Ruling out a long-shot candidate with name recognition and a truckload of campaign cash, George Brauchler, ladies and gentlemen, is your Republican nominee for Colorado attorney general next year. Unless Congressman Ken Buck changes his mind, then maybe it’s a horse race.

And if that’s the case, history gives him the edge on winning the office next year, despite a field of quality individuals battling it out in the Democratic primary, as quality Democrats have done before in this state then usually come up short in the general election.

Since 1950, only two Democrats have been Colorado’s attorney general: J.D. McFarlane and Ken Salazar. And Salazar is the only one in the last 35 years. He beat his successor, Republican John Suthers, by 2.4 points in 1998, the year Libertarian candidate Wayne White got 2.6 percent.

That means it’s time to take a hard look at who we very well might be getting as our state’s next chief prosecutor. The district attorney for the Arapahoe County area, Brauchler is hardly a stranger, especially since leading the prosecution of Aurora theater shooter James Holmes. Just two weeks ago, he was a promising candidate for governor. When Attorney General Cynthia Coffman jumped in the governor’s race, leaving a GOP void in the state prosecutor’s office, Brauchler jumped in.

Monday he tipped off Colorado Politics on who will be running his attorney general’s campaign: Jack Cutter, who was deputy campaign manager when Brauchler was in the governor’s race, before Ryan Lynch left last month.

He might be the next Republican attorney general, but Brauchler’s views are much different than the current one.

It became clear over a long chat with Colorado Politics that Brauchler isn’t riding anyone’s coat tails. He’s certainly not Coffman’s handpicked successor, even though they were both expected to draw from the same conservative base in the governor’s race.

They never even once discussed whether he would run for attorney general, he said. If that’s true, it kills a political conspiracy theory making they rounds: Knowing they’d divide the vote in the gubernatorial primary, as Coffman got in the race she handed her second term to Coffman by vacating AG’s office.

“I haven’t had a single conversation with her about it before, during or since,” Brauchler said.

He said she bumped into him at a luncheon before he announced and told him if he wanted to talk, they could, but they never reconnected.

That theory seemed to gain substance last week when Coffman’s fundraiser, Caroline Wren, said Coffman missed the Republican Women of Weld forum for gubernatorial candidates on Nov. 13, because she was honoring a commitment to attend the Republican Attorneys General Association conference at a beach resort in Florida.

Wren said last week, and again this week, that Coffman serves on the RAGA board and she talked up Brauchler at the event, where the political group courts donors.

But Brauchler wasn’t officially a candidate until the morning before Coffman flew home, and he hadn’t discussed his plans with her.

“Speculation about Mr. Brauchler’s entry into the AG race had begun prior to her arrival at the RAGA meeting,” Wren said in an e-mail. “Attendees began asking Cynthia about George Brauchler as a potential candidate for AG when she arrived on Saturday because they had read the news stories.

“That talk continued throughout Sunday and Monday. People wanted to know more about him, including his background and strength as a prospective candidate. Cynthia had a number of conversations regarding George all three days of the conference.”

Brauchler took the spot Republican state Rep. Cole Wist was expected to take when Coffman jumped in the governor’s race, after Buck bowed out of the speculative race. Wist stepped aside for Brauchler, however.

Did they have a deal? That depends on two lawyers’ definition of a deal. You be the judge of the two would-be state prosecutors.

Colorado Politics was expecting a call from Wist as late as that Friday afternoon to honor a deal to allow us to break the news that he was getting in the attorney general’s race. The call never came. Unexpectedly he went on Facebook that Monday morning to say he wouldn’t run. The next day he told Colorado Politics he didn’t follow through with our deal to talk, because he didn’t want to “upstage” Brauchler’s “big day.”

“It wasn’t a conversation about Cole not running,” Brauchler said of his discussions with his potential rival. “It was more like, ‘Now what? Where are we in this decision-making progress?'”

Brauchler told Wist he would think about it over the weekend and let Wist know of his decision before he announced his plans. They spoke on Sunday night. The Denver Post broke the story of Brauchler’s decision at 6:57 the next morning. Wist’s posted his decision on Facebook at 7:03 a.m.

“As George Brauchler pivots to this race, I wish him well,” Wist wrote.

(Editor’s note: On Thanksgiving Day we’ll bring you more of our talk with Brauchler, including how he’s similar and different from the Republican attorney general he hopes to replace. More surprises are ahead. Hey, cut us some slack for double-dipping; good stories are hard to come by around the holidays.)