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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Wayne Allard, Colorado's Republican senator, was first elected to the House in 1990 and to the Senate in 1996. Allard grew up in the northern end of the Front Range, the son of a cattle rancher and developer, attended veterinary school, then in 1970 started a veterinary practice in Loveland--a lively business in an area with vast feedlots. His father was a Democrat--Allard's colleague Edward Kennedy remembers him from the 1960 campaign--and a friend of conservative Democratic Congressman Wayne Aspinall, but both father and son switched parties after Aspinall was defeated by a liberal in the 1972 primary. In 1982, Allard was elected to the state Senate, where he succeeded in limiting the length of legislative sessions to 120 days, so legislators would be more in touch with their constituents. In 1990, when Congressman Hank Brown ran for the Senate, Allard ran for the House in the 4th District, which covered much of the High Plains and the northern end of the Front Range. Against a former local university president and legislator, Allard won a 54% victory. He was easily re-elected in 1992 and 1994 and, when Brown retired from the Senate after just one term, Allard ran for the seat. Allard's voting record was one of the most conservative in the House. He was scarcely the most prominent candidate going into 1996, but others better known declined to run--former Senator Gary Hart, Governor Roy Romer, former Governor Dick Lamm. In the August 13 primary, Allard won 57%-43% over Attorney General Gale Norton, now George W. Bush's Interior Secretary. The Democratic nominee was Tom Strickland, who had more money and sophistication, but Allard ended up with more votes. Strickland held fundraisers with Robert Redford and Gloria Steinem and attacked Allard's ''Neanderthal'' positions on the environment; Allard said he was interested in ''sound science'' rather than emotional appeals, more local decision-making and less bureaucracy. Allard ran ads attacking Strickland for defending clients with environmental problems, including one company trying to build a medical waste incinerator in a poor Denver neighborhood. Allard won 51%-46%. Allard has a very conservative voting record in the Senate and prides himself on having returned $2.7 million in office funds to the Treasury since 1991. He is not much of a headline-maker. "I try not to be on the front burner of every issue that comes through." As ranking member and former chairman of the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, he strongly supported missile defense and pushed to develop space-based radar and defenses for space-based assets. In 2004 he called for the Pentagon to rely more on smaller, cheaper satellites and he sponsored a bill to end the University of California's management of the security-troubled Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prompted by complaints from the mother of a cadet, he investigated charges of rape and sexual mistreatment at the Air Force Academy and insisted on an amendment establishing an independent panel to determine who was responsible for "the atmosphere that was conducive to recent acts of sexual misconduct." Allard has acted when other outrages come to his attention: in 2004 he got a plane to return an Afghan-American who had suffered a heart attack in Afghanistan and he convinced the ATF to investigate the arson of a Habitat for Humanity house he was working on in Colorado. Allard gets low ratings from national environmental groups, but has done much work on his own environmental causes. With 2d District Democrat Mark Udall, he has worked successfully to create a wildlife refuge at Rocky Flats, a much-polluted nuclear plant near Denver that closed in 1989; this was modeled on his action as a House member, when he joined with Democrat Patricia Schroeder to make the Rocky Mountain Arsenal site a wildlife refuge. One of Allard's most interesting proposals is a ban on the interstate shipment of roosters for cockfighting. He explains: "I'm a veterinarian. I've never supported the idea of animal fighting. My training is not to encourage that kind of treatment of animals with no purpose other than fighting." One of Allard's few moments in the national spotlight came in 2004, when he was the lead Senate sponsor of the Family Marriage Amendment sponsored in the House by Colorado's Marilyn Musgrave. "The courts are driving a redefinition of marriage, contrary to democratic principles," he argued. The amendment fell far short of the 67 votes needed; Allard was defeated 48-50 on a procedural vote. But he was upbeat. "I feel like it was a very strong first vote," he said. "If they technically want to make that argument I guess they can on the number of votes, but I think it is a win." In 2004 he was mentioned as a possible chairman of the Budget Committee; he ended up with a seat on the Appropriations Committee. In his 2002 reelection race, Allard faced the same opponent as in 1996, Tom Strickland. Polls showed he remained relatively little known, perhaps because he has kept his promise to visit all 63 of Colorado's counties--64 since the creation of Broomfield County in November 2001--every year, even though 10 of those counties have 80% of the state's population. Allard was not troubled by his low name identification. "At the end of the day, there are work horses, and there are show horses. As a veterinarian, I know the difference." There was a vast contrast in style between the rural and stolid Allard and the urban and urbane Strickland: The candidate of the simple rural areas versus the candidate of the sophisticated urban core in a mostly suburban state. Strickland said his favorite food (in landlocked Colorado) was sushi; Allard said his was his wife's Crisco cherry pie. Allard constantly called Strickland a lawyer-lobbyist; Strickland called Allard a far right-winger and ran ads saying he lived in a right-wing "Wayne's World." Strickland described himself as a conservative Democrat, ready and able to work with senators in both parties; he called for broader access to health care and a $12,000 per year deduction for college tuition. Much of the campaign dialogue focused on corporate wrongdoing and the candidates' involvement in it. Some of the accusations came in the candidates' 13 debates, but voters saw it more in the independent expenditure ads. Over the summer, the bulk was run by liberal groups against Allard; the Club for Growth and the NRA chimed in with ads against Strickland later. Strickland accused Allard of promoting the 1999 acquisition by Qwest of USWest, which had turned out badly, and criticized him for buying 50 shares of Qwest one day after the acquisition was announced. Allard responded that in 1998 Strickland made a profit of $25,000 in one day because he was let in to the IPO of Global Crossing (which later failed). Allard called Strickland a liberal "elitist" who had worked for a company that wanted to build a medical waste incinerator in north Denver in the late 1980s. In the end, even though many public polls showed Strickland leading, the result was exactly the same as in 1996: Allard won 51%-46%. The percentage and the contours of support were strikingly similar to George W. Bush's 2004 Colorado victory. Allard was shellacked in Denver and Boulder and carried the old-line suburban Jefferson and Arapahoe Counties with only 51% and 52% of the vote. But he won 65% in fast-growing Douglas County, where the turnout was up 40% from the last off-year election, and 66% in Colorado Springs's El Paso County. Strickland carried some fashionable resort areas in the Western Slope and a few Hispanic counties in the south; Allard won large margins in most of the Western Slope and most of the Eastern Plains counties. Strickland carried metro Denver 51%-45%, but Allard carried the rest of the state 57%-39%. Allard has long said that he intended to serve only two terms. After 6th District Rep. Tom Tancredo renounced his term limit pledge in September 2002, Allard, asked whether he would run again, said, "I may or may not. I don't want to talk about what I'll be doing six years from now. I don't see me running again." In December 2004 he said he still plans to keep his term-limits promise. But his new Appropriations seat may provide him with a reason to run for reelection. In March 2005, Congressman Mark Udall said he is preparing to run for this seat in 2008.
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