You’ll have to forgive Jefferson County Republicans for their over-the-top enthusiasm but they believe with Congressman Cory Gardner at the top of their ticket this might be the year They. Could. Go. All. The. Way.
Senate hopeful Cory Gardner greets volunteer Kathy Holderith at a victory rally in Jefferson County on Saturday.(Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post)
Sign at the Jefferson County victory headquarters.
Republicans of all ages mobbed Gardner when he showed up today for a victory rally at the GOP’s Jeffco office just off of Denver West Parkway. It was the same story when Republicans today rallied in Littleton, Thornton .
“It feels like for once we’re going to win and that feels really good,” Scott Hammett of Golden said.
Also speaking to the crowd in Lakewood was governor hopeful Bob Beauprez, secretary of state candidate Wayne Williams, State Treasurer Walker Stapleton and congressional candidate Don Ytterberg.
“We call this guarded optimism,” Ytterberg, the former Jeffco GOP chair, said of how far the Republicans are ahead in .
“What a line up, top to bottom,” Beauprez said of the ticket.
He reminded Jeffco Republicans that when he ran for Congress in 2002 his pollster showed him down 9 points just days out from the race, but his supporters did what Republicans are doing this year: They knocked on doors and talked to voters. Beauprez won the newly created district, which included a chunk of Jeffco, by just 121 votes.
It was a banner year for Republicans but the celebrations have been rare since then.
Gardner, who is running to unseat Democrat Mark Udall in the U.S. Senate race, didn’t offer much new in his brief speech. We need to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a footnote in history. Mark Udall votes with President Obama 99 percent of the time. And so on.
Where Gardner excelled was working the crowd, firing off one-liners and taking one picture after another with a beaming voters. He laughed when a young man showed the candidate a picture of Gardner from his law school days. “Look how thin I was,” Gardner marveled. The young man said he had a hard time finding the law school class pictures. “Maybe they were with my football pictures,” Gardner joked, about his high school football days that the author got wrong and went viral.
Udall and Democratic candidates held their own rallies throughout the metro area on Saturday, which also were well attended. The Udall campaign on Friday released an internal poll to Politico s, who has led in .
