Insurgent Democratic candidate Mark Benner left the race for Colorado’s open U.S. Senate seat over the weekend with more of a whimper than a bang. Democratic chair Pat Waak informed Benner, an art teacher from Anton, that he won only a handful of delegates during the party’s recent county assemblies and failed to make the threshold necessary to get on the ballot for the August primary.

Waak said there were still a few counties to still be tabulated, but that Benner gained the minimum 30 percent of delegates only in his home county of Washington, making five-term Congressman Mark Udall the party’s de facto nominee. (The candidate will be officially nominated at the party's state convention in May).  

Benner’s shoe-string campaign had focused on a handful of issues that appealed especially to the party’s left-wing -- single-payer health care and the impeachment of Pres. George Bush, among them – but he said that in the end pragmatism among delegates won out.

 “Since Mark Udall is a big-name candidate here, for a lot of Democrats it wasn’t about issues, it was about getting someone they can elect,” Benner said. “My goal was to offer an alternative and create dialogue around the issues, and I did just not do a very good job of making that happen.”