Colorado’s Feb. 5 caucuses won’t draw nearly as much attention as Iowa’s, but at least there still may be some choices left when the presidential nominating circus rolls through the state.
In recent years, both parties’ front-runners have been decided very early. Iowa and New Hampshire set a pattern that prevailed all the way to the nominating conventions.
Not this year. The two early states have produced different sets of winners. And the road ahead offers opportunities for even more candidates to show some strength. Each party could have as many as three or even four candidates still in the running three weeks from now, when Colorado Republicans and Democrats have their precinct caucuses.
This had been setting up to be a very boring election year. But the mixed results so far have pumped some uncertainty — and with uncertainty, some excitement — back into the drawn-out spectacle. The big turnouts reflect that.
There was a scramble this year to be first on the list, to play the kingmaker role earlier than anybody else. But January may be just be too early. The voters are more unpredictable. The polls and the pundits are off balance. Especially in New Hampshire, the polls went awry. People don’t answer their telephones the way they used to; it flummoxes the predicting business.
In this overly long political season, John McCain had been virtually written off sometime last fall. But suddenly he’s the comeback kid — or perhaps the seventysomething comeback coot. He definitely exceeded expectations in New Hampshire.
Mitt Romney did worse than expected. He recently had been governor of neighboring Massachusetts; the craggy-faced one should have won the Granite State, instead of finishing 5 points behind. He did win in Wyoming a week ago, but no one paid attention. The next GOP event, Tuesday, is in Michigan — where Mitt was born and where father George was governor. If he doesn’t win there, he’s in real trouble.
Mike Huckabee wasn’t expected to do particularly well in New Hampshire, and he didn’t. Despite a shortage of evangelical voters, he at least made double digits. He could surge again when the presidential circus gets to South Carolina on Saturday. It might help Fred Thompson, too; he has a drawl.
Rudy Giuliani has been concentrating on the big states. In an unsettled year, that late-starting strategy just might work. Or not.
South Carolina is John Edwards’ home state; he needs to win the Democrats’ Jan. 26 primary (a week after the GOP’s). But anyone who uses the word “fight” as often as Edwards does will hold out as long as he can.
Hillary Clinton was a formidable speed bump in Barack Obama’s freeway to the nomination. But in a significant way, she represents “change,” too. She’d still be the first female president.
At least the Democrats have only a three-ring circus. The Republicans have a virtual riot of possibilities.
Does all this tumult mean Colorado will be in the spotlight as Feb. 5 approaches? Not so much. There are, after all, close to two dozen states having presidential nominating events on that same “Super Tuesday,” including spotlight-hogging California and New York.
Colorado is more politically unpredictable than most states, and for that reason worth fighting over. But it’s still comparatively small.
This state tried a couple of times to attract more attention by holding an actual vote, a presidential primary, but that didn’t work out so well.
In the state’s first presidential primary, on March 3, 1992, only 45 percent of the state’s Democrats voted. They picked former California Gov. Jerry Brown over Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, 29 percent to 27 percent. So much for trying to be a bellwether.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
