The decision last spring by U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman of Aurora to turn down a run for the Republican nomination for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat threw state and national GOP leaders into a crunch to find someone, anyone, who could take on U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Denver Democrat, in next year’s election.

This week, more than four months after Coffman announced he would instead seek a fifth term in his suburban swing district, Wikipedia lists six officially declared Republican candidates for Bennet’s seat, including Sen. Tim Neville, R-Littleton, and El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn. The crowd-sourced page also lists 20 possible candidates, including one of Mitt Romney’s nephews, the son of former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong, four state senators, State Treasurer Walker Stapleton and former Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

The shortest list on the Wiki page is those who’ve turned it down.

That includes state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango.

Roberts spoke this week to The Colorado Statesman about that period earlier this year when her name was bandied about as a possible candidate. She announced on June 23 she would not seek the nomination, ending six weeks of the most heightened political attention she said she’s ever received.

Roberts is no stranger to combative politics – she represents a district that has gone back and forth between Democrats and Republicans.

But the experience of even thinking about a run for Washington isn’t one she enjoyed.

It began when the Durango Herald asked her during the closing days of the legislative session if she was considering the bid. She didn’t want to think about it then, with her duties as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as her leadership position as Senate president pro tem, she said.

Two days after the session was over, the questions returned. “That seemed to set many wheels in motion in many directions,” she told The Statesman. She said she was probably a bit naïve (a term she used several times in this week’s interview) about just what was about to happen.

Roberts went home to Durango and began to talk to people about what a Senate run would entail. “It’s a whole ‘nother ballgame than running” for a state office, she said. She talked to people who had previously run for the Senate, both in Colorado and elsewhere and “tried to get a sense of the size and timing” for matters such as fundraising. But that turned out to be the biggest barrier of all: raising money. “I would need to raise millions of dollars this year, while sitting on four interim committees,” she said she realized. That would include chairing two of them, the interim Water Resources Review Committee and the Health Benefits Exchange Committee. The water committee had a heavier load than usual this summer, she added, with nine hearings scheduled around the state to examine the state water plan.

Roberts said she might have been naïve (there’s that word again) going on the record she would consider the Senate run. It unleashed a strong partisan reaction, both in Colorado and at the national level. She got phone calls from people who asked pointed questions and seemed to have no interest in her answers or twisted her responses in ways she hadn’t intended.

“I didn’t have the time or resources to compete with that,” Roberts said, and still do the job she signed up to do, representing her Senate district. She said she felt like she was put in a position to make a decision in a “very compressed” time period.

Her family was at the ready to stand by her if she decided to take the plunge. In the end, what swayed her were the hours, days and weeks she would have to spend on the phone raising money, she said.

But there was another consideration, and that’s being in the majority in the state Senate. Candidates for the U.S. Senate told her it isn’t exactly a fun job. At the state level, and particularly being in the majority, Roberts has an opportunity to affect policy and get things done, she said. But it would be a different matter given the gridlock in Washington and an environment she called “partisanly toxic – you can’t get much done.”

“Why would I work so hard to get a job that I found unproductive and not personally satisfying?” Roberts said she asked herself.

So she decided to stay in Colorado, with a much shorter commute. “I get to be in the state I love,” Roberts said. “Our weather is better, the land is beautiful and people are nicer.”

There’s another name that was tossed into the mix but that didn’t find its way to the Wikipedia page: state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling.

Local political blogs mentioned him as a possible candidate, and he briefly considered it, he told The Statesman this week.

The pressure to run started last spring, he said. It hadn’t been on his radar, although his name had been mentioned a year before that, before Republican Cory Gardner got into the race against U.S. Sen. Mark Udall.

Sonnenberg said he started to look at whether he could put a team together, but he also had a chat with District Attorney George Brauchler, who also was considering a run.

“I thought he’d be a great candidate,” Sonnenberg said. When Brauchler bowed out, Sonnenberg began looking at it again in earnest. During a two-week flurry of activity, he got advice from people in the oil and gas industry, local and national figures in GOP leadership and finance and advisers eager to weigh in on politics of a run.

People he talked with were excited about Sonnenberg getting into the race, he said. He had better name identification than many and could raise money. While Sonnenberg has never had a competitive race in his eight years in the House and his first term in the Senate, he has raised money for Republican causes and candidates.

But fundraising was an issue for him, too, although not in the same way it was for Roberts.

Sonnenberg said those Republicans involved on the finance side of the national campaign are focused on protecting the 24 Republican Senate incumbents running in 2016. That doesn’t bode well for Republican challengers in Colorado, who might not get the level of support they expect from national donors. At the same time, Sonnenberg said, the Democrats’ big donors will focus on protecting their incumbents, and that includes Bennet.

“When it comes to getting money, I would get what was left over if I got the nomination,” Sonnenberg said. In addition, oil and gas industry donors could shy away from supporting a Republican challenger in Colorado, Sonnenberg said, with a known quantity in Bennet. Particularly, Sonnenberg added, Bennet’s support for the Keystone XL pipeline could help dissuade energy industry donors from going after him.

Sonnenberg said he had frank conversations about winning and losing with his family. He asked family members if they could bear the humiliation of losing and of hearing constant attacks.

“They were very supportive and, while you never know how they will react when I get my butt kicked,” Sonnenberg said, they were a little relieved when he made it clear he wouldn’t run.

– marianne@coloradostatesman.com