Just when you think Dan Maes couldn’t possibly hurt the Republican Party any more, you learn that he can.
If Maes doesn’t get at least 10 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial race, Republicans will drop to minor-party status. While that’s bad news for Republicans, perhaps it will help reform the laws that have kept minor parties at such a disadvantage.
Not that we feel sorry for the Republicans — who worked with Democrats over the years to create the unfair rules they might find themselves living under — but what we’ve learned about how the state treats minor parties makes us think the rules ought to be changed to create a level playing field for all comers.
If Maes fails to garner at least 10 percent of the vote — a recent Denver Post poll put him at 15 percent — the Grand Old Party will become a down-ballot minor party, crippled by fund-raising restrictions.
If that happens, their candidates won’t be listed alongside a Democrat in every single race, from president on down, for at least the next two election cycles.
Instead, the first two candidates in each race would be the Democratic nominee and the candidate fielded by the American Constitution Party — Tom Tancredo’s new party. The former GOP congressman is now polling more than three times higher than the 10 percent major-minor cutoff. Voters could have to browse among the ranks of Libertarians, Greens, Communists, Socialists, Prohibitionists and others to find Republican candidates, as one GOP operative notes in a memo to his party.
It gets worse.
Major party candidates are allowed to collect donations for primary races and for the general election at the same time. This is true even if the candidate faces no opposition in the primary. But minor party candidates who face no primary opponents can’t accept donations for the primary season; rather, they can only accept general election donations.
That can mean a minor party candidate’s funding is cut in half.
Yes, we suppose savvy Republicans in the future could run shadow primary opponents to get around the rule. (Then again, hasn’t Maes shown how dangerous it can be to field un- serious candidates?) But resorting to such tricks underscores the unfairness of the current rules.
We suspect the argument could be merely an academic one, as there are likely enough Republicans out there who will vote by habit, along with enough remaining Maes fans, to keep the GOP above 10 percent in the gubernatorial race.
But we hope enough lawmakers in both parties see the minor party dilemma as a matter of fairness, and take action with legislation that levels the playing field.
