IN OFFBEAT ASPEN, EVEN THE SHERIFF'S RACE HAS QUIRKS

One candidate, the challenger, is a police officer who is also an
artist. The other, the incumbent, is a long-serving sheriff who is
writing a book about his close friend Hunter S. Thompson, the late
"gonzo" journalist.

Only in Aspen.

On Nov. 7, voters in this posh mountain town will choose between
five-time incumbent Sheriff Bob Braudis, 61, and Rick Magnuson, a
police officer who is 20 years his junior and whose main issue is that
the sheriff is too easy on drug users.

Braudis, who stands 6-foot-6 and looks like a Hollywood version of a
Western sheriff, might be vulnerable on this. Though he promises to
enforce drug laws, he is eager to tell anyone that tough penalties for
drug use are not helping anyone and that addiction is a matter for
health-care professionals, not jailers.

"The war on drugs provides more casualties than drugs itself," he
argues.

Such statements are aiding Magnuson in his quest to paint the sheriff
as a lawman stuck in the 1970s and '80s, when illegal drug use mostly
meant marijuana. These days, Magnuson argues, people should be more
concerned about heroin and methamphetamine.

In reality, however, the two men are not that far apart when it comes
to enforcing drug laws. Braudis, a Boston native whose Jesuit high
school education taught him Greek and Latin, said he is tougher than
many people think. And Magnuson said he is mindful of the more
tolerant attitudes toward drugs in the area.

Braudis, who has been sheriff of Pitkin County for 20 years, said he
follows a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to teenagers using drugs
or alcohol, though he is dead set against using undercover police to
investigate illegal drugs.

"People assume I support intoxication and escapism," he said in an
interview. "That's not true."

While Magnuson says he would employ undercover officers to ferret out
illegal drug use, he acknowledges that Aspen is a little different
from anyplace else.

"This is a party town," said Magnuson, who has done sculpture and
performance art. "We do not want a heavy-handed police force. We don't
want to look into someone's window to see if he is smoking a joint."

Attitudes toward drug use are, in fact, rather tolerant in and around
Aspen. Recently, the Pitkin County commissioners unanimously endorsed
a statewide ballot initiative that would decriminalize possession of
up to one ounce of marijuana by adults. Even if the measure passes,
federal law still prohibits marijuana use.

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."