For most of this year, it looked like Republican Bob Schaffer
stood a decent chance of resisting the blue tide sweeping
Colorado and the country as a whole. He kept the race to succeed
retiring Republican Sen. Wayne Allard’s seat close, constantly
nipping at liberal Democrat Mark Udall’s heels.
No more. The latest polls show Udall up 15 points, leading
Schaffer 51 percent to 36 percent. This came on the heels of an
Associated Press survey that showed the Democrat ahead by 12
points. Colorado was once a red state and Republicans still
outnumber Democrats there among registered voters. What went
wrong?
Colorado’s demographic mix is changing in ways unfavorable to the
GOP. To the south, Colorado Springs is an epicenter of
conservative and Christian values, with a large community of
home-schoolers and entrepreneurs. It’s the home of James Dobson
and his Focus on the Family ministry. North of Denver, Boulder
has always been its own bubble of communitarian living and
leftist policies, where Ward Churchill is a bigger name than Dr.
Dobson.
Despite the state’s having liberal and conservative portions,
Republicans usually prevailed in statewide races. But in recent
years, Colorado politics have experienced a seismic shift. In
both 1996 and 2002, the Democrats held Allard to 51 percent of
the vote. Democrat Ken Salazar picked up the other Senate seat in
2004, despite Republican gains elsewhere in the country. The
Democrats won the governorship in 2006. The blue parts of
Colorado were starting to outvote the red.
The change is evident in this year’s Senate race, in which
conservative family man Schaffer is up against the Boulderite
Udall. Both former congressmen, the candidates enjoy national
support and should be evenly matched in a race that may well
decide whether the Democrats get a filibuster-proof Senate
majority. But Udall has been pulling away from Schaffer for
weeks.
Schaffer is no stranger to the oddities of electoral politics in
Colorado. In 2004, he lost to Pete Coors in a bitter Republican
primary, only to watch Coors lose to Salazar in the general
election. The loss was felt throughout the Republican
establishment in Colorado, with leadership and activists pointing
fingers at one another trying to figure out where it all went
wrong. Though he is well-respected on the right, the thought was
that Shaffer would not be as strong a candidate as the more
moderate Coors. But Coors’s moderation was no help come November.
Perhaps it is necessary to take a few steps back and examine the
culture of Colorado. With over 300 days of sunshine, the state
has become an attractive destination and has a growing
population. It is a nice place to work and raise a family. Over
the past 20 years, hordes of people have swarmed into Colorado to
enjoy the lifestyle and relatively low cost of living.
Immigration has also enhanced the state’s diversity. But the
newcomers have brought their own views on politics.
Schaffer’s low numbers cannot be explained away be demographics
alone. The latest FEC reports show that Schaffer beats Udall in
the cash-on-hand department, three to one (Schaffer with just
over $1.5 million to Udall’s $470,000). The explanation could be
simple mathematics — Schaffer is being drastically outspent —
though he has the money to wage a harder-hitting campaign.
Not to mention rampant rumors that the National Republican
Senatorial Committee was pulling its support out of Schaffer’s
campaign because of low polling numbers. The NRSC struck back
with a television ad on October 16 declaring Udall a “lieutenant
of Nancy Pelosi, the most liberal speaker of the most unpopular
Congress in history.” Such a strategy may have worked prior to
2004, but these days attacking liberals in an increasingly
liberal state doesn’t seem to do the trick. Schaffer and the NRSC
are simply preaching to the Republican choir.
If Mark Udall and Barack Obama win in Colorado on Election Day,
it may prove that Colorado is a red state no longer. That
possibility has Bob Schaffer singing the blues.
