The congressman from Columbine

For Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, reelection seemed inevitable -- until tragedy struck Littleton.

By Jake Tapper

Dec 7, 1999 | Colorado's 6th Congressional District -- consisting of the eastern, western and southern suburbs of Denver -- is a leafy, soccer-mom kind of place that has sent only Republicans to Congress since it was first created after the 1980 census. But a disconcerting and unpredictable factor has been thrust into the 6th District's political equation this year that removes all electoral guarantees. The peaceful sprawl of Jefferson and Arapahoe Counties has been forever disrupted and the area is now known for something other than suburban anonymity: the blood-soaked tile of Columbine High School.

"They're still grieving," says Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat from the neighboring 1st District. "People are still really deeply affected. Particularly people in that community."

Deep emotions don't always make good politics. Some do, of course -- in the right hands, voter anger, contentment, outrage and exasperation can be channeled into electoral results.

Grief, however, is tricky terrain.

But the tension the grief has created in the 6th District is so volatile the House GOP is nervous about the job security of the freshman congressman whose district includes Columbine: an outspoken pro-National Rifle Association, conservative Republican named Tom Tancredo.

Normally this seat's a "gimme" for any Republican. The district's only congressman until 1998 was the low-key Dan Schaefer, who glided to one reelection victory after another. But after Schaefer retired last year, he was replaced by a very different kind of pol in Tancredo: a right-wing feather ruffler.

Elected to the Colorado House at age 30, Tancredo was one of a small clique of conservatives known as the House crazies. In 1981, Tancredo resigned from the House to serve as a regional representative for the Reagan Administration's Department of Education, where he proceeded to cut the regional office from 220 employees to about 60.

After a career as a local activist and head of a think tank that argued against government support for public education, Tancredo eked out a victory in a contentious five-way House primary for an open seat. During his campaign, Tancredo was tarred by one of the ugliest and most highly derided negative ad campaigns in history, in which his opponent essentially accused him of Nazism.

And when Tancredo's not the victim of controversy, he's creating it. He made national news just days after his election by refusing to attend a White House welcome for new members of Congress.

"I'm not going," he said. "I've been to the White House when we had a real president." He subsequently pulled a no-show at the State of the Union address.

Tancredo's district is perfect for a moderate Republican, but not necessarily for one as conservative as he. "When [critics] say Tancredo is out of touch with the district, they're probably to some extent correct," says Fred Brown, political editor of the Denver Post.

Tancredo's conservative antics combined with his pro-NRA views -- which seem inappropriate in the district where Klebold and Harris wreaked their havoc -- have both Democrats and Republicans raising their eyebrows.

"His district is the district my constituents move to escape urban school violence," observes DeGette. "Suburban Coloradans have become shocked. It's not going to be a normal election year for a guy like Tom Tancredo because of the gun control issue."

Tancredo's vulnerability was formally acknowledged early in November when he was included on a short list of House Republicans targeted for extra help by the national party.

Enter Ken Toltz, a soft-spoken, balding, diminutive Democrat who hopes to unseat Tancredo. The son of a prominent local family that owns 27 area dry-cleaning stores, Toltz is -- for a Democrat in this strong Republican district -- a serious challenger

Having worked for both a pro-Israel lobbying organization and as deputy national finance director for former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's 1984 presidential bid, he has connections and is politically savvy. He is well on his way to raising more than $200,000 by year's end -- an especially strong showing for a 6th District Democrat. He has hired a pollster and a media consultant.

Toltz was already planning on challenging Tancredo five months before the massacre. Now, however, his race has a new focus.

"People are looking for a way to express their anger and their pain," Toltz says. "And it's new for a lot of people to express it through political activity. And that's the challenge for us."

But when asked how he intends to meet that challenge, how he plans on discussing gun control as a weapon in his arsenal against Tancredo without being accused of exploiting the tragedy for his own political ends, Toltz admits he doesn't yet know.

"It's still a very open wound right now," he says.

Toltz has two little girls at public schools not far from Columbine High. And a few of the high school kids working at his dry cleaning shops in the afternoons are Columbine students who lost friends in the massacre.

But Tancredo is also all too familiar with the wound. He lives only half a mile from Columbine.

"I don't think that I have ever been so affected by an event in my political life," Tancredo says. "By far the most extraordinary phenomenon -- the event itself -- almost seemed incomprehensible. Then you saw the community actually in shock. And I know that seems a bit over-dramatic. But I'm telling you, you could actually see it. ... I don't know exactly how to explain it other than to express my feeling that the entire community was showing symptoms of shock."

One of Tancredo's neighbors had a few children in the school that day. "Thank God none of them were physically injured." One of them "held the teacher who eventually died. He's a young man, this kid ... And his father told me not too long ago that he hardly knows him anymore. He said, 'I really don't even know my own son anymore.' And it's true. He seems about 20 years older."

Lately, Tancredo says, residents of Littleton and the surrounding area have been somewhat heartened by the sight of survivors of the April 20 massacre, "coming out of the hospitals with their wounds being healed. They have scars, yes, but they're able to walk now. They're able to pick up the pieces of their lives and try to move on. And we're very pleased by that. But in the back of my mind, I think that for every one of those kids there are probably 100 whose scars we cannot see. And they're not greeted by crowds and flowers and friends. And I just pray for them too. Because there are many more of them, frankly, than we know about. And their healing process can be more difficult than even the ones that some of kids with physical injuries are facing."

But even as the students of Columbine heal, a different kind of attack is being staged in Washington.

Next Page: What's wrong with these kids?

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