CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 31, 2014 11:48 AM UTC
20 Comments
Gessler must have attended the same GOP "How to write a fundraising letter" class as Mike Coffman.
Coffman's letter was yelling "OBAMACARE" and "PELOSI" and the "Democrat" Congress throughout.
But Coffman's biggest fear according to his letter is:
Yep, Mikey, you do need to fear that your Colorado constituents are going to give their hard-earned money to throw you out on your keister!
It's time for me to write Andrew another check.
Is it the fault of Republicans that the most prominent Democrats in America are great fundraising tools? I think not.
Careful now chief, it goes both ways. That's kinda how fundraising works.
True, Andrew's letter (that arrived the same day as Coffman's) did briefly mention the Koch brothers.
But unlike the tone of Coffman's scary, paranoid and fearful letter, Andrew's was funny and uplifting — spending half the letter outlining his agenda to help build our economy by investing in our families and the country's infrastructure.
Pretty much all Coffman bragged about was all his votes to repeal Obamare.
Modster, you're just jealous because our big contributers haven't been dying lately at the rate yours have.
None of the gubernatorial candidates (including Hickenlooper) are addressing the issues Coloradans care about: the economy, education, pollution from energy development. We need a better candidate.
Last Colorado Dem who primaried a Dem incumbent for a major office had to sell his house. I think the message was received by the masses. Stay in your place. We are important. You are not.
Yes, but the Dem you are referring to (Andrew Romanoff), after working with IDE on human powered water pumps for developing countries for 3 years, is about to serve up a large helping of whoopass to Mikey "Confused" Coffman in CD6.
Except we did not EVEN want Bennet as our Senator.
I can safely tell you to go back to FreeRepublic and PeakPolitics. Your trash won't work here.
So your masters chose him for you. Isn't that nice.
umm… Bennet was appointed to fill the vacancy created when then Sen.Salazar was appointed to Obama's cabinet by the Governor, Ritter at the time, as is always the case under those circumstances. How old are you anyway?
As for when he subsequently ran to be elected to keep the seat, he was the incumbent and, as usual with incumbents, had the support of the majority of Dem primary voters. See my comment above for further explanation of that election. I suppose the majority could have stood up to demand Andrew but since they were both centrists bound to have almost identical voting record, most of us thought going with the one already established and with all the national party support and the best chance of winning made more sense. Of course there are Romanoff supporters from back then who will disagree with me. We aren't the Borg. You could look at the facts and decide for yourself. Oh wait. You're a rightie so…. you don't know how.
You don't know WTF you're talking about. Just regurgitating rightie insults. Insults that are pretty funny coming from someone whose party leaders first jammed McCain down the base's throat and then followed up with Romney, in spite of the fact that, in both cases, the Tea Party base and the entire rightie media were against those choices during the primary seasons. How do you suppose that happened?
Never mind. I know. Crickets. Because all you have is your list of talking points and standard put downs. You don't have anywhere near enough knowledge or critical thinking skills to engage beyond that level.
Goddam, A.C., ya' know, I'm kinda' glad you're here . . .
. . . you're almost that new kinda' crazy we ain't ever seen in these here parts !!
Andrew Romanoff's problem was that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference on policy between him and Bennet and the majority of Dem primary voters weren't interested in trading an established centrist incumbent for a risky centrist challenger who would have voted pretty much exactly the same way as the guy we already had and who was running, not because of those largely non-existent policy differences, but because he couldn't get over being snubbed for the appointment n the first place.
Since then he's worked very hard accomplishing worthy goals and is running against a GOTP creep in a competitive CD, not a fellow centrist Dem statewide. Those of us who were pissed at him back then are very happy to have him running against Coffman now. It's the right race this time.
Well, finally — speaking for the collective — I'm very glad to see we might all have finally gotten beyond the past . . .
I should have said most of us. I can't speak for everyone. But I don't know anybody who was in the anti-Romanoff camp back then who isn't willing to support him now. In fact everybody I knew who opposed Romanoff's run against Bennet (including me) had always been a Romanoff fan prior to that.
I was pretty plugged in back in those days. Not at all important myself but I knew people who were very connected to inner circles and I was very involved in the whole caucus/primary/election process. If there are more than a very, very few who wouldn't be willing to back Romanoff over Coffman now, in spite of some of us not speaking to each other at the time, I don't know of them.
I was standing next to my state rep one Saturday as we were getting a bagle. Her phone rang, and it was Andrew telling her he was going to run for Senate. I asked her why he wasn't running for Governor (this was before Ritter decided not to run for re-election).
Like you, I was a delegate for Bennet — not anti-Romanoff, just pro-Bennet.
In 2010, I went to my local caucus and voted for Romanoff, as did 73% of the attendees in our area, and 51- 46% statewide. Nevertheless, Organizing for America steamrolled right over us and promoted Bennet's candidacy.
That's the part that offended me – that a gigantic progressive political organization, which I still mostly support, got involved in a local primary campaign.
That was inappropriate. Obama apparently made some kind of deal with Bennet.
In addition, as a 10-year DPS teacher, I was not happy with Bennet's history as Superintendant, and his "Borrow from Peter to Pay PERA" strategy to save DPS retirement funds. That worked out as badly as I had feared.
I got involved with the Romanoff campaign, and it was as badly mismanaged a campaign as I have ever seen. The manager had no use for data tracking, did not follow up with volunteers, and could not delegate. Faced with the OFA organizing behemoth, the primary went the way that Obama wanted it to go.
So, yeah, I'm not pissed about it anymore (much). I'm friends with all of my friends in Jeffco who supported Bennet. I've even forgiven my sister and brother in law, who hosted a Bennet fundraiser. Although now, my brother in law admits that Bennet is mostly a corporate hack who has crappy constituent service.
But I do remember how it all went down. Forgiving does not necessitate forgetting.
Well, I believe Romanoff after that campaign has learned valuable lessons. The issues you point out make me shudder to think that Buck could have easily pulled out a win as a result.
Andrew's got much better support this time around, especially when it comes to data tracking and finances.
I look forward to Andrew becoming my CD6 Representative!
Caucus goers are are dedicated base/volunteer types and everybody knew Romanoff was going to win caucus. But it's quite common for those who win caucus to lose when the wider primary pool of voters vote. Of course Bennet got the "steamrolling" support that pissed you off but it wasn't just because of OFA. It was the same back when Mike Miles was beating Ken Salazar at caucus.
The less electable often appeals more to the base and loses in the primary to the more electable, less liberal candidate. Now Miles really was far more liberal than the conservative Salazar and in the atmosphere of the time only a pretty conservative D was going to win that Senate seat. Between Romaoff and Bennet, on the other hand, there was virtually no difference on left/right scale. Progressive champion Romanoff was a fantasy totally out of sync with his record. Andrew was the Colorado DLC Chair and a triangulating Clinton man through and throug. Not a liberal.
Parties support their incumbents for the simple reason that the job of the party is to elect party members and defeat opposing party members and incumbency almost always confers advantage. Period. It would have made no sense to fail to support our incumbent against a candidate who was simply another centrist with a lower chance of winning and who would have voted exactly like Bennet 99% of the time anyway in the unlikely event of getting himself elected.
Bottom line: The party has to have a very compelling reason for failing to support its own incumbent. Romanoff didn't give us one. You can call that steam rolling. It may be but it's also the party doing its job.