In Offbeat Aspen, Even the Sheriff's Race Has Quirks

Crime in the area is very low, Braudis said. Property crime peaks at the end of the summer and skiing seasons, he said, when workers leaving the area get sticky fingers for expensive skis and bikes.

Braudis argues that most of the drug use in the county occurs in Aspen, where city police officers, not sheriff's deputies, patrol.

"My area is field and forest," he said, referring to Pitkin County's 975-square-mile area, noting that there are only four bars in his jurisdiction. About one-third of the county's population of 14,700 lives in Aspen.

"Yes, most of the drug dealing happens in Aspen," Magnuson countered, "but there is quite a bit in the county. Drug dealers aren't stupid; they know where they are protected."

The race, in some ways, reflects the metamorphosis of Aspen from a sleepy town where people come to ski, ride mountain bikes or just enjoy the beauty of the region, to one where people come to cash in on exploding real estate values. Multimillion-dollar mega-mansions, many of them second, third or fourth homes for the rich and famous, now dot the landscape, a development many longtime residents, including Braudis, lament.

Home prices are so high that many who work in Aspen cannot afford to live there; the road leading to town from Glenwood Springs, 40 miles away, is so busy it has HOV lanes -- in the morning for the traffic into Aspen and in the evening when workers leave the fancy shops and hotels to go home.

In the 1880s, when Aspen was trying to lure investors from the East, locals erected false fronts on ramshackle buildings in town. "Now it's false insides and false people who lean on their mountain bike, middle-aged men with hair transplants and trophy wives and their German sports cars," said Braudis, who moved to Colorado in 1969.

Such residents do not join the volunteer fire department -- an important entity in the rural West -- and they do not show up to search for hikers who get lost on mountain trails.

Magnuson, however, said he believes that a good portion of his support is coming from new residents, often young professionals. "They're people with kids in school" and are worried about drugs, he said.

Though Braudis has a contract to write a book on Thompson, he says he is focused on this election.

Of Magnuson, he said, "I am taking his candidacy very seriously and campaigning very aggressively."