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DENVER — The newly-formed independent expenditure group “Republicans Want to Win”, which is backing GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bob Beauprez, is on the air with a TV ad that hits back at another newly-formed independent expenditure group’s ads that are a thinly-veiled attempt by Democrats to tip the primary to Tom Tancredo.

Ever since the emergence of Protect Colorado Values, a 527 formed by the Democratic Governors Association and independent Democratic Colorado donors, Beauprez has claimed that the group’s two ads — one attacks Beauprez for weakness on his opposition to Obamacare while the other brands Tancredo as “too conservative” — prove that Democrats would rather face Tancredo than him.

That’s the argument made in the new ad from Republicans Who Want to Win, an effort to convince primary voters that Beauprez is the party’s best shot at beating Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper in November.

“Why are outside Democrat influences spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get Tom Tancredo elected in a primary?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Because they know that Tom Tancredo cannot beat John Hickenlooper.

“They also know that one Republican primary candidate can – Bob Beauprez. And they’ll spend whatever it takes to stop him.

“So who would you rather support? The candidate the Democrats are pushing? Or Bob Beauprez, the candidates that Democrats fear?”

Tancredo remains the favorite to win the June 24 primary given his lead in most polls, deep base of support and the fact that there are three other options on the ballot who will likely split the anti-Tancredo vote (a circumstance Tancredo’s campaign helped engineer in April by instructing supporters to help Mike Kopp make the ballot at the state GOP assembly after Tancredo had already petitioned onto the primary ballot).

Beauprez, in an effort to prevail, is fighting on two fronts — to convince voters that the guy in front of him, Tancredo, can’t win in November; and that voting for either candidate running behind him in the polls will likely split the vote and ensure Tancredo is the party’s nominee.