{"id":108201,"date":"2015-11-17T20:39:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T03:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ryan-frazier-joins-u-s-senate-race-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2015-11-17T20:39:21","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T03:39:21","slug":"ryan-frazier-joins-u-s-senate-race-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ryan-frazier-joins-u-s-senate-race-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Frazier joins U.S. Senate race in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Frazier\"
Frazier<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The Republican field for U.S. Senate in Colorado grew on Thursday with an announcement from former Aurora Councilman Ryan Frazier.<\/p>\n

Frazier, 38, is seeking his party\u2019s nomination to unseat Democrat Michael Bennet in 2016. He faces an uphill battle.<\/p>\n

While he has name recognition within political circles, Frazier will have to work to establish himself as a household name. Fundraising also will be a challenge, as Bennet has more than $4.3 million in the bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a different kind of Republican candidate to win Colorado,\u201d Frazier told The Durango Herald.<\/p>\n

He became at least the fifth Republican to announce, though the party continues to search for someone with significant statewide recognition.<\/p>\n

In outlining his platform, much of Frazier\u2019s campaign mirrors goals shared by traditional Republicans, including advocating for fiscal responsibility, pro-life policies and protecting constitutional freedoms, such as gun rights.<\/p>\n

But he also pointed to ideas such as addressing student debt and reforming the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of issues and things that are impacting people\u2019s daily lives in our country as a whole that Republicans have to be able to provide solutions to,\u201d Frazier said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCriminal justice, student loans, education reform has to be part of the conversation right there with how we grow our economy and how we protect our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats were fast to attack Frazier, pointing to failed election bids in the past, including an unsuccessful campaign for a U.S. House seat against Democratic incumbent Ed Perlmutter in 2010. He again lost in 2011 in his quest to become Aurora\u2019s mayor.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrazier has lost every campaign he\u2019s attempted since 2010, and no matter who gets their nomination, Republicans will be left with a weak nominee who can\u2019t win in 2016,\u201d said Colorado Democratic Party spokesman Andrew Zucker.<\/p>\n

Frazier countered that over the course of his political career, he has won three elections, including his Aurora council seat. He says he has grown over the past five years, running a small business and co-founding an Aurora charter school that has two-thirds minority enrollment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the state of Colorado, we like to think that when you fall down, you get right back up, you dust yourself off and you keep going,\u201d Frazier said. \u201cWith a lot of hard work, we have a legitimate shot to win this.\u201d<\/p>\n

pmarcus@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex-councilman seeks GOP nod<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108201"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}