A popular U.S. senator thought to be all-but-unbeatable leaves office, setting in motion a rapid fall from power for his party. It happened in Colorado in 2004. Could it happen in Colorado in 2010?
That question swirled through political circles in recent days in the wake of Gov. Bill Ritter’s stunning decision to abandon his re-election bid, the latest in a series of events stretching back more than a year that have given voice to a palpable sense that Democrats may face big trouble in November.
Ritter’s announcement underscores what strategists, elected officials and pollsters in both parties know: Things can change in a hurry in Colorado politics.
“I think it’s inevitable that the pendulum swings back the other way,” said former state Sen. Mike Feeley, a Democrat. “I think that’s inevitable.
“The Greeks were onto something when they coined the term and the concept of hubris. And you know you have tremendous success, like the Democrats had, and they’re going to get kind of a big head.”
State GOP chairman Dick Wadhams said one election does not predict the next.
“When parties start thinking that way, they lose,” Wadhams said. “Republicans have been guilty of that in the past; Democrats, I think, are guilty of it right now.”
And anyone anxious to see how Ritter’s decision — and other political moves over the past year — will play out may need to look back no further than 2004.
Six years ago, it was Harley-riding pony-tailed U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell who decided not to run for re-election at a time when everyone in both parties thought he could virtually sleepwalk to another term. At the time, Republican Gov. Bill Owens was being touted as a potential vice-presidential candidate, and when he decided not to shoot for Campbell’s seat, it sparked a stunning reversal of fortune for the GOP in Colorado.
Campbell’s decision opened the door for a folksy attorney from the San Luis Valley, Democrat Ken Salazar, to seize a Senate seat that had been in GOP hands.
Trouble’s been brewing
Last week came Ritter’s decision. And while it would be tempting to look at it as the beginning of the headache for the state’s Democrats, the potential trouble actually began just weeks after the party’s historic advances of November 2008, when it captured Colorado’s second U.S. Senate seat and a congressional seat that had been in GOP hands for generations.
For it was the decision by the highly popular Salazar to leave the Senate for a post in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet that laid a foundation that may well lead the Republicans back to power in November. Ritter then appointed Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet to take the seat — a move that angered some Democrats and gave Republicans hope for 2010.
Before Ritter’s conclusion that he should get out, which he attributed to several weeks of reflection about the toll the job was taking on his family, the rumblings about a shift in the electoral winds emanated mostly from political operatives in an annual mix of poll results, wishful thinking and bravado.
No more. Ritter’s announcement sparked a frenzy in both political parties — Republicans thinking seriously about rebounding from three Election Day thumpings, Democrats grappling for a candidate who could keep them on course and in office.
Welcome to politics in modern-day Colorado, where the reversal of fortune is nothing new. This is a state that went for George W. Bush in 2004 even as it was handing a U.S. Senate seat and the legislature to the Democrats.
Political strategists, operatives and observers in both parties scrambled in the days after Ritter bowed out to figure out what it means. And while they had different interpretations of some of the particulars, colored in part by their party affiliations, they all agreed on one thing.
Things can change quickly in Colorado politics.
“Like the weather,” said Lori Weigel of Public ap Strategies, a Republican polling firm.
For Colorado Democrats, 2008 was the cherry on an ice-cream sundae they began enjoying in 2004. That year, Campbell dropped his re-election bid and Owens decided not to run. Salazar, then the state’s attorney general, seized the seat; his brother, John, won a congressional seat that had been held by Republicans; and Democrats took control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1962.
Democrats followed that up with Ritter’s election in 2006, snatching back the governor’s mansion after eight years of Republican rule, and adding to their majorities in the statehouse.
Then came 2008.
A blip on the radar?
The Democratic National Convention unfolded amid technical wizardry and partisan enthusiasm at the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field at Mile High, where Obama accepted his party’s presidential nomination. November saw not only Obama’s sweeping victory but also Mark Udall’s win that gave the party both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats — and even a victory in the 4th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave failed to hold a seat that had been in GOP hands for decades.
But the Democrats’ 2008 may have easily been the Republicans’ 2002.
That year, Republicans won back the state Senate after a two-year blip in which Democrats controlled it, and the GOP saw Bob Beauprez win in Colorado’s then-new 7th Congressional District. Gov. Bill Owens cruised to victory, and Sen. Wayne Allard, who had been seen as vulnerable, held on to his seat.
“Republicans Rule,” one newspaper headline declared.
Ritter’s decision highlights the political makeup of Colorado, where voters are divided into roughly equal factions — about one-third are Republicans, one-third are Democrats and one-third are not affiliated with any party.
“They (unaffiliated voters) always make the difference, and in this election they’ll make the difference, and for the foreseeable future they’ll make the difference,” said Democratic strategist Mike Stratton, who most recently consulted on the presidential campaign of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. “They are the largest percentage of voters, and they are not ideologues.”
For that reason, it doesn’t take a big shift in the mood of unaffiliated voters to dramatically alter the state’s electoral makeup.
“I think we’re a purple state,” said Weigel, the pollster. “I think people pick and choose. They’re willing to cross party lines. They’re willing to vote for a Democrat for Senate and a Republican for governor, and vice versa.”
Colorado also finds itself in the middle of a national political storm — one that many observers believe is going to benefit Republicans in the fall.
Weigel pointed to Virginia, where Republican Robert McDonnell took nearly 60 percent of the vote in November’s gubernatorial race, knocking off Democrat R. Creigh Deeds. Her firm did post-election polling there, and voters jittery about the goings-on in Washington helped sweep McDonnell to victory.
“It was just completely different than 2008,” Weigel said. “Republicans were energized. Independents swung completely back into the Republican camp. They wanted nothing to do with Democrats.
“It was nothing like 2008.”
Finding the pulse
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who has spent the days after Ritter’s announcement thinking about whether to jump into the race, said he sensed a restlessness among voters that goes beyond party lines.
“My sense of the state is that there’s a frustration — and I’m not sure it’s as much Republican and Democrat as it’s just a frustration with government, and with the polarization, and the unwillingness for people to kind of figure it out and come together and find solutions that have broader appeal,” Hickenlooper said.
Now leaders of both parties are trying to decide what it all means for November.
And there’s one other factor that may come into play in Colorado, something peculiar to the state: It is occasionally an election or two ahead of the rest of the country.
It wasn’t until 2006 that voter fatigue with the Iraq war and with President Bush manifested itself in big Democratic gains across the country. But that was two years after Colorado saw Democrats steal a Senate seat and the state legislature from Republicans.
And in 2008, when Democrats were piling it on, Republicans did win two modest victories that got little attention, taking back two seats in the Colorado House even though they were far short of seizing control there.
One of those races saw the GOP oust Democrat Bernie Buescher, who was widely believed to be on the verge of becoming speaker of the Colorado House.
For the dejected GOP, those two wins were like the first crocus of spring popping through the snow in a blizzard of otherwise bad election news.
The news got even better just a few weeks later. Salazar, viewed as an unbeatable 2010 Senate candidate, joined the Obama administration as the interior secretary. Ritter’s pick of Bennet to replace him divided the Democrats, adding to Ritter’s woes.
Before Obama was even sworn in in January 2009, before additional stimulus packages and tea parties, Colorado Republicans already were excited for 2010.
“What a difference a day or a week or a month can make in politics,” said former state Rep. Rob Witwer, a Genesee Republican. “This is all fluid, and anything can change.
“It’s probably a little premature for people to be measuring drapes in political offices.”
Staff Writer Lynn Bartels contributed to this report.
