Colorado’s Third Congressional District On George Will’s Radar Screen
In his editorial published in The Washington Post, George Will enumerated some of the more interesting stories to watch for in Tuesday’s Democratic beating. One of those stories is the probable defeat of Colorado’s John Salazar, the incumbent Democrat from the Western slope:
Rep. John Salazar (D-Colo.), whose younger brother was a Colorado senator before becoming interior secretary, won in 2008 by 22 points. In Congress, Salazar has opposed cap-and-trade and TARP and supports a one-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts. The National Rifle Association has endorsed him. Nevertheless, he may lose.
Given his fairly conservative voting record, if Salazar does in fact lose on Tuesday, I think it will signify the anti-incumbent nature of the current political climate rather than the anti-liberal/anti-Obama narrative conservatives are trying to develop. Voters, in other words, aren’t just angry at President Obama and the Democrats. They are angry at everyone in Washington.
Understanding the Female Enthusiasm Gap: Why Women Just Aren’t That Into It
Democrats in Colorado have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make Ken Buck look unelectable to women. They have dug through Buck’s past and have run negative ad after negative ad in a desperate attempt to turn the Colorado Senate race into a referendum on his deeply conservative, anti-feminist social views.
In a post published on this blog a couple weeks ago, I argued that such attempts to energize the women’s vote would likely be in vain because it would do little to swing the election in Michael Bennet’s favor. Admittedly, my piece was fairly controversial, and a number of friends and other readers took issue with some of my conclusions.
Although I readily admit that I may be wrong in my analysis—although I still don’t think I am—this video, and the related article, from CNN.com reinforces my original analysis:
John Salazar Trails Republican Opponent by Four Points, According to The Hill
Earlier this summer, John Salazar, the three-term Democratic Congressman from Colorado’s third Congressional district, appeared safe from the Republican tsunami awaiting Democrats in November.
Now, however, a new poll conducted by The Hill has Salazar trailing his Republican opponent, Scott Tipton, by four points. It observed that:
Independent voters are breaking for Tipton by 15 points. He’s also winning among male, female, middle-aged and older voters.
Salazar is winning among younger voters, but the three-term lawmaker gets mixed reviews from his constituents. When asked about him, 46 percent gave Salazar a favorable rating while 48 percent gave him an unfavorable one.
A big issue in this district is earmarks. Tipton has criticized Salazar for bringing home millions in federal dollars and has taken a no-earmark pledge.
Voters tend to agree with him. When asked if they’d rather have a member of Congress who’d fight to cut spending or one who will fight to bring benefits to the district, 55 percent said they’d prefer a lawmaker who cut spending while 36 percent wanted one who would bring back the money.
This rapid change in fortunes for Salazar, who is the younger brother of former Senator and current Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, does not bode well for Democrats nationally. It means that Republican gains on Nov. 2nd could amount to a blowout of historic proportions.
Dan Maes is Poised to Force Colorado GOP into Minority Party Status
According to a poll released by the Denver Post on Sunday, Democratic Gubernatorial candidate, John Hickenlooper, holds a comfortable lead over both Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo. In fact, with a mere 1% of the voters undecided, Hickenlooper has more support than both of his major opponents combined.
See Graph:
According to the Colorado constitution, any gubernatorial candidate that garners less than 10% of the vote, his/her party is, by definition, relegated to minority party status for the next two election cycles. That means the party will usually face some fundraising limitations and it does not get preferential placement on the top of the ballot with the major parties.
With Maes, the Republican candidate in the race, garnering only 9% of the vote, all I can say is, “Hello minor party status for Colorado Republicans.” You can thank the tea baggers, who nominated Maes, and Tom Tancredo’s massive ego for your place between the Libertarian and the Unity Parties on the 2012 ballot.
Don’t Boot the Blue Dogs. Promote Them.
Ari Berman wrote a major Op-ed piece in the The New York Times on Sunday, arguing that a smaller, more ideologically coherent Democratic majority in Congress will move a progressive legislative agenda better than the current majority. Suggesting that the Party should ‘Boot the Blue Dogs,’ he writes:
A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)
Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.
Berman’s entire rationale collapses under the weight of its own logical inconsistencies. Berman advances an interesting idea, but I fail to see how it is going to yield more progressive outcomes. Even a small majority in Congress requires moderate and conservative Democrats from swing districts, especially since only about 180 seats are in safe Democratic territory. Moreover, a smaller majority only increases the likelihood of needing Republican votes to pass any piece of legislation. Berman seems to think getting the GOP to compromise would be easier than conservative Democrats within the caucus. That is just absurd.
DCCC Pulls Betsy Markey’s Ad Funding, Salazar and Perlmutter Still Get Ad Buys
Reid Wilson at the National Journal’s Hotline On Call is reporting that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pulled its independent expenditure advertisements for Betsy Markey in Colorado’s CD-4. National Democrats, Wilson wrote, “are using their checkbooks as acknowledgement that nearly a dozen members are beyond saving.”
With just two weeks to go before election day, he goes on to say:
The DCCC did not spend money on behalf of Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.), Betsy Markey (D-Colo.), Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.), Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) and Steve Kagen (D-Wis.), the filings show. Republicans believe those seven seats are all but guaranteed to fall their way.
Even though the DCCC has pulled Congresswoman Markey’s ad buys for the week, it still invested $236,000 for John Salazar in CD-3 and $147,000 for Ed Perlmutter in CD-7—a sign that Democratic leaders in Washington still believe both seats can still be saved from the national Republican wave.
Markey/Gardner Debate A War Over Rival TV Ads
Last night’s CD-4 debate in Loveland between Betsy Markey and Cory Gardner was an unusually boisterous affair, surely a sign of the polarized political landscape in the Age of Obama (or the Age of the Tea Party). The audience was filled with more ideological partisans than undecided voters. In fact, barely a single undecided voter was in attendance.
As a result, the entire event was marked more by political theater than a real exchange of wits. So it is not surprising then that the most noteworthy exchanges between Betsy Markey and Cory Gardner was over a pair of new television attack ads the two candidates are airing against each other.
The first was a recent ad by the Markey campaign accusing Gardner of hypocrisy over wanting to raise taxes during a recession. It then goes on to suggest that he did just that when he sponsored HB10-1158, a bill that purports to allow wind rights to be separated from the real property it blows across and bought and sold just like mineral rights.
Ken Buck’s Problem with Women Unlikely to Swing Election
There has been a great deal of coverage regarding Ken Buck’s disconnect with women voters this week ever since the Colorado Independent published its hard-hitting report on his refusal to prosecute a 2005 date rape case involving a 21-year-old UNC student.
Since the Independent story, follow-up reports have been written by the Denver Post, Greeley Tribune, and even the Huffington Post. Among the various facts revealed over the last couple of days is an admission by the suspect in the case that he continued to pursue sexual relations after the victim told him ‘No,’ as well as the suspect being recorded over the phone admitting that he recognizes what he did as rape.
For many Democrats, this story feeds into and confirms a long running narrative around the Weld County District Attorney—namely that he is bad for women voters. Other elements in the narrative include his draconian opposition to abortion, his initial support of Colorado’s Amendment 62, and the politically imprudent comment he made during the GOP primary that Republicans should vote for him because “he doesn’t wear high-heels”.
Amendment 62 and Cory Gardner’s Assault on Women’s Rights
Republican Senate candidate, Ken Buck, has garnered a great deal of state and national media attention for his unusually rigid view of what rights a woman has to an abortion. His contention that even in instances of rape and incest, abortion is still morally repugnant and should not recognized as legally permissible, has even been fodder for campaign ads against the Weld county district attorney.
With all of this negative attention focused on Buck, it has gone largely unnoticed that CD-4 Republican Congressional candidate, Cory Gardner, holds similar views on abortion and women’s rights more broadly defined. In fact, where they do differ, Gardner’s pro-life position on abortion is even more extreme than Buck’s.
Last week, in an interview in the Coloradoan, Gardner, who is running against Betsy Markey, elaborated on his pro-life views and suggested that he makes no exceptions. When asked if he would allow exceptions for rape, incest, or in instances where the mother’s life was in danger, he simply answered, “I’m pro-life, and I believe abortion in wrong.”
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