yielded enormous advantages. Virtually everybody in Colorado knew about Pete Coors long before he announced his candidacy, and on the campaign trail people often ask for his autograph or a picture. This means Coors hasn't had to devote resources to what is usually a rookie candidate's first test: raising name recognition among an indifferent electorate.

Despite this, Coors encountered a few early problems, many of them arising from his inexperience as a politician. He spoke about tax policy, gun rights, and abortion with knowledge and conviction, but he needed a few weeks to develop clear-cut positions on other issues. Even then, Coors occasionally stumbled. In a June forum, Schaffer asked him whether he agreed with Paul Martin on trade between the United States and Canada. "I'm not sure I know who Paul Martin is," replied Coors. Schaffer pounced: "A U.S. senator needs to know who the prime minister of Canada is." It was an embarrassing "gotcha" moment for Coors, who was accustomed to public speaking but not the rough-and-tumble of political debates.

Additional challenges emerged. Coors was one of the first companies in the country to offer benefits to employees' same-sex partners--a fact that generated flak from social conservatives during the primary. He also became snared, perhaps inevitably, in a debate over alcohol. In the past, Coors has said that if an 18-year-old can put on a uniform and die for his country, then he ought to enjoy the legal right to crack open a cold one. He hasn't changed this view, but he does find it necessary to assure various inquisitors that he has no "hidden agenda" to lower the drinking age. And he spent a portion of the primary fending off accusations from the likes of Schaffer and James Dobson of Focus on the Family (headquartered in Colorado Springs) that no self-respecting conservative would allow his company to bankroll a TV ad campaign as raunchy as the one used to market Coors Light.

Yet Schaffer and his supporters, for all of their attacking, performed a helpful service: They made Coors a better candidate, less prone to mistakes that will hurt more if they're committed in October. When Coors spoke to a gun club in September, he knew how to turn his personal story into a political pitch. "My dad taught me how to shoot pigeons off the grain elevator at the brewery when I was six years old," he said. It was just what the gun owners wanted to hear.

One thing about Coors's presentation hasn't changed since he started: His two favorite subjects on the stump are taxes and lawyers, and he doesn't especially care for either. Attorney General Salazar is a lawyer, of course--though his top campaign message seems to be that he's really a farmer. He discusses this background about as often as John Kerry mentions his service in Vietnam. "If you look at my hands, you will see the calluses and cuts of a proud farmer," he says.

It's not an act: Salazar grew up in a house without electricity, in the rural town of Manassa. His family still farms there. Salazar is only 49 years old, but he looks at least a decade older--and very much like retired senator Phil Gramm, albeit in a cowboy hat and bolo tie. He speaks with the slight inflections of old-time Spanish Americans whose ancestors have lived in what is now the United States for centuries. And just about everybody believes he is on the verge of becoming a major force not just in Colorado politics, but perhaps nationally as well. If he wins this year, he may find his way onto veep lists for Democrats in 2008. "We have to beat him now so we don't have to deal with him in the future," says Owens.

That won't be easy. Salazar has won a pair of statewide races, including a reelection two years ago when he carried an impressive 58 percent of the vote in what was otherwise a good year for Republicans. A Coors victory will almost certainly require some of these Salazar backers to switch their allegiance.

The defectors probably won't be Democrats, as Salazar knows how to excite partisan crowds. Many of them start out disliking the Coors family because they know its political sentiments; they also resent company efforts to resist unionization. But they especially enjoy Salazar's class-warfare riff of a humble farmer taking on a Republican child of privilege. "Pete, you and I come from different worlds," he said at a debate in Grand Junction on September 11. A few minutes later, he gestured at Coors and announced: "Don't give tax cuts to the wealthy." His comments are much sharper when he speaks to groups of Democrats. At a small gathering in Rifle, he concluded his remarks by condemning "the forces of evil that Karl Rove and others are behind." That afternoon, at the headquarters of the Mesa County Democrats, Salazar spoke in the same mode as he attacked those who "try to do great harm and great evil to this state and this nation."

Salazar led in the polls through the summer, but more recent surveys have shown the race tightening to just a few points. Republicans have every reason to believe their man will eventually come out on top, from the fact that they outnumber Democrats in Colorado to the sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort they dispatched two years ago to help Sen. Wayne Allard win a close race. No matter what else happens on Election Day, a Coors victory will give conservatives something to toast on the night of November 2.