Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and the Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, Andrew Romanoff, both felt entitled to the seat as prominent Democratic elected officials.  Hickenlooper, who had hired Bennet as his chief of staff, looked like he was about to endure a root canal rather than celebrate a newly appointed senator at Ritter’s State Capitol news conference.

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall had just been elected in 2008 after a long, grueling campaign against former Congressman Bob Schaffer. One can only imagine what was going through Udall’s mind as he watched Bennet waltz into the U.S. Senate without having to campaign for one minute or raise one dime.

The Colorado Republican Party, which I chaired at the time, dubbed Bennet “The Accidental Senator.”  Although I doubt he saw it as complimentary at the time, he now embraces the moniker as a badge of honor after winning two consecutive elections in 2010 and 2016.  He touted it in his book, “The Land of Flickering Lights” which was written to advance his brief presidential campaign in 2020 and he often alludes to it in his daily fundraising emails for his 2022 reelection campaign.

Now in his thirteenth year in the Senate, Bennet is the fourth longest-serving senator in Colorado history. Since 1913 when the 17th Amendment went into effect providing for the direct election of senators — previously state legislatures elected senators — Colorado has elected 25 senators.  Two were elected to three terms, Democrat Edwin Johnson (1937-1955) and Republican Gordon Allott (1955 to 1973).  Republican Eugene Milliken (1941-1957) was appointed to the Senate in 1941 before being elected to two terms.

Should Bennet be reelected in 2022 and serve the entire term until January 2029, he would be the longest-serving senator in Colorado history at 20 years.

Rumors are floating that Bennet is not enjoying the Senate anymore Could he withdraw from the race at some point? It’s certainly something Colorado has seen before.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth was facing a strong challenge in 1992 when he abruptly ended his campaign in April, just six months before the election. Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who was elected as a Democrat in 1992 but reelected as a Republican in 1998, withdrew from the race in March 2004. Both Wirth and Campbell were running well-financed, aggressive campaigns before their sudden, unexpected withdrawals.

So how did Bennet become one of Colorado’s longest-serving senators? He can thank Colorado Republicans for nominating opponents who were complicit in allowing him to win campaigns he should have lost.

Underscoring his vulnerability as the appointed senator in 2010, Bennet was challenged for the Democratic nomination by the jilted Romanoff who soundly beat Bennet at the Democratic State Assembly. But as the incumbent senator, Bennet grossly outspent Romanoff in the primary election and won by an unimpressive 55% to 45%.

Meanwhile, there was a very competitive Republican primary between former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck.  Fueled by the newly emergent Tea Party movement, Buck overcame Norton’s financial advantage and won by a 52% to 48% margin.

2010 was a difficult year nationally for Democrats during President Obama’s first mid-term election and Bennet was on the defensive in the general election. Buck led Bennet late in the campaign but he made some damaging mistakes which squandered that lead allowing Bennet to be elected by a margin of 48% to 46%.

Bennet was once again vulnerable in 2016.  A crowded Republican primary of five candidates resulted in the nomination of El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn. Raising very little money for his campaign, Glenn was propped up by more than a million dollars in independent spending on his behalf by the Senate Conservative Fund out of Washington, D.C.  Glenn won the primary with 38%.

Going into the fall campaign, Glenn had no discernable campaign infrastructure and seemed totally bewildered about running in a competitive general election rather than in a Republican primary. Despite this, Bennet eked out a victory by six points, 50 to 44.

So, yes, Bennet has now been elected twice after being appointed to the Senate. But had it not been for the late undisciplined mistakes by one opponent and the not-ready-for-prime-time nature of another opponent, those races would have been closer and Bennet could have lost both of those elections.

Despite his less than impressive wins, Bennet clearly has some advantages in 2022, not the least of which is his incumbency.  Although two incumbent senators have been defeated in the past eight years — Mark Udall in 2014 and Cory Gardner in 2020 — Colorado reelected senators in 1980, 1984, 1998, 2002, 2010 and 2016.

Also, Colorado’s electorate has dramatically changed over the past ten years since Bennet was given the seat and when the state’s affiliation breakdown was essentially 33-33-33.  Colorado has added 700,000 residents according to census figures and now 42% of registered voters are unaffiliated, 30% are Democrats, and 26% are Republicans.  And many of those unaffiliated voters are younger and more socially liberal, and were very anti-Trump in 2018 and 2020.

But the political terrain has started to shift in the past six months.

Much of Colorado is in a state of decline with rampant homelessness and rising crime rates. But the homeless problem did not start under Mayor Michael Hancock. It can be traced back to the failed “Denver’s Road Home” project under then-Mayor John Hickenlooper in 2007 to allegedly end homelessness in ten years. But homelessness has dramatically increased and anyone who travels around metropolitan Denver can see it.

Just like every other Democratic elected official, the silence from Bennet is deafening as serious allegations of sexual misconduct stack up against Tay Anderson, a Democratic Socialist member of the Denver School Board, who was honored by the Colorado Democratic Party as their “Rising Star.”

Masquerading as a moderate during his thirteen years in the Senate, Bennet now votes 97% of the time with the hero of the Democratic Socialist left wing of the party, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The Consumer Price Index broke 13-year record with inflation surging on food and gasoline. Axios conducted national focus groups with voters who voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020 and found an overwhelming majority not only fear rising inflation and the rising national debt but an economic crash as well. Bennet has been a loyal foot soldier for President Biden’s failing economic policies.

Colorado Republicans must nominate a candidate who will run an aggressive, disciplined campaign with a clear agenda that is in stark contrast with Bennet and that focuses on the issues that appeal to unaffiliated voters rather than repel them.  And the candidate cannot get mired in discredited conspiracy theories about alleged stolen elections.

Colorado Republicans have another opportunity to get it right in 2022. If not, Bennet will be headed to another undeserved victory.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.

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“A U.S. senator that represents Colorado once said to me, ‘Should I be concerned that when I walk through the airport no one recognizes me?'” said Garnett, a 37-year-old Democrat who lives near the Capitol. “I don’t want them to know me. If they know me it means they’re worrying about what I’m doing.”

Garnett, who served as House majority leader the past two years, was recently elected by his colleagues to serve as speaker for the next two, succeeding the term-limited KC Becker. It’s a role that comes with enormous responsibility and influence. Among other duties, a speaker is largely responsible for setting the majority’s agenda, managing the politics of how and when to push on a policy, or not. The speaker must make tough choices: saying no to a member who wants permission to bring a certain bill, for example, or settling disagreements among caucus members. The speaker negotiates with the governor’s office, the minority party and with state Senate leadership, and has a bully pulpit like few others in the building.

In other words, there’s plenty of opportunity, as speaker, to throw one’s weight around.

That’s not Garnett’s preferred approach.

Garnett had planned on being a lead sponsor of Senate Bill 217, the landmark police reform bill that resulted directly from protests against police violence and racial injustice. He stepped back, he said, after speaking with Latino lawmakers.

“They came to me and said, listen, this really isn’t about a white guy. The Latino community has had a distrustful relationship with law enforcement for a very long time,” he said. “They made a ton of sense. Instead of leading from the front, I led by standing behind other members and lifting up what they believed was most important.”

“He creates teams,” said state Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, who served previously in the House with Garnett. “One of the reasons he’s going to be a great speaker is he highlights other people’s strengths and creates ways to allow everyone to shine.”

He’s averse to drama in a building filled with it, and whip-cracking is not his thing. It is, however, part of the job.

“I’m not going to always get it right, but I’m ready,” Garnett said, of those tougher calls. “Hopefully people see me as being fair. They’re putting their trust in me to make those decisions.”

Garnett has plenty of experience watching others lead. Well before he served under Becker, or former Speaker Crisanta Duran before her, Garnett worked for U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, and his father, Stan Garnett, was the district attorney in Boulder for a decade before stepping down three years ago.

He describes the Perlmutter years as formative. They began in his early 20s, as a campaign volunteer when Perlmutter was first running for Congress. He made himself useful by learning how to fix the copy machine, and later moved to Washington, D.C., to work for Perlmutter in Congress.

“There’s a firmness about him, but he’ll make tough decisions in a way that doesn’t cause more anger or angst than is necessary. Some people don’t have good personal skills. He has good personal skills,” Perlmutter said.

Matt Knoedler, the Republican former state lawmaker, said he saw that firmness up close in 2015, during Garnett’s first term. Garnett was sponsoring a bill concerning regulation of yoga studios.

“When the bill came before committee, one yoga studio testified against it. Some of his colleagues on the Democratic side felt a little squeamish on a yes vote after that,” Knoedler said. “He just gave them this unblinking stare when they started wavering a little, and they snapped out of it and voted ‘yes’ unanimously. It was so impressive — you don’t have that kind of pull, unspoken, without some genuine respect.”

Garnett said he hopes to wield what pull he has, in his final term at the statehouse, to inspire his colleagues to listen more — to each other, to people crafting or advocating for or against a bill, to their constituents. He also said he will be focused largely on pandemic response and recovery, which will no doubt define much of state government’s work in general in the coming years.

The pandemic has damaged the state budget, and, according to state revenue projections, likely will continue to do so at least for the duration of his speakership. That means more hard decisions than usual, with 2020 having created so many new problems, but with much less money to go around to solve them. He knows the legislature will have to be picky.

He’s bullish — like his predecessor, Becker, was — on being the speaker who can finally say they helped solve Colorado’s chronic problem of underfunding transportation, though he said he doesn’t know how that will happen. He believes cash bail, which keeps poor people behind bars while wealthier people pay for freedom, is unfair, but he hesitates to call for ending it because of fiscal implications. He wants to lower health care costs, but he says he’s not sure whether he supports a return of 2020’s scuttled bill to create a public health insurance option.

“We’re going to have to be creative about how we solve some of these,” Garnett said.

This is what he signed up for, and long ago aspired to. He knew he wanted to work in politics as a young adult, and, indeed, it’s all he’s done. In addition to his work for Perlmutter, Garnett was executive director of the state Democratic Party and worked on his father’s unsuccessful bid for attorney general, before running for the House District 2 seat, winning at age 31.

Asked whether his lack of experience outside of politics limits his worldview as a legislator, Garnett said, “You wouldn’t want your plumber to come in and have this be the first time they’ve fixed a clogged sink.

“Sometimes having somebody who’s studied policy, policy theory, policy-making, watched it on the staff level on the federal side and from the state side, is actually helpful.”

So focused on politics is Garnett that when asked what he’d do if he didn’t work in this field, he didn’t offer any alternative career ideas for himself. He’s always wanted to be in the public sector, he said, because it struck him as the most direct way to effect change.

The Capitol is brimming with ambitious politicians, and Garnett is no exception. Lawmakers generally brush aside questions about their political futures, but Garnett told The Post that he’ll be on the lookout for opportunity. He also said he’s at peace with the fact that it may not present itself.

“Serving in the legislature is like playing college ball. It’s an honor to do it,” he said, “but more people get to do it than go on to play in the NBA. … That’s totally cool with me.”

The job of speaker, despite its prestige, has not always proved to be much of a launchpad. Multiple recent Colorado speakers have tried and failed to reach higher office.

Garnett theorized that lawmakers can easily delude themselves into believing that “people outside the building are paying closer attention to you than they actually are.”

He said he’s in no hurry to capture their attention, anyway.

“It’s very cool and it’s a huge honor and I’m very, very, very, appreciative of this opportunity,” Garnett said. “But it is not lost on me that people outside this building have really busy lives and are focused on getting their kids dressed, getting them to school, making ends meet, how they’re going to get their car fixed. And they actually don’t know who the speaker is.”

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In a small, dwindling number of hours, 2020 will end. Nothing can be said of it that has not already been said of roaches, rotten eggs and root canals, so let’s leave it at that and dive right in: Here is the best, worst, dumbest and weirdest of Colorado politics in that no good, very bad year, as compiled by reporter Justin Wingerter in consultation with several political observers.

Best federal campaign: Lauren Boebert

When you’re a millennial high school dropout with no political experience and little money who manages to beat a five-term incumbent congressman by 10 percentage points, you’ve earned this superlative. No contest.

“Lauren Boebert accomplished something no Colorado candidate had done since 1972, unseating an incumbent member of Congress in a primary election,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chair of the Colorado Republican Party. “Even though Trump endorsed five-term Congressman Scott Tipton, she convinced Third District primary voters she was the real Trump candidate.”

With a potent Trumpian mix of social media bombast, ultra-conservative platitudes and an unfailing ability to bring attention to herself, Boebert shocked Tipton on June 30. Then she won a general election contest against the far more politically experienced Diane Mitsch Bush on Nov. 3, making her a rising Republican star in Colorado — albeit one who since winning her election has made the biggest wave by backing outgoing President Donald Trump’s attempts to cast doubt on his loss.

Worst campaign: Scott Tipton

When you’re a five-term incumbent congressman who lost to a millennial high school dropout with no political experience and little money by 10 percentage points, you’ve earned this superlative. No contest.

“It would be inaccurate to say that Scott Tipton and his campaign team fell asleep; they were in a coma,” says Jason Bane of Colorado Pols, a Democratic blog.

Aside from sending a few mailers bashing Boebert, Tipton never seemed to acknowledge he had a primary challenger. He skipped forums and did not run TV or radio ads. Then he lost. Badly. There’s not much more to say about Tipton’s campaign because, well, there wasn’t much of a Tipton campaign.

Scott Tipton's primary campaign in :

— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman)

Best legislative campaign: Kevin Priola

The state senator, a Republican from Henderson, continues to defy expectations, demographics and his party’s decline in the state. How? By combining with a centrist, bipartisan record. The result was in an otherwise Democratic .

Both parties poured massive amounts of money into the legislative race, and Democrats attacked Priola on several fronts. But just as in 2016, when Priola first ran and won, the Republican held on, sketching out a blueprint for how Republicans can be victorious in Colorado’s moderately Democratic areas.

“He went door-to-door in the middle of a pandemic and made the case for reelection despite a brutal barrage from progressive interests and a real lack of quality air support from right-wing outside groups,” said Ian Silverii, executive director of Progress Now Colorado. “Priola is a household name in Adams County to be sure, and that gave him a good head start, but running against that many headwinds and still eking out a victory deserves recognition.”

Best local government campaign: Alexis King

Since 2004, district attorneys in the 1st Judicial District (Jefferson and Gilpin counties) have been Republican. Four years ago, Republican Pete Weir won by a solid seven percentage points. Four years before that, Democrats didn’t even nominate a candidate.

Skip ahead to November. Alexis King, a reform-minded Democrat, faced Matthew Durkin, a Republican with decades of experience and the endorsement of The Post. She won by nearly 10 points, a 17-point party swing from 2016, and will be the first woman to hold the position of top prosecutor in the 1st Judicial District.

Best ad: Andrew Romanoff, “”

This mid-June ad from the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was eye-catching, memorable, and accurate. It used former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s famous 2010 shower ad to brutal effect and encapsulated the Senate contender’s awful June in a punchy 30 seconds.

So much so that Colorado’s Democratic establishment rushed to Hickenlooper’s aid. Angrier than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory, they issued statement after sanctimonious statement, decrying the attack ad as too mean.

Worst ad: Giffords, “”

This August spot from the gun control group features a man we are told is Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner but who looks more like an overweight Jeff Daniels. Setting aside the fact that guns were not a top issue for voters (this was August 2020), the supposed purpose of the ad — to criticize Gardner for opposing background checks — is lost in strange imagery, like chest hair coming through MAGA pajamas.

Worst political blunder (tie): Hancock’s travel

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s decision to travel for Thanksgiving, after telling Denverites and city staff not to, was immediately criticized by public health officials and politicians in both major political parties. Democrats distanced themselves while Republicans and anti-shutdown conservatives had a field day with it — for weeks.

Today's cover: Democrat hypocrites are undermining COVID with ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude

— New York Post (@nypost)

Worst political blunder (tie): Hick’s contempt

In a slew of unforced errors just weeks before his June primary election, John Hickenlooper refused to appear at a virtual hearing of the Independent Ethics Commission, fought a subpoena in court, lost in court, still refused to comply with the subpoena, and was held in contempt, all because he didn’t like virtual hearings.

His decisions, and those of his lawyers, generated weeks of bad headlines and Republican ad material while accomplishing absolutely nothing. In the end, Hickenlooper still had to testify about his multiple gift ban violations. The virtual format he wasted time and taxpayer money fighting worked just fine after all.

“Because of Hick’s own arrogance, resources national Democrats could have deployed elsewhere were instead poured into the primary to rescue his campaign,” says Kyle Kohli with Compass Colorado, a conservative group.

Despite himself, Hickenlooper pulled off wins against Romanoff and then Gardner.

Greatest sacrifice for a campaign: Teddy Hickenlooper

Look, no teenager playing hoops in the driveway wants to go up for a fadeaway only to be blocked by his or her 68-year-old dad. Much respect to Teddy Hickenlooper for enduring that indignity in aid of his father’s U.S. Senate campaign.

In May, the Hickenlooper campaign posted a video of its candidate swatting Teddy’s shot, walking over to a camera and vowing to “block Mitch McConnell from the chokehold he has on the U.S. Senate.” The video was mocked by some — including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — but proved popular, racking up hundreds of thousands of views.

This man embarrassed his son for a campaign ad and I’m crying

— Anthony Raia (@anthonyraia_)

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Here’s our list of the top 10 political stories of the year.

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Here are the state’s top political stories of 2020, as decided by The Denver Post����ap politics team.

COVID-19 response

Colorado’s elected leaders, particularly Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, have had to grapple with how to respond to a pandemic that has resulted in more than 4,600 COVID-related deaths in the state.

Life as many Coloradans knew it began to change in March. The governor declared a state of emergency, businesses were shut down, people were furloughed and lost jobs, whole industries had to figure out new models to survive and the health care sector was faced with unprecedented levels of need. A fragmented federal response left much of the decision-making to individual states.

Throughout the pandemic, Polis’s actions were criticized by Republican leaders who believed he was going too far and was exceeding his authority. Some Democratic leaders and public health experts believed he wasn’t going far enough, resisting statewide mandates for too long that could help save lives. The governor’s office won some legal battles and lost others. But for the most part, Coloradans have applauded Polis’s leadership amidst a crisis that seemed to have much worse effects in other states.

Most recently, Polis received pushback from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado as well as Democratic lawmakers for deprioritizing prisoners and those living in congregate settings for vaccine distribution. This was a reversal from the draft vaccine plan his administration proposed, which garnered criticism from groups that inmates would receive higher priority over other Coloradans.

Police accountability and reform

The streets surrounding the Capitol building in Denver were filled with protesters for months after George Floyd was killed at the hands of Minneapolis police in May. People across the country demanded change amid a national reckoning over racial and social justice.

It was that push for change in Colorado policing practices that state lawmakers credited as the impetus for Senate Bill 217. The bill was historic in many ways — it was among the most comprehensive police reform packages in the country, and it was a bipartisan effort.

It also made a major change to the qualified immunity defense, a legal doctrine that typically shields government employees from being held liable for constitutional violations unless an appellate court had previously declared the same conduct unconstitutional. Officers determined not to have acted in good faith or with a reasonable belief that what they did was legal can now be held personally liable for 5% of a judgment or settlement, up to $25,000. Colorado is the first state to do this through the state legislature.

The bill also bans the use of chokeholds, requires officers to get equipped with body-worn cameras and limits when police can shoot at fleeing suspects. Since the bill’s passage, at least one local government has tried to take and others have found other areas of the legislation that need to be amended. Lawmakers intend to bring those changes in 2021.

Repeal of the death penalty

The Colorado legislature abolished the state’s death penalty early this year, before going on hiatus because of the coronavirus, after years of failed attempts. Polis signed the bill into law March 23. That same day, he also commuted the sentences of the three men on death row.

Colorado became the 22nd state to end the death penalty, a punishment that has lost significant support nationally over the years, particularly as death row inmates have been exonerated and people of color disproportionately affected.

The decline of the Colorado GOP

The Colorado GOP took another hit in November after the state’s voters handily elected Democrats to office, turning the state a deeper shade of blue. As more than 20 Colorado Republicans looked back on the GOP’s decline in the state over the past few decades, they attributed many of their woes to party infighting, demographic shifts, the growing power of Democrats, the unpopularity of President Donald Trump and allegedly mismanaged campaign money.

One such example of the party’s recent failures: House minority leader Rep. Patrick Neville placed his brother in charge of campaign cash meant for the entire caucus. But his brother, Joe Neville, funneled nearly $1 million of that cash to his own political consulting company through no-bid contracts, while losing seats in the House and dwindling the GOP’s minority to a historic low point.

Buck as the face of GOP infighting

U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who also serves as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, made national headlines in May after an audio recording revealed that he had pressured a local election official in El Paso County to submit incorrect election results to the secretary of state.

That incident triggered a deluge of similar controversies.

Just days later, the Weld County GOP chair mentioned one of Buck’s congressional aides in a complaint alleging election fraud and corruption. Democrats passed the El Paso County complaint to the state board that regulates attorneys, asking them to disbar Buck. The Weld County complaint was then passed to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office for additional investigation. Both incidents churned out negative headlines and served a distraction at a time when Republicans said they should have instead been focused on the impending 2020 election.

Buck has since announced he will not run for a second term as state party chair.

The rise of Boebert

Lauren Boebert began 2020 as a millennial restaurant owner on a longshot campaign for Congress with little money and zero political experience. She ended 2020 as a congresswoman-elect.

The Rifle Republican’s shocking defeat of Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, by 10 percentage points on June 30 was the biggest upset of the year in Colorado. She ran as the most pro-Trump candidate, despite Trump’s endorsement of Tipton and Tipton’s role as a Colorado co-chair of Trump’s campaign.

Boebert has since claimed there was widespread fraud in the presidential race Trump lost and, on Jan. 6, will not vote to certify the presidential results, part of a longshot bid to overturn the election. There has been no poof of rampant voter fraud, particularly in Colorado.

Greenlighting family leave

Colorado voters this year approved the creation of a statewide paid medical and family leave program, after multiple attempts to pass such progressive legislation at the state Capitol failed.

What voters passed in November goes even further than what lawmakers had initially proposed at the legislature. The measure creates a state-run paid family and medical leave insurance program for Colorado workers that would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave annually. Funding for the program would come from payroll deductions.

A bill to pass paid medical and family leave earlier this year was met with several obstacles but ultimately began to collapse, just before introduction, after two sponsors withdrew their support, citing concerns that the bill wouldn’t do enough to protect the state’s most marginalized employees. New sponsorships were in the works, but the pandemic halted the plans. So, instead, sponsors backed the ballot measure.

Teflon John’s bumpy ride

John Hickenlooper’s defeat of Sen. Cory Gardner by nearly 10 percentage points on Nov. 3 was predictable – almost a foregone conclusion – due to the state’s Democratic lean and Trump’s unpopularity in Colorado. The road that led Hickenlooper there was less so.

In the weeks before Democratic primary voters decided between Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff on June 30, Hickenlooper refused to appear at a virtual hearing of the Independent Ethics Commission, fought a subpoena, lost in court, refused to comply with the subpoena, was held in contempt by the IEC, and was found to have twice violated the state’s gift ban. The series of unforced errors earned the candidate negative headlines and left political observers scratching their heads.

After Hickenlooper easily beat Romanoff, Republicans saw an opening, pouring money into ads that claimed Hickenlooper was a crook. But the ads mattered little. Hickenlooper handed Gardner the first loss of his career and the largest margin of defeat for a U.S. senator from Colorado in 42 years.

Hancock takes flight

After weeks of cautioning residents to stay put and avoid travel or gatherings on Thanksgiving, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock joined the throes of elected officials across the country using a mantra of “do as I say, not as I do.”

About 30 minutes before boarding a flight at Denver International Airport, Hancock’s Twitter account posted a message telling residents to avoid travel if they can. Someone at DIA alerted local media about Hancock’s travel, and his spokesperson confirmed that he was going to visit his daughter in Mississippi, and his wife was already there. The story gained national attention, and the backlash was swift.

Hancock issued an apology, saying he should have shared his travel plans publicly and that he asked for forgiveness for “decisions that are borne of my heart and not my head.”

Crow and impeachment

Speaker Nancy Pelosi surprised many when, on Jan. 15, she announced Rep. Jason Crow would be one of the seven House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against Trump in the Senate.

Crow, an Aurora Democrat, was a defense attorney, not a prosecutor, before joining Congress. And, unlike the other six managers, was not a member of the Intelligence or Judiciary committees, which researched and drafted the articles of impeachment. At 40, he was also the youngest manager.

As he made his case to senators — ultimately without success; Trump was acquitted — it became apparent he was there due to his combat experience. He spoke, with first-hand detail, of soldiers at war, to illustrate the danger in Trump’s withholding of military funds to Ukraine.

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On Aug. 13, 2019, a poll showed the Democrat with a 13-point advantage over Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. A week later, Hickenlooper entered the race. On Tuesday night, he won it handily.

The reasons for that are numerous. They span from the macro — the coronavirus pandemic, the president����ap unpopularity — to the micro, such as ad strategy and debate performances.

In the end, Gardner was unable to escape from under the weight of President Donald Trump and Colorado’s increasingly Democratic electorate. In key moments, his critics say, he didn’t try to. Hickenlooper, meanwhile, overcame an embarrassing ethics ruling that ultimately did little to hurt his electoral odds.

“Colorado has changed a lot since 2014” — the year Gardner first won a seat in the Senate — “and because of Trump’s unpopularity here, Gardner was in a very tough, if not intractable, situation,” said Kyle Saunders, a professor of political science at Colorado State University.

Trailing in the polls and hit with a barrage of outside spending, Gardner’s prospects looked dim as 2019 ended and the first several months of 2020 passed. But a Republican-authored ethics complaint against Hickenlooper began to bear fruit in the spring, fertilized by Hickenlooper’s own unusual decision-making.

In the weeks before Democratic primary voters decided between Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff, Hickenlooper refused to appear at a virtual hearing of the Independent Ethics Commission, fought a subpoena in court, lost in court, refused to comply with the subpoena, was held in contempt by the IEC, and was found to have twice violated the state’s gift ban. The series of unforced errors earned the candidate negative headlines and left political observers scratching their heads.

Gardner and his allies saw an opening. Outside GOP groups poured money into Colorado as ballots went out to Democratic voters. Negative ads hit the airwaves highlighting Hickenlooper’s dismal June. At the end of the month, Hickenlooper beat Romanoff easily but Republicans had their opening: to paint Hickenlooper, in Gardner’s words, as “the most corrupt governor in the history of Colorado.”

In a different year, it may have worked.

But this is 2020, the year of a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, the year of a stark economic downturn, the year of racial and civil unrest. The pandemic in particular highlighted health care, Hickenlooper’s signature issue. The Affordable Care Act, once vilified, was in vogue again.

Gardner caught a small break in August when his Great American Outdoors Act, a significant public lands bill, was signed into law by the president. His ad strategy became two-fold: criticize Hickenlooper’s ethics, and tout the GAOA.

But nothing seemed to move the needle, which remained firmly on Hickenlooper’s side. A September poll showed Gardner within five percentage points of Hickenlooper, but it was an outlier. Other polls that month showed Hickenlooper’s lead holding steady at seven to 10 points over Gardner. They never budged.

“Hickenlooper and his team did exactly what they needed to do: They ran a campaign that highlighted Hickenlooper’s strengths and positive image without making any big mistakes or gaffes,” said Saunders, “while really all they had to do to keep the lead weight of Trump around Gardner’s neck was to show pictures of him with Trump and connect the two in the minds of voters with their ads.”

All that was left were the October debates, which both sides saw as Gardner’s best opportunity to close the gap. Gardner, the much better speaker, went hard after Hickenlooper but with a smile and nod to bipartisanship. Hickenlooper focused on health care, Trump and the state of the nation. When the dust settled, the polls remained stubbornly unmoved. Nothing Gardner did changed the state of the race.

“I don’t think it’s been any secret that there’s a heavy anti-Trump sentiment among unaffiliated voters, and they represent 40% of the electorate,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chair of the Colorado GOP and former campaign manager in Senate elections, on Tuesday night. “And that has affected races up and down the ticket.”

It was Gardner who aligned himself with Trump, endorsing him last year and rallying with him in Colorado Springs this February, creating much material for Democratic ad makers. It was Gardner who, in another widely shared moment, called Trump ethical and moral during his final debate against Hickenlooper.

“Because Cory Gardner has made this decision to unequivocally support the president no matter what he says or does, he’ll be paying the price for that,” said David Flaherty, a GOP pollster in Colorado, in the days after the final debate.

That price is the first electoral loss of Gardner’s career, and the largest margin of defeat for a U.S. senator from Colorado in 42 years.

Staff writer John Aguilar contributed to this report.

Democratic challenger John Hickenlooper defeated Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner on Tuesday in a closely watched contest that will help determine which party controls Congress next year.

Hickenlooper had 54% percent of the vote with 85% of ballots counted Tuesday, and Gardner had 44%. Three other candidates split the remaining votes.

It’s unclear so far whether Democrats will win enough seats nationwide to take over control of the U.S. Senate.

“Tonight, your message is loud and clear: It’s time to put the poisonous politics of this era behind us and come together to move forward,” Hickenlooper said in a victory speech on Facebook Live shortly after 8 p.m.

“Clearly, people are saying it’s time to turn the page. It’s time for a different approach. It’s time to start solving problems and helping people and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Hickenlooper added.

Gardner called Hickenlooper to concede before thanking his supporters, staff and family in a speech at 7:40 p.m. He said Hickenlooper’s success will be Colorado’s success, and offered to help smooth Hickenlooper’s transition to the Senate.

“To the people of Colorado, thank you for this great honor to serve you. This nation’s better days are ahead of us, and let none of us forget that,” Gardner said.

Hickenlooper, a Denver Democrat and former two-term governor, began the day as the front-runner following that showed him with a significant lead over Gardner, a Yuma Republican.

Nicole Wilson, an Adams County resident who voted at Ball Arena, cast her ballot for Hickenlooper because she thought he was a good mayor of Denver. As Jon Sierra dropped off his ballot in Denver’s Sunnyside neighborhood, he said, “Hick deserves a shot.”

Gardner parlayed short careers in the Colorado General Assembly and U.S. House into a 2014 run for Senate, where he rode anti-Obama sentiment to an unexpected and narrow win over then-Sen. Mark Udall. But anti-Trump sentiment and Colorado’s increasingly Democratic lean made him an underdog from the start against Hickenlooper, whose missteps did little to shrink his polling lead.

Laurie Sanchez, who described herself as a Democrat at heart, cast votes for Trump and Gardner on Tuesday because she believes they will not pass any strict gun control measures.

Hickenlooper began the 2020 election cycle as a presidential candidate and not to run for Senate, saying he was not “cut out” for the job, that he would “hate it,” that being a senator would not bring him “any satisfaction or delight,” and that he would likely not be a successful candidate or senator.

But after dropping out of the presidential race in August 2019 and at the urging of national Democrats, he announced a run for Senate. In the weeks after, several top Democratic candidates dropped out and threw their support behind Hickenlooper. Eventually only progressive candidate Andrew Romanoff remained, and Hickenlooper easily defeated him in a primary election June 30.

That night, Gardner kicked off the general election race by calling Hickenlooper “the most corrupt governor in the history of Colorado,” and he rarely pulled punches in the four months and four days that followed, using debates, television ads and social media to endlessly criticize Hickenlooper for twice violating the state’s gift ban and for refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify about the violations.

“It����ap a very clear contrast between somebody who believes the people of Colorado are first — that����ap what I believe — and somebody who believes their own self-interests are first and that they want to go to Washington to line their own pockets,” Gardner said during a debate in Pueblo last month.

Hickenlooper, on the other hand, largely focused on policy, namely health care, and Gardner’s support of President Donald Trump, harking back often to a rally the two Republicans hosted in Colorado Springs this February. Hickenlooper used attack ads for the first time in his 17-year political career, saying they were necessary given a barrage of attacks from Gardner and his GOP allies.

“Donald Trump told us Cory Gardner has been with him 100%, not with Colorado,” one of Hickenlooper’s stated. “How’s that working out for you?”

Through it all, public polls remained virtually unchanged. In August 2019, they showed Hickenlooper leading by 13 percentage points. An October 2020 poll showed the same margin. On average, the Democrat led by about 10 percentage points in the month before Tuesday’s election. At no point in the 14 months after Hickenlooper joined the race did a poll show Gardner tied or in the lead.

“I don’t think there’s any question that (Trump) was the drag,” said Ryan Winger, a Republican-leaning pollster with Magellan Strategies. “I think the results would look better across the board without President Trump being an anchor on the ticket.”

Staff writer Sam Tabachnik contributed to this report.

“There is no reason for either side to put another dime into this state. It����ap over,” said David Flaherty, a Republican pollster in Colorado who predicts “historic” losses for his party Nov. 3.

“It is undeniable. The train wreck and implosion of the president will bring a historic number of other Republican candidates down, and if you don’t believe that then you have your head in the sand,” he added.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Gardner led two years ago, has spent $145,000 in Colorado in the first half of October, according to a Denver Post review of campaign finance filings through Wednesday. That is far less than in the other five states the NRSC has focused on: Iowa ($3.2 million), Michigan ($3.2 million), Montana ($2.2 million), Maine ($2.2 million) and Arizona ($1.7 million).

The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC with ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has spent less in Colorado this month than in the 10 other states it has focused on, according to the review of campaign finance filings. When SLF it was spending $22.5 million to boost eight Republican Senate candidates, it set aside just $1 million of that for Colorado.

“Where the NRSC spends its money signals to everybody else what����ap in play, what isn’t in play, and where they think they can most effectively allocate their resources,” said Kyle Saunders, a professor of political science at Colorado State University, “and right now that just isn’t Colorado.”

The reasons for this are twofold, election observers say. First, Gardner has never led in a public poll and showed Democratic challenger John Hickenlooper leading by an average of 10 percentage points.

Second, the national map of Senate seats in play has expanded greatly, with Republicans gaining ground in Michigan and Democrats doing so in several Republican states, including Kansas, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. SLF announced Tuesday it is spending $3.3 million in Alaska — more than it has spent in Colorado all month — to protect a once-safe Republican incumbent there.

“It����ap unbelievable,” said Flaherty, the pollster. “Republicans are trying to defend South Carolina, Georgia, arguably Texas, Kansas, and that is 100% due to the president����ap failures as a candidate, on addressing COVID, and on a number of issues. That����ap why the Republicans really have their backs up against the wall.”

There was a time when national Republican groups spent a lot in Colorado just before an election. That was in June, before the Democratic primary Hickenlooper won. The NRSC spent several million dollars that month bashing Hickenlooper before he easily beat Andrew Romanoff. The next month, it began an $8.7 million spending spree here, making Colorado its second-highest priority.

But that has changed with the seasons. In September, the NRSC spent about $1 million in Colorado, considerably less than in the other states it has prioritized. In Arizona, where a Republican incumbent is trailing by similar margins as Gardner, it spent $3.3 million that month. In Maine, where Republicans have a better chance of re-electing an incumbent than in Colorado, it spent $4.5 million in September.

“The NRSC is proud of its significant investment in this race and our efforts to help Senator Gardner draw an important contrast with his scandal-plagued opponent,” said an NRSC spokeswoman, Joanna Rodriguez, when asked whether the Republican group has given up on Colorado.

Jack Pandol, a spokesman for SLF, said in a statement that his political action committee is holding Hickenlooper accountable through “aggressive advertising efforts” and called this article “false and ridiculous.”

Republican groups rightly point out that they have already injected a lot of money into Colorado this year — about $15 million total from the NRSC and SLF alone — and are scheduled to spend more in the weeks to come, even if it is far less than what they are spending elsewhere in the country.

“My perception is that Cory and his allies have together bought a huge amount of television time. At some point, does another $100,000 make any difference? I’m not sure it does,” said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair who has managed successful U.S. Senate campaigns.

“Cory’s problem is not that he does not have enough money in his account or that there’s not enough spending on that side. Cory’s biggest problem right now is the national political environment, and that has been driven by President Trump’s numbers against Joe Biden,” Wadhams said. “I’m not sure any money can offset that right now.”

Such as:

Despite running for governor for eight years while serving in another statewide office, one candidate was incapable of defining an agenda. Another gubernatorial nominee’s terribly thin resume was exposed as very exaggerated. A befuddled Senate nominee only campaigned with Republican groups even after winning the primary.  Another Senate candidate, who was leading going into October, inexplicably said during a nationally televised debate that being gay is like being an alcoholic, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

But these guys are rank amateurs compared to the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate: hypocritical, self-entitled, unengaged, sleepy John Hickenlooper.

Unlike those unsuccessful Republicans who frankly deserved to lose and did, Hickenlooper could possibly win this Senate race due solely to the anti-Trump prevailing political winds and the millions of dollars in “dark money” negative ads from Washington, D.C. attacking Sen. Cory Gardner.

Let����ap review the “highlights” of Hickenlooper’s campaign comedy:

— The best day of Hickenlooper’s failed campaign for president was the day he announced and it went downhill from there as Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats just didn’t buy the quirky brewpub owner shtick. He had no impact on the presidential debate stage, and no one noticed or cared when he exited the race.

— Anticipating the presidential campaign’s inevitable collapse, the media asked why he wasn’t running for the Senate. He denigrated the U.S. Senate and those who serve there as do-nothings and declared he was “not cut out” to be a senator.

— Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of Washington, D.C. big-footed themselves into the Colorado Democratic primary for the Senate forcing out several candidates who had diligently campaigned for months and, unlike Hickenlooper, actually wanted the job.

— When faced with more than 20 forums with the remaining Democrats who refused to be forced out of the race by the New York/Washington, D.C. power axis, Hickenlooper showed up for only a handful. When asked by The Colorado Sun why he wouldn’t debate, Hickenlooper declared “I need my sleep.”

— During televised Democratic primary debates with his opponent, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, it was clear why Hickenlooper hid from them. He looked and sounded like a candidate who didn’t want to be there and had no idea why he was running.

— When the Colorado Ethics Commission pursued charges against Hickenlooper for alleged violations of ethics rules during trips paid for by his wealthy friends, he refused to appear before the commission. After blowing off a subpoena, the commission voted to hold him in contempt, the first elected official in Colorado history to be held in contempt by the Colorado Ethics Commission.

He was found guilty of violating ethics laws and was fined. Meanwhile, taxpayers were on the hook for $150,000 in legal fees even though Hickenlooper is a very wealthy man who could have paid for his own defense.

— When asked by a reporter about these alleged ethical violations, Hickenlooper declared it was the media’s job to protect him. Remember, John Hickenlooper is special and the rules don’t apply to him.

— Hickenlooper grudgingly accepted three debates against Sen. Cory Gardner while blowing off a tradition-laden debate in Grand Junction sponsored by Club 20, a western slope advocacy organization and one by Action 22 representing southern Colorado counties.

— Although poor Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has been severely criticized for the out of control homeless problem in Denver, it didn’t start with him. It was Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper who, with great fanfare, declared in 2005 he would end homelessness in ten years under his “Denver’s Road Home” program. Hickenlooper’s grand plan was a complete failure as homelessness tripled over the next fifteen years while spending millions of dollars. Confronted with his failure in 2015, he said “we always knew we weren’t going to end homelessness.”

— Finally, Hickenlooper sanctimoniously declared in 2010 he would never air negative ads against an opponent and even took a shower with his clothes on in a television ad to proclaim his purity and virtue. Funny how a close race changed his mind as he now airs a series of attack ads against Gardner.

Colorado voters are the losers when a political party fails to nominate its best candidate for something as important as the U.S. Senate. Republicans have certainly been guilty of this in the past.

Imagine if Democrats had nominated former state Sen. Mike Johnston, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, or former House Majority Leader Alice Madden, accomplished Democratic leaders who actually wanted the job rather than treating it as an entitled consolation prize after a failed presidential campaign.

Hickenlooper is the worst candidate for major statewide office in decades in either party.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.

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Jared Polis has gone out of his way as governor to appear as nonpartisan as possible. It’s pretty rare to hear the Democrat badmouth other politicians — even Republicans. 

Even President Donald Trump. Since the pandemic began, I’ve heard him compliment or thank the Trump administration more often than I’ve heard him criticize it.

On the rare occasions when he does go after another politician, he’s usually quite measured. 

This week, the governor rallied support for Diane Mitsch Bush, the former state lawmaker running for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, at Pitkin County Democrats’ annual gathering on Zoom.

He didn’t utter Republican candidate Lauren Boebert’s name, but he had this to say about the race: “Listen, go to your Republican, independent friends and neighbors, and have them take a look at these two candidates in that congressional race. Even for mainstream conservative Republicans, I don’t think they want to be represented by somebody who believes in this QAnon conspiracy and has been cited for violating numerous health orders and putting people in their own restaurant’s health in jeopardy.” 

(Boebert says she doesn’t subscribe to QAnon’s beliefs, but her campaign has largely been defined in media — especially national media — by her “Q-curiosity.”)

Polis didn’t exactly throw bombs, but, again, he never really does. 

Speaking about the election in general, Polis also told the group, “You know, many elections we say it’s important, it’s the most important, but this one is. 2020 is the most important. There is so much at stake for our state, for our nation, for the world.”

Elsewhere in this week’s newsletter, Justin Wingerter revisits a political ad that some are calling prescient, Conrad Swanson digs into the fight over Denver’s budget and Saja Hindi looks at the lack of excitement over a second effort to recall the governor.

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Top Line

The state’s unemployment claims system has struggled to keep up with the sheer number of people laid off or furloughed since the pandemic hit. Joe Rubino writes about the latest problem — with a tool that’s supposed to pay $300 in federal to Coloradans who qualify for at least $100 in state assistance weekly.

Capitol Diary • By Saja Hindi

Try, try again? Or not.

The latest petition seeking to recall Gov. Jared Polis over his coronavirus response has been met wearily by Colorado’s political crowd, even some Republicans.

And it����ap easy to see why. It would take collecting more than 600,000 signatures in 60 days to force a recall election. A 2019 effort by some of the same people to recall Polis didn’t even turn in signatures to be verified — one of several failed recall attempts by conservatives that year.

Polling indicates the group faces an uphill battle in bringing down the governor even if enough signatures could be collected. Survey findings released this week by liberal advocacy group ProgressNow showed that 58% of registered voters approve of Polis’ handling of the pandemic, compared with 36% who disapproved of it. Of those who participated, 43% were unaffiliated, 27% Republicans and 30% Democrats — similar to the state’s political makeup.

Those who want to limit the governor’s powers and change how the state responds to the pandemic would be better off trying to flip the state Senate, that chamber’s GOP spokesperson, Sage Naumann, Wednesday. A net gain of two seats there would give Republicans control of the chamber and provide a check on Polis and the solidly Democratic House.

Note to Colorado candidates

The Denver Post has emailed — or attempted to email — questionnaires to all candidates on 2020 Colorado ballots for U.S. Congress, RTD board, CU Board of Regents and state Board of Education as well as Denver metro area candidates for the state legislature and district attorney. If you are running for one of these offices and haven’t seen a questionnaire — including in your spam folder — please email khamm@denverpost.com to receive a link. The questionnaires must be returned by Sept. 27.

More Colorado political news

• The governor’s latest coronavirus order will allow for some fall sports.
• A lawsuit against Colorado lawmakers over Blue Book language has been dismissed.
• You can now track your ballot. Here’s how.
• El Paso Republicans are lashing out against GOP chair Ken Buck.

#COSen 2020 • By Justin Wingerter

Has Romanoff been vindicated?

Last year, then-U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff released a campaign ad that I’ve heard described as “cartoonishly grim,” “long as hell,” and a lost scene from Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Headlines called it “apocalyptic” and “nightmarish.” Sen. Cory Gardner called it “insane.”

Climate activists are now calling it something else: prescient.

“When Andrew Romanoff released this ad, he was decried as sensationalist and hyperbolic,” the youth-led Sunrise Movement. “Now, millions are trapped indoors by the smoke from climate crisis induced fires as the sky is orange or red across the West Coast.”

“Romanoff and Sunrise Movement are owed apologies from every news outlet, pundit and politician that mocked his climate ad which forecast a future of being forced inside because of heat, ozone and wildfire,”, a Coloradan and former speechwriter for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The 4-minute, 16-second digital ad shows a dystopian “not so distant future” in which a Colorado Springs family lives in a bunker and wears hazmat suits to protect themselves from 127-degree temperatures, an air quality index of 420, and tornadoes. None of that has occurred yet in Colorado Springs, but other parts of the country have seen 130-degree temperatures (Death Valley), air quality index readings of 420 (Oregon) and even fire tornadoes (California).

So, does Romanoff feel vindicated?

“‘Vindicated’ is not on my list,” he said via text Wednesday. “What I feel is grateful for the firefighters and other first responders, sad for the victims of these disasters, and angry at the administration and anyone else who continues to deny the evidence all around us.”

More federal election news

• Misleading voter information from the U.S. Postal Service is causing harm to Colorado voters, a federal judge said.
• A look at Lauren Boebert����ap rise to Twitter fame, the benefits and limitations of it, and the tweets that got her there.
• If you’ve been thinking the Gardner-Hickenlooper U.S. Senate race has been … uneventful … you’re not alone. And it����ap on purpose, observers say.
• The — this one to be held by 9News and other outlets Oct. 13. 
• In an interview with the Durango Herald, Boebert – acknowledging she received a GED this spring – and about her health care policies.
• former 3rd Congressional District congressmen about what it takes to win – and represent – the enormous district.
• Gardner had to return some donations from John Elway because they exceeded donor limits,. FEC-ordered donor refunds are fairly common.

Mile High Politics • By Conrad Swanson

Timing is everything

Expect Denver City Council to propose some substantial changes to Mayor Michael Hancock’s proposed budget for 2021. 

The whole process got off on the wrong foot in more ways than one, but the timing in particular has left council members frustrated.

Hancock’s staff released the budget proposal Tuesday, which is precisely when Council members got their first glimpse of the nearly 800-page document. And they had just over 24 hours to read and digest the weighty tome before budget hearings started Wednesday.

“There’s no possible way we can be expected to go through this budget realistically, absorb the information and prepare ourselves to ask the questions in time for budget hearings to start,” Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said. 

Typically council receives a draft budget in early July, Sawyer said. But this year’s version was essentially worthless because the city was still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. They were told none of the numbers would remain constant between then and now, she said. 

Sure, this is a fluid situation and Hancock’s office faces complications of its own developing the budget, Sawyer acknowledged, but the administration should either have delayed budget hearings or shared the proposal with the City Council members earlier. 

This year’s proposal includes tens of millions of dollars worth of cuts and employee furloughs. If the coronavirus resurges it will only take a turn for the worse. The group must adopt a final version of the budget in November. 

“This process was created by design to keep Council from digging into the details,” said Lisa Calderon, chief of staff for Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca. “It is set up to rubber-stamp the mayor’s budget with as little pushback as possible.” 

But Hancock is already seeing pushback. 

The City Council rejected his proposed police union contract Monday — something that����ap never happened before — and a chief objection was over voting on such a substantial portion of Denver’s public safety budget before seeing the entire financial picture. 

Even some council members who supported the contract voiced that concern, although they said they voted in favor anyway for fear of new contract negotiations resulting in a worse deal. 

Meanwhile, it remains unclear what changes are coming for the city budget. Council members have to read the document first.

More Denver and suburban political news

• The National Western Stock Show won’t happen in 2021 because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
• Mayor Michael Hancock pulled the plug on a second site proposed for the city’s first sanctioned homeless encampment.
• A complaint filed by a Denver police officer against City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca has been dismissed.
• RTD considers laying off fewer employees as it wrestles with how to close a budget gap.

But we’ll get back to that.

Democrats and most of the news media have already declared the 2020 Colorado Senate race over and done with.

Oh, sure, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner has more than $10 million in the bank, and he has been lauded by Democratic Governor Jared Polis for their collaborative work on the coronavirus pandemic. He has a long litany of Colorado accomplishments such as securing permanent financing for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, getting the United States Space Command headquarters located in Colorado Springs, authorizing funding for the Arkansas Valley Conduit water improvement project that had been delayed for almost sixty years, and relocating the national headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction from Washington, D.C.

But everyone knows the general election is a mere formality even though the recent primary election exposed former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s ethical lapses and profound weaknesses as a candidate.  This is a sure thing!

Hickenlooper defeated underfunded Andrew Romanoff not because of his dogged pursuit of the nomination — he claimed he couldn’t debate because he needed his sleep — but because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. spent $7 million to drag him across the line.

Hickenlooper is owed this Senate seat! This is a sure thing!

And everyone knows that Colorado is now a deep blue state that will never again elect another Republican for statewide office. Just ask the newly arrived Democratic Socialist political activists who think Colorado politics began when they showed up.

Wasn’t Colorado an impregnable Republican bastion before Democrats started winning in 2004?  A little political history:

When Gov. Bill Owens — the only Republican governor in the last fifty years — was elected in 1998, Democrats had won six consecutive gubernatorial elections since 1974. Only two Republicans, Senators Bill Armstrong and Hank Brown, had won Senate elections between 1970 and 1994. So much for being a Republican bastion.

So when U.S. Sen. Hank Brown announced he would not seek reelection in 1996, Democrats were giddy. Winning the seat was a foregone conclusion with the formidable Republican incumbent out of the way.

Their giddiness went into overdrive when conservative Congressman Wayne Allard, a soft-spoken veterinarian from Loveland, won the Senate nomination over a respected Republican attorney general.

Meanwhile, Democrats nominated a powerful, wealthy lawyer-lobbyist straight from Denver’s 17th Street power corridor, Tom Strickland, whose campaign said when they had won the primary that the general election was in the bag as well. They derided Allard as an inferior, inevitable loser to the much more polished Strickland. And early polls did show a substantial Strickland lead. It was a sure thing!

But Colorado voters are discerning, and they were terribly uncomfortable with a candidate whose campaign slogan could have been “conflicts-are-us” as many of Strickland’s lobbying clients were at odds with his public positions. The low-key workhorse Allard ran an aggressive campaign on their professional contrasts, and he won an improbable upset victory.

Dismissing his loss as a lucky fluke by Allard, Strickland ran again in 2002 after trying to polish his resume with a brief tenure as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado. Allard didn’t have a chance this time! This was a sure thing!

But U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard touted several environmental accomplishments while sharpening the contrast of “the veterinarian versus the lobbyist.” Allard was reelected by just about the same margin as he won in 1996.

Democrats will argue that Colorado’s electorate has fundamentally changed in the last decade and indeed it has. More than 800,000 people have moved to Colorado, many of them younger and instinctively liberal, especially on social issues. Unaffiliated voters have exploded to 40% of the electorate while Republicans have slipped behind Democrats.

They will argue that President Trump is like an anchor pulling Gardner into oblivion.

This is a sure thing!

But not all of those unaffiliated voters — even those who vote for Biden over Trump — will buy off on this “sure thing” Senate race. They are unaffiliated for a reason. They shy away from partisan labels, and they will give Senator Cory Gardner a fair hearing. Meanwhile, John “Ethics-Laws-Are-for-Other-People” Hickenlooper will continue to be unfocused and uninspiring.

The race is already tightening. A respected national polling firm, Morning Consult, shows the Hickenlooper lead has slipped to just six points, 48-42.

Cory Gardner is once again the aggressive, young, dynamic challenger, and Hickenlooper is the tired, old, self-entitled, ethically challenged incumbent.

The ghost of Tom Strickland haunts Hickenlooper.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for Gov. Bill Owens and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard.

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