Colorado’s race for governor officially begins today, as Republican Bob Beauprez and Democrat Bill Ritter battle each other for the right to lead the state for the next four years.
Beauprez, coming off months of party infighting with Marc Holtzman, is considered wounded but also politically tested.
Ritter, the sole Democrat, had looked forward to another month and half of quiet pre-primary campaigning. But Holtzman’s departure from the GOP race forces Ritter immediately into the spotlight – for better and worse.
And most experts agree the impending five-month battle will be costly, bloody and funded by large amounts of out-of-state money.
“Both of these candidates are nice people, but the political process puts a premium on attack ads,” said Michael S. Cummings, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “There are going to be a lot of outside interests and pressures. My question is, how will these candidates be able to stand up to them?”
Colorado is considered to have one of the country’s 12 most competitive governor races this year, said Jennifer Duffy, managing editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which keeps close tabs on the nation’s gubernatorial contests.
Not only are the two national political parties and both parties’ governor’s associations expected to play a role, but independent political committees with no fundraising limits are likely to flood Colorado airwaves with radio and TV ads.
The stakes, Duffy said, are simply too high not to.
“The Republicans have to hold the seat. They realize that losing the governorship sets Colorado up to be more of a swing state in 2008,” she said.
How much damage Holtzman has inflicted on Beauprez over the past few months is unclear, political watchers say. On one hand, Holtzman’s blows merely glanced Beauprez’s shoulders as he pulled in large campaign donations and racked up high-profile endorsements.
But in battling Holtzman, Beauprez moved himself even further to the right, which has already caused some problems. For instance, his continued opposition to Referendum C, which allowed the state to keep billions of dollars in tax revenues that would have otherwise been refunded to voters, has irritated some moderates in the business community.
The fact that Beauprez, a two-term congressman, was recently the first person to sign a petition for a proposed ballot initiative to send some of the Referendum C money back to taxpayers was a step too far to some of them.
“Beauprez may not invest time or money into that initiative, but he’s stuck with supporting it,” said political analyst Eric Sondermann. “He’s also wounded by the ‘Both Ways Bob’ label, which I don’t think will go away.”
Holtzman accused Beauprez of taking both sides on issues like Referendum C, coining the phrase “Both Ways Bob” last year.
Negative political labels that evolve during a primary can hurt a candidate in the general election. For instance, in the 1996 U.S. Senate race, Tom Strickland was labeled by his fellow Democrat Gene Nichols as a “practitioner of money politics.”
After Strickland handily won the primary, his Republican opponent, Wayne Allard, immediately jumped on the characterizations started by Nichols. He portrayed Strickland as a slick lawyer-lobbyist who had became a millionaire working for polluters. Strickland lost.
Ritter, who had been able to avoid most of the skirmishes as the Republicans focused on each other, now becomes both a target and a shooter.
“Ritter will start to get a lot of attention – good and bad,” said University of Denver political science professor Seth Masket. “A lot of voters don’t know much about him, and now people are going to look at his record and his accomplishments and flaws.”
Ritter, the Denver district attorney for 12 years, can expect to have his record on plea bargains and his relationship with the Police Department scrutinized – especially by Beauprez.
In 2002, Beauprez ran attack ads against his Democratic opponent, Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, criticizing his plea-bargaining rates, his office budget and a letter he wrote about a convicted man who is still in the penal system.
“It’s going to be ugly,” Sondermann predicted. “Beauprez will try and tar Ritter like he did Dave Thomas, and Ritter will try and tag Beauprez as the second coming of Tom DeLay,” the former House majority leader who is facing conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
Staff writer Karen Crummy can be reached at 303-820-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
