Daily Sentinel: Tipton wins backing of Sarah Palin in quest to unseat John Salazar

Daily Sentinel: Tipton wins backing of Sarah Palin in quest to unseat John Salazar

By Gary Harmon
Friday, September 24, 2010

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has again jumped into the race for 3rd Congressional District in Colorado, endorsing Republican challenger Scott Tipton.

Palin endorsed Tipton on her http://www.takebackthe20.com site.

The site is aimed at ginning up opposition to 20 Democrat representatives who voted for health-care legislation championed by President Barack Obama, despite hailing from districts carried by the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008.

One of those is Colorado’s 3rd, which is represented by John Salazar, a Democrat from Manassa.

“Now we can vote against them,” the website says.

The Salazar campaign said the endorsement was unimpressive.

“What else could Palin do? Especially when her first choice, Bob McConnell, didn’t win the primary,” Salazar spokeswoman Tara Trujillo said. “She had no choice but to support the next guy in line.”

In addition to Tipton, SarahPAC, Palin’s political-action committee, endorsed Cory Gardner in Colorado’s 4th District.

The Palin endorsement cited Tipton’s experience as a “small-business leader,” who “knows how government red tape strangles small businesses.”

While Palin supported McConnell, a Steamboat Springs man, in the primary, Tipton garnered the endorsement of former Clinton political adviser Dick Morris.

Tipton then was quoted in The Denver Post and on the Politico website as saying Palin’s endorsement of McConnell carried some weight, but might not have been “as dramatic as many had thought.”

For the general election, Tipton said he was honored to have Palin’s endorsement, calling her “a great inspiration to a lot of common-sense conservatives.”