It may not be Republican Bob Beauprez’s fault that he’s running behind Democrat Bill Ritter in the polls in the race for Colorado governor.
Beauprez has 50 years of Colorado political history against him.
Over the past half century, no Republican has ever been elected governor of Colorado in the sixth year of a Republican presidential administration. For the past five decades, every time a Republican has occupied the White House for six years, a Democrat has won the Colorado governorship by a wide margin. Beauprez is running for governor in the sixth year of George W. Bush’s Republican presidency.
This pattern first cropped up when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Ike, a very popular Republican, was first elected in 1952 and re-elected in 1956. The sixth year of his presidency was 1958. That year, there was a major economic recession. The Democrats swept the congressional and gubernatorial elections. Steve McNichols, the Democratic incumbent governor in Colorado, was easily re-elected.
The next Republican administration was the Nixon-Ford presidency. Richard Nixon was elected to the White House in 1968 and re-elected in 1972, but he had to resign because of Watergate. Vice President Gerald Ford finished Nixon’s term and was in office in 1974, the sixth year of the Nixon-Ford presidency.
In that election, Democrats were swept into office across the nation. In Colorado, Democrat Dick Lamm defeated sitting Republican Gov. John Vanderhoof in a landslide.
On to Ronald Reagan. First elected in 1980 and re-elected in 1984, his sixth year in the White House was 1986.
In Colorado in 1986, Democrat Roy Romer won the first of his three terms in the governor’s mansion by a comfortable margin.
It should be noted that this sixth-year jinx works against the Democrats as well. Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. Following his assassination in 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson finished out Kennedy’s term and was elected president in 1964. Thus, the sixth year of the Kennedy- Johnson administration was 1966.
In Colorado in 1966, incumbent Republican Gov. John Love was easily re- elected.
Jimmy Carter won the presidency for the Democrats in 1976, but he only served one four-year term in the White House before being defeated by Ronald Reagan, so he thus never made it to a sixth-year election.
But Democrat Bill Clinton did. Elected president in 1992, Clinton was re-elected in 1996. In his sixth year in office, in 1998, Clinton was mired in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
In that year, Colorado’s present Republican governor, Bill Owens, was first elected.
Helping Ritter out is the fact that the six years of the Bush presidency have not been particularly happy ones. There is the war in Iraq that appears to have no end. The economy has revived, but in a way that is not satisfying a large number of voters.
Ritter is running a near-perfect campaign for a Democratic candidate who hopes to benefit from the widespread sixth-year disillusionment with the Bush administration. He has cast himself as the receptacle into which upset Colorado citizens can cast votes against Bush.
Does this mean it’s all over for Republican hopes to win the governorship? Not necessarily. Although the time until Election Day is dwindling, front-runners can be knocked off by an opponent’s strong finish.
And every historian knows that sooner or later, all historical precedents bump up against an exception. Records – even historical ones – are made to be broken.
Bob Loevy is professor of political science at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
