Schaffer to run for Senate (03/28/04)

Schaffer to run for Senate

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Former Congressman Bob Schaffer of Colorado, a one-time co-chairman of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, on March 12 announced his intention to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate, according to several media reports.

The former three-term Republican congressional representative, who is looking to fill the spot being vacated by GOP Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, has yet to gain his party's nomination for an election that could decide control of the senate.

"I think Colorado is going to be ground zero in the senatorial political races around the country," Mr. Schaffer, a Ukrainian American, told the Associated Press. "The balance of the Senate is at stake."

The Republicans currently hold a 51-48 majority in the Senate, with the lone independent a former Republican who now tends to favor the Democrats.

Mr. Schaffer, 43, was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1996 and won re-election in 1998 and 2000. However, the Colorado congressman stuck to a self-imposed term limit pledge to retire after he completed his third term in 2002. He later told the AP that his pledge cost him House leadership positions and coveted committee assignments and said he would not make a similar pledge if elected to the Senate.

Mr. Schaffer is the first Republican to announce his candidacy for Colorado's Senate seat. "I've filed and I have an organization that I've put together, an exploratory team and a team that is getting larger," Mr. Schaffer told the AP. "I see nothing that discourages me."

Mr. Schaffer, who has a congressional voting record as a strong conservative, previously described himself as "the strongest advocate for improved U.S.-Ukraine relations in the Congress." In 2002 he also suggested that the U.S. government should end all foreign assistance funding to the central government of Ukraine, and redirect it instead toward grass-roots democracy programs, small and medium enterprise development and health initiatives in that country.

In a letter written to The Ukrainian Weekly and published on November 25, 2001, Mr. Schaffer called the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 "a naked act of genocide against Ukraine and its people."

Mr. Schaffer has also been an advocate for permanently lifting U.S. government trade restrictions against Ukraine. The 1974 Jackson-Vanik Amendment sought to prohibit the extension of U.S. government credits and most-favored-nation trade status to any country without a market economy that didn't allow its citizens to emigrate freely.

On March 13, 2002, Mr. Schaffer introduced legislation in the House of Representatives aimed at graduating Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik restrictions in recognition of the country's "substantial progress" in the area of human rights, as well as its cooperation in the "global struggle against international terrorism."

As a member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Schaffer made frequent trips to Ukraine, including as a member of the U.S. delegation that monitored the March 31, 2002, parliamentary and local elections there.

There has been speculation that Mr. Schaffer will face Democratic Attorney General Ken Salazar in the general election in November, a race that is seen as a toss-up despite Colorado's GOP-leaning electorate.

Prior to a November election for the vacant Colorado Senate seat, Mr. Schaffer looks likely to face an August 10 primary, unless no Republican rises to challenge him. Various media reports have speculated that a GOP primary would include retired Air Force Academy law professor Dan O'Bryant, while several frontrunners - Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, Rep. Bob Beauprez and state Treasurer Mike Coffman - have told the AP they are not candidates.

Other potential Republican nominees include Lt. Gov. Jane Norton and Jim Nicholson, the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2001.

As a member of Congress, Mr. Schaffer opposed abortion and gun control, and was known as a politician who often rejected conventional political wisdom. In 1998 the National Taxpayers Union recognized Mr. Schaffer as the most frugal member of Congress after he returned more than $360,000 of his allotted office budget.

The retiring senior senator from Colorado, Mr. Campbell, 70, announced recently that he was leaving the Senate for health reasons, having received treatment last year for prostate cancer. The AP also reported that his Washington office faces allegations that a longtime aide had taken bribes.

As a member of the Senate, Sen. Campbell was an advocate of various Ukrainian issues and co-chaired the Helsinki Commission, an independent agency of the U.S. government. Additionally, Mr. Campbell is the sponsor of Senate Resolution 202, the resolution on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine that unequivocally calls the Famine a genocide.

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