DENVER — Tom Tancredo is quick to admit he brings plenty of baggage to the Colorado governor's race.
Like the time he called Miami a "Third World country." Or when he got thrown out of the White House for suggesting then-President George W. Bush was soft on illegal immigration. Or when he refused to take part in a presidential debate because it was on a Spanish-language network.
This week, he added more fuel to the fire when he said President Barack Obama is a bigger threat to the United States than al-Qaida or terrorism.
But despite all the baggage, the immigration hard-liner is running a solid campaign for governor as a third-party candidate and is within the margin of error in several recent polls.
Tancredo has successfully courted tea party groups, capitalized on anti-incumbent anger and parlayed his trademark blunt talk on the issues to become the de facto Republican candidate. Tancredo has also taken advantage of the collapse of GOP nominee Dan Maes, who is polling in single digits amid a series of character issues and campaign gaffes.
Tancredo is a former Republican lawmaker who left Congress in 2008 to mount a longshot White House bid that was largely based on an anti-immigration platform. He quit the GOP this year after saying that the Republicans in the governor's race couldn't win.
He got on the ballot as the American Constitution Party candidate – and has been surging in the polls ever since.
Democrat John Hickenlooper, the popular mayor of Denver, remains the favorite and a formidable candidate given his fundraising lead, but he has never made it above 50 percent in most polls.
The Canon City Daily Record reported that Tancredo told a coffee shop crowd Tuesday that Obama posed a threat to the Constitution, saying: "It's not al-Qaida, it's the guy sitting in the White House."
rest at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/28/tom-tancredo-obama-al-qaeda_n_775699.html?ir=Politics%3Ffbwall
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