What the Hell Happened in Colorado?
Why Republicans held the state for Bush and lost everything else on the ballot.
by John Andrews
Weekly Standard
RED-STATE JOHNNIE HAS THE BLUES. Times are hard for Colorado Republicans, these days. Yes, we again carried Colorado for President Bush. With a GOP voter-registration edge of 186,000, we darn well should have. But that was all we did. Down-ballot, this was the ugliest election for Colorado Republicans that I've experienced in my 30 years in politics. And as president of Colorado's state Senate, I saw the devastation up-close.
While Republicans were winning U.S. Senate races from Florida to Alaska, netting a four-seat gain, Colorado lost a seat the party has held since 1995, when Ben Nighthorse Campbell crossed the aisle following the Gingrich sweep. Senator-elect Ken Salazar heads to Washington as one of the Democrats' only bright spots--along with Barrack Obama of Illinois--in a bleak, 44-seat minority.
While Republicans were picking up five seats in the U.S. House, boosted by Texas' hard-fought redistricting victory last year, we lost a western Colorado seat that should have been safe. (Attorney General Ken Salazar convinced our Democrat-led supreme court to nullify Colorado's 2003 redistricting bill). Congressman-elect John Salazar rides east with Ken on a wave of celebrity over their being only the fourth congressional brother-brother act in history.
And if this weren't enough, Colorado was the only state to suffer a bicameral switch of legislative control in the last election. Democrats won seven seats in the Colorado House, and one in the state Senate, to grab a majority in both chambers for the first time since 1960.
Dems capped off their near-sweep by succeeding on three of five big-government ballot issues in metro Denver and statewide. This boosted their turnout and helped bleed Republican coffers, even on the two issues which failed.
The somber weeks since the November election have seen a lot of soul-searching among Colorado's GOP leadership. We've huddled together and tuned in, figuratively, to radio WTHH: What The Hell Happened in this 2004 election? Why did a state so reliably red for so long--a state that's gone Republican in seven of eight presidential races since I came here from the Nixon White House in 1974--vote deep blue all down the ticket below Bush-Cheney?
IT'S BEEN SUGGESTED that the big Republican voter-registration edge hides a quiet leftward shift in Coloradoans' political preferences, driven by the heavy migration from California and other West Coast states we've seen since 1990. But if that were so, Bush wouldn't have won here by several points while Senate candidate Pete Coors, a shade less conservative, was losing by a similar margin.
"They don't like us any more" is too easy an out; it doesn't fit the facts. Neither does the other comforting excuse: "They buried us in dollars." It's true that Salazar significantly outspent the wealthy Coors, and Democrats did pour almost $7 million into legislative races, twice what Republicans spent. But to really explain what happened you have to look at the 3 M's--money, message, and motivation--of which the finances are actually the least important.
It was motivation, above all, that powered this Democrat victory. Democrats were driven and hungry from decades in the political wilderness. Republicans were complacent and soft from too long in power. Their motive for winning was to get in there and do things. Ours, it often seemed, was merely to stay in there. These attitudes translated into discipline and unity for Democrats, indulgence and disunity for Republicans. GOP factionalism was endemic and fatal.
The message gap was a consequence of this motivation gap. Democrats talked about making Colorado a better state, about not letting Republicans cut cherished programs, and about the GOP's supposed obsession with "gays, guns, and God." Republicans talked about . . . what? Other than denying their charges and hurling some back, we pretty much punted. Republican candidates picked their own issues locally. Churchill would have called it a pudding with no theme.
Our campaign had what one analyst termed a sort of Nixon-Ford tiredness and blandness. I had considered, back in 2003, framing a conservative Contract with Colorado to provide a single, statewide framework for all 75 state Senate and House races. But after sizing up the competing intra-party fiefdoms and tensions, I decided not to start that fight. Mea culpa; I should have fought.
So because of the yawning gaps in motivation and message between Republicans and Democrats, there was naturally a money chasm between the parties as well. Duh. They had the foresight and will to enact lopsided campaign-finance rules giving labor the advantage over business. We lacked the toughness to either defeat or circumvent those rules. They recruited several leftist millionaires to carpet-bomb us with 527 spending. Our millionaires were mostly AWOL.
The dollar disparity hurt, sure, but it was a symptom of a much deeper problem for Colorado's GOP. A political party is an idea before it's a checkbook, an organization, or a platform. The idea that has inspired Republicans from Lincoln to Reagan to George W. Bush is an optimistic, assertive defense of ordered liberty and traditional values. That idea lost its voice in the Centennial State. Recovering it will be Job One for us in 2005.
John Andrews of Denver, a member of the Colorado Senate since 1998 and its president since 2003, leaves office on his term limit next month. |
