IT IS not just President Bush that the Democrats have in their sights this November: they also believe that the election gives them a good chance to retake control of the Senate.

Mr Bush is relying on one man in particular to help Republicans to defend their tiny but crucial Senate majority: a Colorado beer- seller and political neophyte who has advocated lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

Pete Coors, however, is not your average purveyor of lager. He has the kind of name recognition that could come only from owning one of the nation’s largest brewing companies, the maker of Coors beer. It is a brand lit up in neon across Colorado, home of one of this November’s closest — and dirtiest — Senate races, a contest that both national parties believe could determine who controls the upper chamber.

Mr Coors may have no political experience, but the White House is banking on the fact that everyone in Colorado knows the Coors name. Denver has its baseball stadium named after his family. Coors lager sponsors its football team, the Denver Broncos. Last week, after a proud Mr Coors introduced him, Mr Bush held a rally at Coors Amphitheatre, a concert venue. And, of course, tens of thousands of cans of Coors lager touch the lips of Colorado’s voters every day.

Mr Coors’s baptism of political fire has come about because of the unexpected announcement in March by Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican senator, that he would not seek re-election this November. With the Senate divided between 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one reliably anti-White House independent, Democrats need only a net gain of two seats in November to tip the balance of power back their way.

Although Democrats are defending five vacant seats in the South, at least two of which they will struggle to hold, the party is all but assured of taking Illinois from the Republicans, is feeling bullish about doing the same in Alaska and harbours hopes, albeit fainter, of picking off Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. The fate of the Colorado race is thus critical.

With Mr Nighthorse Campbell’s withdrawal, the White House was left scrambling to find not just a candidate, but one who can defeat the Democrat challenger: Ken Salazar, Colorado’s Attorney-General for the past four years and a man whose Hispanic roots go back 12 generations. He has enormous name recognition in a state where 20 per cent of the electorate is Hispanic.

In the Republican primary earlier this year, the White House backed Mr Coors, a moderate loyal to Mr Bush in a state where 33 per cent of voters list themselves as “unaffiliated”, over his ultraconservative opponent, Bob Schaffer. Mr Coors prevailed easily. The main event against Mr Salazar will not be so easy and has turned nasty. Polls put the two men in a statistical tie.

Some Republicans are nervous that their candidate is emerging as the political equivalent of Coors Light. His grasp of policy details has appeared sketchy at times. His call for lowering the drinking age appeared self-serving in a culturally conservative state. He has also had to break with his own company, one of the first in Colorado to give benefits to gay employees, by backing a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Yet in recent weeks he appears to have turned from an affable businessman into a verbal rottweiler, launching attacks on Mr Salazar, who campaigns in white cowboy hat, blue jeans and pick-up truck. In their first debate last week, Mr Coors called him an “appeaser” because of Mr Salazar’s support for John Kerry’s “some kind of more sensitive War on Terror”.

On the campaign trail, he said: “Salazar paints himself as a good old boy with his pick-up truck. But in Washington he would vote right along with the other Democrats.”

Mr Salazar, 49, bridled at this. He has been the subject of largely discredited television advertisements, run by an independent Republican group, accusing him of being responsible earlier in his career for a cyanide spill. “I tried to encourage Pete Coors to run a positive campaign,” he said. “He called me an appeaser. It’s namecalling, and I won ’t take that without punching back.”

Ken Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado, said: “It’s going to get nastier. I would not be surprised if Pete Coors is attacked on television for using scantily-clad women in his beer commercials.”

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