Republican Cory Gardner, flanked by state GOP chairman Ryan Call and campaign staffer Matt Connelly, declares victory on election night. (Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
Republican Cory Gardner just bucked Colorado’s longstanding political axiom of “As Jefferson County goes, so goes Colorado.”
Results posted today by the Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson show that Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Udall won 47.28 percent of the vote to Congressman Gardner’s 46.94 percent in But Gardner only lost by 869 votes in Jeffco, a tight margin that allowed him to win statewide, 48 percent to 46 percent.
Until this election, Jefferson County had picked the winners in U.S. Senate races since 1992 and gubernatorial contests since 1978, a decades-long stretch that made it the state’s premier swing turf.
Dick Wadhams, a veteran GOP strategist who lives in the county, has long maintained, “If you don’t win Jeffco, you don’t win the state. It just comes down to that.”
“Conventional wisdom has been turned upside down in this election,” Wadhams said today, noting that Gardner did well in the typically Democratic strongholds of .
Jeffco’s record on gubernatorial races, however, remains intact: Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper beat Republican Bob Beauprez 51 percent to 45 percent in Jefferson County. Hickenlooper beat the former congressman statewide 49 percent to 46 percent.
