Glenn Wins Primary, But Can he Scale Up to the General Election?

Darryl Glenn, a little known El Paso County Commissioner, just won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Colorado, with about 130,000 votes in a five-person field in a low turnout primary (38% of 350,000 votes). Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin endorsements joined a late contribution from a conservative Washington D.C. Super PAC to help him reach $500,000 in contributions.

Darryl Glenn & Michael Bennet

But by Labor Day, Glenn will need to scale up his volunteer grassroots campaign to attract millions in campaign contributions and communicate with more than three million voters.

In an interview with Dan Frosch for the Wall Street Journal:

Floyd Ciruli, a longtime independent pollster in Colorado, said the race against Mr. Bennet could well be a close one.

“To the extent that a huge proportion of this re-election is going to be a reflection of the anti-establishment tone of the presidential race, there are early indications that the race will be competitive in Colorado,” he said.

Still, Mr. Ciruli said, Mr. Bennet was well-positioned to defend his seat, noting that Mr. Glenn would have to tack to the center and scale up a bare-bones campaign that had so far focused only on a narrow portion of Colorado’s electorate.