It was exciting to read, a few weeks ago, that Colorado’s 5th Congressional District might be in play this year for the first time in its history.
Its history goes back to the 1970 Census, when Colorado had gained enough population to get another House seat in addition to the four it had contained since 1910. Bill Armstrong of Colorado Springs, then a power in the state legislature, helped draw the lines for a district dominated by his city, then as now a Republican bastion.
He thus had a safe seat when he ran for Congress in 1972, and the district has never elected a Democrat since then. Armstrong won a U.S. Senate seat in 1978 and served until 1991. His old House seat went to Ken Kramer, who did not seek re-election in 1986 and ran for U.S. Senate instead; he has not been heard of since then. Joel Hefley got the Republican nomination that year, and has held the seat ever since.
Chaffee County, where I live, and neighboring Lake County are rather peripheral to the grand scheme of things in Colorado. Thus after every census we move between the 3rd and the 5th. We were in the 3rd in the 1970s, the 5th in the 1980s, the 3rd in the 1990s, and the 5th again in the 2000s.
We fit better in the 3rd, which covers the San Luis Valley, Pueblo and much of the Western Slope. Our major concern is public lands, not keeping Fort Carson open. Plus, we’re more important in the 3rd. The largest city in the 3rd is Pueblo, with about 100,000 people, and the second-largest is Grand Junction, with about 45,000. Pueblo is Democratic, Grand Junction Republican. We’re between them, both geographically and politically, so we get more attention as part of the competitive 3rd than as part of the Republican 5th.
Until this year, the one Democratic victory in the 5th, and it is a small one, belonged to my friend and neighbor Curtis Imrie, who ran against Hefley in 2002 and, for the first and only time in the history of the 5th, carried a county – Lake County. Otherwise he was buried in the GOP landslide.
This year could be different. The Republican primary was a nasty six-way race, won by Doug Lamborn. Supporters tried to characterize some of his opponents, most of them also conservative Republicans, as tax-raising captives of the radical homosexual agenda.
Hefley characterized Lamborn’s run as “the most sleazy, dishonest campaign I’ve seen in a long, long time,” then added that “I cannot support it.” He is apparently supporting “none of the above” in the 5th this year, for he has also said that he is not voting for the Democratic candidate, Jay Fawcett.
Fawcett is easy to vote for. He’s a retired Air Force officer who won a bronze star in combat. He addresses real issues, like national defense, deficit spending and health care, rather than contrived threats like gay marriage and magazine displays. In person, he’s thoughtful and well-spoken, just the sort of guy you’d like to have representing you.
Lamborn, by contrast, claimed that all his primary opponents had endorsed him, which was a lie. In Fremont County, he addressed an audience member with “Excuse me sir, why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” When asked what he wanted for Iraq, he said “I don’t have a plan.”
In any civilized region, this election wouldn’t even be close; Fawcett would win in a landslide. But here in the rotten-borough 5th, it’s entirely possible that Lamborn could win.
It’s hard to follow from here, though. Modern elections revolve around TV ads, and the Denver stations cover most of the state. And so I know that in the 4th District, Marilyn Musgrave is out of touch and that Angie Paccione has experienced financial difficulties. That in the 7th, Ed Perlmutter supports the same immigration bill as Ted Kennedy, while Rick O’Donnell would draft high school seniors to patrol the border.
But the 5th is fought in Colorado Springs, which has its own TV stations that don’t arrive on our little satellite dish. So I don’t know how many times Lamborn has accused Fawcett of being a tax-raising East Coast liberal cut-and-runner who wants to open the nation’s borders to married gay pornographers who will take away our guns.
However, I can say that the Quillen Informal Yard Sign Survey in Salida shows Fawcett well ahead in this remote backwater, and I hope it’s true throughout the 5th District through Election Day. It would be a pleasure to elect someone good while defeating a bully.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
