"Charlie Brannan is a synthetic farmer and was a miserable failure as Secretary of Agriculture. I will challenge the ex-Secretary to a cotton-pickin', wheat-shockin', cow-milkin', calf-ropin' contest. If Brannan loses, he has to drop out. If I lose, I'll drop out."
Thus last week in Colorado these words, spoken by ex-Governor Dan Thornton, wealthy rancher and onetime farmboy, shoved Colorado's senatorial race right off its mile-high mountaintop and down into the barnyard. As sole Republican candidate for the vacated Senate seat of ailing Eugene D. Millikin, who is retiring, the popular Thornton...