Ken Buck
Kenneth Robert Buck is an American lawyer and politician who represented Colorado's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2015 until his resignation in 2024. Buck served as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, from 2019 to 2021. Formerly the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, Buck ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2010, losing to Democrat Michael Bennet.
In Congress, Buck joined the Freedom Caucus, and emerged as a staunch fiscal conservative, as well as one of the foremost proponents of antitrust enforcement in the Republican Party.
Buck announced in November 2023 that he would not seek a sixth House term, stating that his party's "insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans' confidence in the rule of law." On March 12, 2024, Buck announced he would resign from Congress at the end of the following week on March 22, 2024. Governor Jared Polis scheduled the special election for Buck's replacement for June 25.
Early life and education
Buck was born in Ossining, New York, in 1959. He and his two brothers were encouraged by their parents, Ruth and James Buck, both New York lawyers, to attend Ivy League colleges. Buck earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Princeton University in 1981 with a 75-page long senior thesis titled "Saudi Arabia: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place". Buck later said that the Princeton degree was "more important to than me".At Princeton, Buck played four years of football on the Princeton Tigers football team, including one year as a defensive back/punter/kicker and three years as a punter, earning All-Ivy League honors as a punter his senior year. After college, he worked in Wyoming at the state legislative services office and received a Juris Doctor from the University of Wyoming College of Law in 1985. He was also an instructor at the University of Denver Law School and for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy in Colorado.
Career
U.S. Attorney's Office
In 1986, Buck was hired by Congressman Dick Cheney to work on the Iran–Contra investigation. Following that assignment, he worked as a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C.In 1990, Buck joined the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado, where he became Chief of the Criminal Division. Buck was formally reprimanded and required to take ethics classes in 2001 for a meeting he had with defense attorneys about a felony case he thought should not be pursued. Only one of the three men initially indicted on felony charges was convicted for a misdemeanor offense. Buck said he is "not proud" of the incident that effectively ended his career with the Justice Department, but that he felt it was unethical to prosecute such a "weak" case. One of the three men donated $700 to Buck's 2010 Senate campaign.
Weld County District Attorney
Buck was elected the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, in 2004. When he suspected that Social Security numbers were being stolen by undocumented immigrants, he raided a tax service in Greeley, Colorado, and seized more than 5,000 tax files. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Buck's office for violating the privacy of the service's clients and after an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, costing the county approximately $150,000, the raid was deemed unconstitutional. Buck has said that his time enforcing laws for the Justice Department and Weld County stoked his desire to become a lawmaker himself.Rape case controversy
During the 2010 Senate race, The Colorado Independent ran an article titled "Suspect in 2005 Buck rape case said he knew it was rape." The article, about a case Buck refused to prosecute in 2006, included a complete transcript of a tape between the victim and her attacker, including the following dialogue:The tape, which Greeley police had the victim record during its investigation, was available before Buck made his decision not to prosecute the woman's admitted rapist. According to a following article in the Independent, "Buck's refusal to prosecute 2005 rape case reverberates in U.S. Senate race", the reporter provides a transcript of another tape of a conversation between the woman and Buck, in which "Buck appears to all but blame her for the rape and tells her that her case would never fly with a Weld County jury."
Buck told the Greeley Tribune in 2006: "A jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer's remorse." The victim told the Colorado Independent in 2010: "That comment made me feel horrible. The offender admitted he did it, but Ken Buck said I was to blame. Had he not attacked me, I might have let it go. But he put the blame on me, and I was furious. I still am furious." According to the Independent, "A man entered the alleged victim's apartment and had sex with her while she was drunk, she says. As she passed in and out of consciousness, she says she told him 'no' and tried to push him away. If he had been a stranger, the case may have played out differently, but he was a former lover, and she had invited him over." In the meeting that she recorded, Buck said, "It appears to me … that you invited him over to have sex with him," and that he thought she might have wanted to file rape charges to retaliate against the man for some bad feeling left over from when they had been lovers more than a year earlier. According to the Independent, "Buck also comes off on this tape as being at least as concerned with the woman's sexual history and alcohol consumption as he is with other facts of the case." Drawing on Buck's abortion stance, the Independent wrote, "The suspect in this case had claimed that the victim had at one point a year or so before this event become pregnant with his child and had an abortion, which she denies, saying she miscarried. The suspect's claim, though, is in the police report, and Buck refers to it as a reason she may be motivated to file charges where he thinks none are warranted."
Attempted falsification of Colorado Assembly GOP primary
On May 6, 2020, The Denver Post published a recording of a conference call between Buck and local Republican party official Eli Bremer, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording. In the recording, Buck first asked Bremer if he understood "the order of the executive committee and the central committee" to put activist David Stiver "on the ballot" in the November 2020 election for the District 10 state senate seat. Stiver had not qualified for the November ballot because he only received 24% of votes from Republicans in the district, short of the 30% qualifying mark. Bremer replied: "Uh, yes, sir, I understand the central committee has adopted a resolution that requires me to sign a false affidavit to the state". Buck continued: "And will you do so?" Bremer replied: "I will seek legal counsel as I am being asked to sign an affidavit that states Mr. Stiver received 30% of the vote. I need to seek legal counsel to find out if I am putting myself in jeopardy of a misdemeanor for doing that." Buck lastly asked: "And you understand that it is the order of the central committee that you do so?", to which Bremer replied he understood, and reiterated he would seek legal advice.Buck told The Denver Post on May 6 that Colorado political party committees traditionally made such decisions. The primary between Stiver and his opponent had been unfair due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Colorado, Buck said. He further claimed he was not asking Bremer "to commit fraud", but asking "if he understood the decision of the central committee and if he was willing to follow the request of the Republican central committee". Buck also said he had no "personal stake in the process". Meanwhile, Bremer decried that the Republican Party he belonged to was "for the rule of law except when it applies to us".
2010 U.S. Senate campaign
Republican primary
Angered by what he later called the nation's "lurch to the left," Buck announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate on April 28, 2009. In his first run for statewide office, Buck frequently referenced national issues in defining his goals as a U.S. senator. Among these were his opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the role of federal policy czars. Buck also stressed mounting governmental debt, an issue to which he frequently returned during the primary campaign. Contrasting himself to what he argued was the "top down" style of early Republican favorite Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton, Buck pledged a "bottom-up" campaign that would include visits to each of Colorado's 64 counties.Initially Norton was seen to have had a nearly insurmountable advantage against "a band of underfunded unknowns" that included Buck, who early in the primary season was called "a dead-in-the-water Republican U.S. Senate candidate with laughable fundraising totals and little establishment GOP support". Norton's staff at the beginning of the campaign was twice the size of Buck's. He attempted to make a virtue of his meager war chest by positioning "himself as the small-money underdog" in an election cycle that saw a "populist push for outsider candidates to upset the Washington establishment".
After receiving nearly $600,000 in a television advertising support from Americans for Job Security and a victory in March at the state party's caucuses, Buck began to receive endorsements and notice. By late spring of 2010, Colorado had highly competitive Republican and Democratic primaries.
Although Buck positioned himself as the candidate for the Tea Party movement during the Republican primary, he stirred controversy at times with remarks critical of former Representative Tom Tancredo, a Tea Party favorite, and the statement "Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I'm on the camera?"—a reference to those suspicious of President Barack Obama's place of birth. Buck blamed the comments on his exhaustion and frustration after months of campaigning, and on his exasperation that it was difficult to keep debate focused on the mounting governmental debt. Tea Party leader Lu Busse criticized Buck's "choice of words" and inclination to treat all Tea Party adherents as a uniform group.
Buck again stirred controversy by suggesting voters should cast their votes for him over Norton because, unlike Norton, "I do not wear high heels." Buck later said he was responding to Norton's television ad claiming he was not "man enough" to attack her himself.
Making reference to Buck's mandatory ethics classes, Norton argued that she "didn't need an ethics class to know what's right.... Ken broke the rules, and the facts speak for themselves." After Buck's former supervisor, then-U.S. Attorney John Suthers, endorsed Norton, the Colorado Democratic Party Chair called for Buck's resignation from his Weld County post because of his "career bypassing justice and ethics to reward political allies and campaign contributors".
On August 10, Buck defeated Norton in the Republican primary, 52% to 48%, the end of "a bitterly contested primary that saw him go from an obscure and cash-starved underdog to a gaffe-prone mascot for anti-establishment conservatives and nationally."