Monday Morning Politicking with Bentley Rayburn

Retired Air Force Major General Bentley Rayburn was a political novice when he jumped in the 2006 5th Congressional Republican primary race just four months before the primary election. Rayburn ended up in third place with 17 percent of the vote in that election. But this election cycle, Rayburn started his campaign last November, in what's turned out to be a CD-5 GOP primary rematch with incumbent U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs) and Springs businessman Jeff Crank.

In this week's Monday Morning Politicking, Rayburn discusses why he thinks he can win this time around, argues how his executive experience can translate into becoming a successful legislator, and criticizes Lamborn's legislative savvy.

PolitickerCO: 2008 seems to be a repeat of 2006 in terms of who's running in the 5th congressional district. Why do you think you can win this time?

Rayburn: Well, of course, it may look like a repeat, but in fact there are no redos in politics - it's a completely different election than it was in '06. Not only because it's a different set of players, and a smaller number in our case, but the incumbent [Lamborn] has a record that he's got to defend in Washington. And people have made their whole assessment about the strengths (and) weakness of his leadership, and whether this community needs a different kind of congressman representing them.

And of course that's the essence of our running again is that after the first election, we kind of felt there was two winners: obviously the incumbent because he won the vote in the primary, and we felt we were real winners because we, of course, beat everybody's expectations. In fact, this last week when we were in Washington, D.C, we were chatting with somebody who had been following the polls in the last weeks of the primary, in July and early August  of '06, and was amazed how fast we were climbing in the polls, just kind of commented that we ran out of time. Well, maybe so - I mean, I'd like to think about that - but in fact we didn't have the extra time, so Lamborn won. But we felt real good and positive about what the people felt about our positive campaign, and of course we watched and helped Congressman Lamborn through this fall in this general election and through the spring.

I don't know if I mentioned it to you before, but it was the late spring [of 2007] when really it was the business community here in Colorado Springs that came to me and said, "Hey, look, this isn't working. We don't feel like we've got good representation. We'd like you to consider running again." So I spent the summer talking to absolutely anybody I could talk to and get their opinion, and by September my wife and I decided that, you know, people really do deserve better leadership, and it was up to us to hold our hand up and say we would run again...

...Your question about the differences, obviously instead of three months and coming from zero name recognition, we've had a total of 10 months, and instead of - you know, people know who we are, to a certain degree, obviously.  And besides a novice campaign staff that we had last time - full of wonderful folks, but not a lot of campaign experience - this time we've got a very top notch campaign team, and we're doing the things that we need to do.

PolitickerCO: What do you think will be the most important factor in deciding the Republican primary? What's it going to come down to?

Rayburn: I think as far as issues are concerned there's not a tremendous amount of difference philosophically between the three candidates, but I'll say there's quite a bit of difference with regard to - in fact, what Doug Lamborn has done or not done in his first term deserves to be examined very closely by the voter because that's a very indication, if he was re-elected, whar we would expect out of him for many years to come.

Second, I think, we live in dangerous and difficult times. I was just published this week that the U.S. Congress now has the smallest percentage of the members of Congress with any kind of military experience since World War II we are in a very difficult battle with radical Islam that is going to be the focus of our attention for many years to come. And we need people who have got the kind of life experience that I have gained in 31 years of service in uniform.

Additionally, we're going through some tough economic times as a country and as a local community. For El Paso county and the entire district, the biggest sector of our economy is based directly on our active duty military bases of course we've got five of them here in El Paso County, and those defense companies that build up around the bases and our headquarters, and those second- and third-tier companies that support them. I've got a background that's extensive in terms of how the military interacts with the business community drawing good ideas to help the military solve problems within the defense department, and likewise how companies come up with great new ideas and want to get them in front of the services or the military to see if there's applications that they would be interested in.

So as I talk around with my colleagues, many of whom are in very high positions within these companies and others, it's obvious that this kind of background would be very helpful to help our own economy that we don't see being done right now. So clearly on the national scale and here locally, I'm the kind of candidate who will be able to step in from day one and has got the background and the position to listen to and have credibility from the very first day

PolitickerCO: So you'll also be "ready on day one?"

Rayburn: Yeah, to use the phrase that seems to be going around these days.

People say, "Oh, you've got to give the guy a chance to learn the job." Well, I reject that. As a senior military officer, I would be hired to do a job that I might not have any particular experience in.

When I was sent down to be president of the war College, I'd never been president of a university before. When I was given the responsibility for managing the largest commands budget in the Air Force -- $17.2 billion - I'd never done that before. And you know that by rules , you're only going to be in that slot for two years, and on average it's probably only going to be somewhere between a year, year and a half. Well, as a senior military guy, we learn really quickly that you've got to get down there, you've got to figure out what the lay of the land is, who the smart people are, who you can listen to, who understands the issues, then in coordination with the folks who are working with you, and certainly your superiors, you come up with a vision of where you need to take that organization or  unit or anything else, and lay out a plan to get the work done and get the work done.

This is the U.S. Congress - this is not something that you go to for on-the-job training. You look at all of the polls out there, and everything from the standing of the whole delegation within the state of Colorado, and our own representative within the list of 435 representatives, and you see that both Colorado and here locally, we'd shake. We need somebody that can really provide us with some aggressive leadership that'll stand out and that'll move on the stature of this seat up so we can help not only at the local and state level but certainly on the national level.

Colorado right now is ranked 47th out of 50 [in terms of state delegation power]. There are so many issues and challenges that we deal with that may not necessarily be particularly a Republican or a Democratic issue - you take water or things like that. But since we're such a popular state in terms of a destination to live, we're going to continue to grow. That growth brings its own set of problems, and if we don't have a congressional delegation with more stature, we're going to have a tough time when we battle these other states in the western region over issues like water and things like that.

So I think that's why we've had a very good reception up in Denver, that even though we wouldn't be their local political representative, they understand from a statewide issue  that there're a lot of things that we work as an entire delegation, and we need a stronger delegation - that's clear.

PolitickerCO: Being an officer in the Air Force and president of the Air War College -- that's executive experience. Do you think that that can translate well into a legislative job?

Rayburn: Well, sure it can. First I think it's clear to me that we  -- a lot of the problem that our country's in is because so many folks in Congress are career politicians. We need a good cross-section of folks in congress. We need certainly some lawyers because you write law. And but you don't need a whole congress full of lawyers for sure. You've got to have some professionals because laws that you do write impact health care and that obviously is an enormous issue, especially these days. You've got to have some businesswomen and businessmen because you're impacting the economy, but as I read the Constitution it's clear to me that the main responsibility of Congress is to provide for the common defense. So certainly you have to have some folks in there with some good, solid operational military experience who understands national defense, who understands the U.S. military and national affairs. You need to include all kinds of life experiences.   

Having a few folks that've come up from the local to the state level and worked their ways up on various levels on the political machine is good, but you absolutely can't have everybody there, because if that's everybody's experience,  1) you can't draw from other people, and 2) you get a very, very narrow and very tilted political view of the world, rather than people who have actually been out there, lived in the world and solved major problems.

You mentioned my college president experience. Of all the candidates, I'm the only one who's had hands-on experience in the formal education system of our country. I took that college through the accreditation process. We granted a master's degree on the authority of the U.S.  Congress, but it had never been accredited. So I took the school through the accreditation process. And I'll tell you, that taught me a lot about the state of higher education, hands-on, and it's not all particularly that encouraging. In every one of my jobs I've got life experience that translates directly to the things that we're wrestling.

But probably most important is this whole issue about leadership. This really is a question of leadership, because the congressional delegation and your local congressional representative can provide so much leadership in areas that have nothing to do with a vote back in congress. And bringing people together, figuring out what the art of the possible is encouraging creative solutions and then moving forward helping people actually execute a solution.

We dug ourselves a huge hole with this Pinon Canyon issue. That's one of the things that was, just was, how to describe it - it was one of the big errors that Doug made.

Now Doug, the incumbent, ran on the fact that he had all this legislative experience - we need to send a legislator to Congress. Well, a year ago we had that vote on the whole issue of putting a moratorium on the US army with regard to their discussions with the locals about Pinon Canyon. We lost that vote 34 to however many, close to 400. And the 34 is essentially [supportive of] the U.S. Army's position - I know the army's got more allies in congress than 34. But that's all the votes that Doug could muster.

But if he's got so much legislative experience, he should have known that you don't lose a vote 34- to 400 you do everything you can to not do that - demand a voice vote, do something.  Whatever the case, you don't lose this 34 to 400. All that did was dig us an enormous hole, and now it's going to take leadership to get us out of, and that's leadership that I have not seen. We have abdicated the leadership on that issue to Ken and John Salazar, and I don't think that's good for our national defense, I don't think it's good for the U.S. army, and I don't think it's good for our local folks here.