Bob Schaffer

Robert Warren Schaffer (born July 24, 1962) is a Republican former member of the United States House of Representatives from the State of Colorado in the 105th Congress and the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1997 - January 3, 2003).

In 2004, Schaffer lost in the primary election to be the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat. He was the Republican nominee for Colorado's other Senate seat in the 2008 election, which he lost to Democratic nominee Mark Udall.

Early years

Schaffer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised Catholic. He attended Archbishop Moeller High School.

The son of public-school teachers, Schaffer worked his way through college as a farm hand. In 1984, he graduated from the University of Dayton with a B.A. in Political Science. He was later awarded an honorary doctorate in Management from Colorado Technical University.

Schaffer served for nine years as a Colorado State Senator in the Colorado General Assembly. Schaffer was only 25 years old in 1987 when he was appointed to finish Colorado State Senator Jim Beatty's term, making Schaffer the youngest to serve in Colorado's Senate. As a Colorado Senator, he was Chairman of the Finance Committee, the State Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, and the Local Government Committee. Schaffer also was the Vice-Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Schaffer was awarded the "National Republican Legislator of the Year for 1995" by the National Republican Legislators Association.

In 1993, Schaffer made headlines when he removed a display from the Capitol—that was in clear view of visiting children—that contained pamphlets describing "unsafe sexual practices."

Schaffer was first elected to the U.S. Congress in November 1996 representing Colorado's 4th congressional district, succeeding Wayne Allard and Hank Brown.

Schaffer served three terms in Congress, fulfilling the three-term pledge he made during his first Congressional campaign.

Schaffer upheld his pledge in spite of pleas from national Republicans and President George W. Bush to run for another term. Schaffer lead no less than four congressional delegations to Ukraine, and offered an ultimately unsuccessful balanced budget resolution and amendment. He was described as fiscally and socially conservative and to the right of the center of the party.

His education policy work focused on school-choice and local control, and Schaffer was remembered for being able to help his Republican colleagues form their arguments when debating this issue. He was succeeded by Marilyn Musgrave in January 2003. His congressional colleagues recount his tenure in congress as an education-policy expert.

Liberty Common High School

Schaffer currently serves as the inaugural principal of Liberty Common High School, a college-preparatory charter school in Fort Collins, Colorado. Under his leadership, each graduating class at Liberty Common has posted the highest average composite ACT score in Colorado, with the class of 2015 breaking the state record.

Energy Industry

Schaffer was vice-president for business development at Aspect Energy, LLC., where he was involved in a variety of energy, mining and education projects, working primarily in wind energy. He was also a board member on the National Alternative Fuels Foundation, but environmental groups released attack ads during the 2008 U.S. Senate race highlighting Shcaffer’s congressional vote which gave $2.5 billion to alternative energy research and a much larger amount to traditional energy research and tax credits.

Board Member

Schaffer served as president of the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education, a non-profit corporation promoting school choice reform in Colorado's public education system, and is active in the state’s transformation to a market-driven education system.

Leadership Program of the Rockies

Schaffer has been chairman of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, which is a nonprofit corporation providing economic education and civic-leadership training in Colorado. Schaffer was also an opinion columnist for the now-defunct Northern Colorado Courier.

Colorado League of Charter Schools

Since 2003, Schaffer has been chairman of Leadership Program of the Rockies, a nonprofit providing economic education and civic-leadership training in Colorado. http://www.coloradoan.com/story/opinion/2016/09/08/bob-schaffer-liberty-common-congress-colorado-coloradoan/90002122/

Republican National Committee

In March 2005, Schaffer was elected Republican National Committeeman for Colorado.

Colorado State Board of Education

Schaffer was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Colorado State Board of Education by a party vacancy committee, representing a district that is coterminous with the state's Fourth Congressional District. He successfully ran for the seat in 2006, against Democrat Tom Griggs. In January, 2009, Schaffer was made chairman of the Colorado State Board of Education with a unanimous decision of the four Republican and thee Democrat board members. Fellow board members elected Schaffer to continue his chairmanship in 2011.

As Chairman of the Colorado State Board of Education, Schaffer borrowed from Singapore and Finland when working to create new forward-thinking standards that are internationally benchmarked and designed to grow students’ strategic thinking capabilities over fact memorization.

Citing the importance of letting parents know if someone proximal to their children has been arrested, Schaffer took a leadership role in the effort to require parent notification if a school employee is arrested or charged with a serious crime. The measure went into effect in April 2011 despite strong opposition from the Colorado Education Association, the state-based teachers' unions.

Schaffer maintained the position throughout the debating of the measure that parents are in the best position to make decisions about their children’s safety. He voted against adopting Common Core standards, but the federal standards passed on a 4-3 vote. Adopting the standards were a keystone factor to the Colorado’s application for $175 million in Race to the Top funds. In early 2011, Schaffer took heat from Democrat State Board of Education member Mary Johnson. The disagreement was over Schaffer's inviting William Maloney, Colorado education commissioner under both parties from 1997 to 2007, who spoke on “three incontestable realities concerning which America has been in denial for decades,” regarding America's education performance on a global scale, the unsustainable costs of education, and the availability of better models for the path forward.

Under Schaffer's chairmanship tenure, unanimous charter school guidelines were adopted. The new concrete rules adopted best practices for charter school authorization.

Other

He is the Colorado Chairman of the Judicial Confirmation Network. In 2006, Schaffer founded Dreamsoft Colorado, LLC, a firm that creates high-end interactive websites for business and political clients. He is also the President of AMDG LLC.

In 2004, Schaffer contended for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate after incumbent Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell chose not to run for re-election. Brewing magnate Pete Coors opposed Schaffer. Coors entered the bitter primary battle after Schaffer faced down potential contenders such as David Liniger, founder of ReMax. The nomination battle concluded when Coors won the Republican nomination over Schaffer with 61% of the vote. Coors went on to lose to Democratic nominee Ken Salazar in the 2004 general election.

Schaffer's Jefferson County field office in 2008

Schaffer was the Republican nominee for the open seat of retiring Senator Wayne Allard. He lost to Mark Udall, the Democratic nominee.

On May 9, 2007, Schaffer filed his official statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission. On May 12, 2007, he made an official announcement in Boulder that he would run for the Senate to a group of over 150 Republicans attending a fundraising event.

On September 28, 2008, Udall and Schaffer appeared on Meet the Press's Senate Debate series, discussing the proposed bailout of the U.S. financial system.

Political opposition

In 2008, the League of Conservation Voters named Schaffer a member of its "Dirty Dozen" because of an anti-environmental record during his tenure in Congress.

In 2001, then-congressman Schaffer voted for President Bush's energy plan that Democrats argued was a $33 billion gift to the oil corporations. Republicans argued that the bill would help reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

Endorsements

• Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on October 9, 2008
• The Pueblo Chieftain on October 17, 2008

Schaffer was linked to the Mariana Islands worker abuse scandal by his association with the Traditional Values Coalition. The organization was used by Jack Abramoff to pay for the trip of the then-Congressman to visit the island. The Denver Post reported that the TVC paid the $13,000 travel bill for the trip, organized by Abramoff's lobbying firm. Schaffer appeared visibly angry and expressed disgust with the Denver Post’s reporting, asserting that the allegations were fiction and that he had no contact with the individuals in the report, particularly Jack Abramoff.

WikiLeaks Reveals Motives Behind Scandal Accusations

These accusations against Schaffer were spearheaded by Allen Stayman. Stayman leveled the unconfirmed and never proven Schaffer-Abramoff accusations at a press conference organized by Catholics United, an organization with ties to the Democrat party and created by Clinton insider John Podesta for the purpose of mobilizing Catholics into a socially progressive “Catholic Spring.”

Abramoff's lobbying team would prepare questions and "factual backup" for friendly lawmakers. Trips to the island for congressmen and staff would be a key tool to "build permanent friends," the memo said.

The congressional junkets to the Mariana Islands were designed to build support in Congress among Republican lawmakers to block labor and immigration legislation for the islands, which had been found to harbor squalid working conditions and abusive labor practices, including child prostitution and forced abortions.

Schaffer claimed that he spoke with local clergy who denied there was a problem of forced abortions in the Northern Marianas, the only area of the United States where abortion is banned by their local constitution. After his return from the islands, Schaffer used his position on the Resources Committee to attack reports of abuses on the islands.

Benemerenti Medal

Upon retiring from Congress in 2003, Schaffer was awarded the Benemerenti medal by Pope John Paul II. The Benemerenti Medal is an honour awarded by the Pope to members of the clergy and laity for service to the Catholic Church.

During his 2008 Senate campaign, Schaffer suggested that the Northern Marianas' guest worker program might serve as a model for U.S. national immigration policy, stirring further controversy.

Schaffer was particularly impressed with their pre-qualifying foreign workers before they were allowed to immigrate to the CNMI. According to a 1998 World magazine article that mainly sourced Andrea Sheldon of the TVC, some argued that the issues of the Northern Marianas labor, wage, and immigration laws are simply attacks by U.S.-based labor unions who are attempting to eliminate competition. Schaffer told the Denver Post, "The workers were smiling; they were happy." Schaffer downplayed criticism from pro-life organizations that he participated in Abramoff's lobbying strategy to protect the sweatshop system by arguing, "In five days, I did not observe a forced abortion or meet anybody who had any knowledge of them."