Category Archives: Congress

This is the face of a guy who just wants to go get some #HorseSushi and a mug of iced beer.

Colorado’s U.S. Senate race is entering its final days with a big ol’ heaping plate of “whatever.”

For weeks, national news outlets pretended that the battle between incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet and Republican challenger Joe O’Dea could be a closely-watched race on Election Day. But with less than two weeks to go, reality has sunk in for O’Dea as he faces anger from the right and apathy from everywhere else.

During Tuesday’s Senate debate at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, O’Dea displayed the energy and enthusiasm of a teenager asked to wake up early on a weekend morning. In fact, the most notable takeaway in watching O’Dea might have been his audibly heavy breathing whenever Bennet was talking. O’Dea flubbed many of his lines; declined to use up his full allotment of time in responses; and literally read aloud his closing remarks from a piece of paper (remarks you would think a Senate candidate would have memorized by now).

O’Dea has seen the polls, all of which show him losing badly to Bennet. O’Dea knows that he won’t have the resources to do anything about it in the final stretch of the race, with his campaign resorting to weird tinfoil hat conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to raise a few more bucks from conspiracy-minded donors.

Quite frankly, we can’t blame O’Dea for having trouble mustering up any excitement. The writing is on the wall. The fat lady is getting ready to sing. Pick your cliché.

As CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote on Tuesday:

Last week, a super PAC affiliated with Mitch McConnell announced it was pulling nearly $6 million out of the New Hampshire Senate race. On Tuesday, the group dumped an additional $6 million into the Pennsylvania Senate race…

…Seemingly gone for Republicans are the dreams of picking up the likes of the New Hampshire seat, where Sen. Maggie Hassan is seeking a second term. Ditto Republican hopes of beating Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet. [Pols emphasis]

Sen. Michael Bennet is endorsed by every major newspaper making a decision in Colorado.

Jesse Paul of The Colorado Sun continued this theme today:

O’Dea hasn’t benefited from the kind of NRSC spending Republicans running in other U.S. Senate races have benefited from. And [NRSC Chairman Rick] Scott wouldn’t commit Sunday to allocating more money in Colorado. [Pols emphasis]

In Arizona, for instance, the NRSC has spent nearly $7 million opposing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. In North Carolina, the group has spent $6 million. The NRSC has spent more than $3 million in each Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The NRSC, by comparison, has spent just $241,000 in Colorado on O’Dea’s behalf, and that was in August.

“We spent money defining Bennet. We spent money on polling. We spent money on get-out-the-vote. We spent money on texting. Things like that,” Scott told The Sun.

When asked whether the NRSC would spend millions in Colorado in the next two weeks before Election Day, Scott said “we’re working to raise money every day.”The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has spent $1.25 million in Colorado on O’Dea’s behalf. That’s a fraction of the amount the group has allocated to races in other states.

This is a continuation of the national Republican message from earlier this month (which was a continuation from the previous month) that “We’re keeping an eye on Colorado.” It’s reminiscent of a kid asking his mom if they could go out for ice cream, and the mom saying, “We’ll see”; it’s not a definite “no”, but you know enough not to put on your shoes.

With the caveat that, yes, Coloradans still need to cast their ballots, yada, yada…the reality is that the U.S. Senate race is pretty well wrapped up.

Please, sir. May I have some more?

As Natalie Allison reports for POLITICO, one of two major national Republican Super PACs associated with GOP efforts to win majority control of the U.S. Senate has at last contributed some money toward efforts to help Republican Joe O’Dea defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet:

The question has remained for months about whether the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, would put money into a state President Joe Biden won by 13 points in 2020. Republicans this summer nominated Joe O’Dea, a construction entrepreneur who is running as a centrist and has distanced himself from Donald Trump, saying he would be willing to buck his party in the mold of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) if elected.

The Senate Leadership Fund on Friday made a $1.25 million contribution to the pro-O’Dea super PAC American Policy Fund, an investment the group first confirmed with POLITICO. The spend is significantly smaller than SLF’s expenditures in other battleground states this year, though spokesperson Jack Pandol said they “aren’t closing the door on further investment” in Colorado, and are “keeping an eye on” the race against Sen. Michael Bennet. [Pols emphasis]

“Keeping an eye on Colorado” is something that Republicans have been saying for at least a year. It’s the equivalent of a parent responding to a child with, “That’s nice, dear.”

It would be a much more important story if national Republicans have decided to spend real money in Colorado; $1.25 million is a relative pittance compared to what McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) is spending in other top races around the country — though it’s $1.24 million more than the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has committed to Colorado. As you can see from this graphic put together by Reuters that covers outside spending through Oct. 3, a $1.25 million “investment” in Colorado is peanuts:

Via Reuters

Spending from SLF is arriving pretty late for O’Dea. Mail ballots in Colorado start going out to voters in exactly one week, which will make it hard for any ads to sink in with the electorate before voters are done thinking about 2022. This is probably one reason why the SLF is writing a check to the Super PAC “American Policy Fund,” a contractor-aligned group that has really been the only outside source of advertising for O’Dea. The SLF money isn’t part of any new program for O’Dea — it’s merely a contribution to the same group that is already running ads in Colorado.

Sen. Michael Bennet

Meanwhile, as POLITICO reports, Democrats ARE spending bigger on behalf of Bennet:

The new support for O’Dea’s bid comes as outside Democratic groups have jumped into the race to help Bennet, even as public polling has shown Bennet with a steady lead. On Friday, the League of Conservation Voters’ super PAC bought $1.3 million worth of ads in support of Bennet, following a combined $5 million in recent weeks from Giffords PAC, the gun control super PAC associated with former Rep. Gabby Giffords, and another Democratic group.

Bennet’s campaign has also outraised O’Dea by an 8-to-1 margin; while Bennet has been all over the television, O’Dea’s campaign has been buying TV time on a week-by-week basis. It’s important to note that television ads reserved by candidate campaigns are significantly cheaper than those that come from PACs, so Bennet should continue to saturate the airwaves while O’Dea’s campaign rifles through the couch cushions.

So what is the point of McConnell’s late, meager spending in Colorado? Perhaps McConnell and the SLF want to be able to say that they tried to help O’Dea in Colorado. Maybe it is a way for McConnell to tell future candidates, with a straight(ish) face, that he really does support people who are not complete MAGA Republican weirdos. Whatever the reason, this is not an amount of money that is designed to change the outcome of a Senate race.

For O’Dea, $1.25 million is better than nothing…but it’s not nearly enough to be good enough for something.

Michael Bennet, Joe O’Dea.

Here’s what readers thought the last time we asked this question.

Now we’re asking again: Who will win Colorado’s U.S. Senate race? Will incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet earn a third term, or will Republican businessman Joe O’Dea pull off the upset?

*Remember, as always with our totally non-scientific polls, we want to know what you legitimately THINK will happen — not what you hope will happen or which candidate you support personally. If you had to bet the deed to your house that your prediction would be correct, how would you vote?

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UPDATE: As The Washington Post reports in a story about Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker:

With polls showing Republican candidates underperforming the fundamentals in several key Senate races, Walker — for all his previous problems, which were many — hasn’t lagged as badly as some. And just two weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) named Georgia and Nevada as the GOP’s best pickup opportunities, apparently over others in Arizona, Colorado and New Hampshire. [Pols emphasisi]

Oof.

—–

GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea

One of the most persistent — and bizarre — storylines this fall has been the steady stream of national publications writing about Colorado’s U.S. Senate race as though it just might be an opportunity for Republicans to pick up a Senate seat.

Multiple national outlets, from The Washington Post to The New York Times, have published stories in recent months considering whether the underfunded and little-known Republican Joe O’Dea could knock off incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet in November. Every single one of these stories follow the same basic script:

1. Republicans think O’Dea could upset Bennet in 2022;
2. Here are a few quotes from Republicans saying that O’Dea could beat Bennet;
3. O’Dea has some different positions on abortion and Donald Trump (sort of);
4. Here are some quotes from Democrats saying that O’Dea will NOT beat Bennet;
5. Bennet is way ahead of O’Dea in fundraising and polling numbers;
6. Nevermind our original premise because Bennet will probably win.

It’s uncanny, and it’s as pointless as responding to one of those spam text messages that just says, “Hi.”

The latest national reporter to embark on this paint-by-numbers journey is Caroline Vakil of The Hill newspaper:

Republicans are hoping Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea’s move to distance himself from the more extreme elements of the party will help them pull off a win in what could be a potential sleeper race come November.

O’Dea, a construction company executive running to unseat Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), has expressed support for some abortion rights while also bucking his party by suggesting former President Trump shouldn’t run in 2024.

Republicans argue that by branding himself as a moderate, O’Dea will appeal to critical voting blocs in the state, like independents and Hispanic voters, even if some in the party acknowledge he likely faces an uphill climb.

“I think that those same unaffiliated voters that voted so overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates in ‘18 and ‘20 are ready to look at Republican candidates in 2022. And I think Joe O’Dea is the perfect kind of candidate to appeal to them,” said Dick Wadhams, a former state GOP chair. [Pols emphasis]

This quote from former Republican State Party Chair Dick Wadhams is perfectly emblematic of the kind of response that national publications include in their stories about Colorado’s Senate race. Wadhams is quoted because he presumably knows what he’s talking about after spending 400 years in Republican politics, although the last time Wadhams was involved in a winning scenario for the GOP was when Wayne Allard was a U.S. Senator.

If you’re asking yourself, “Who in the hell is Wayne Allard,” then you’re getting what we’re putting down here.

Democrats have absolutely CRUSHED Republicans in Colorado in the last two election cycles, but Wadhams says things will be different in 2022 because…um…well…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Darryl Glenn was a called a “unicorn,” too.

This is all the same fact-free punditry from the same Republicans who keep losing big races in Colorado year after year after year. For example, Axios published a story about O’Dea this summer calling him a political “unicorn,” which is the same thing that some pundits said about Republican Senate candidate Darryl Glenn when he was running against Bennet in 2016.

There’s absolutely no logical reason to suspect that 2022 will be different for Republicans than 2018 and 2020, particularly when they are running the same program again and again. We learned today, for example, that former Republican President George W. Bush will host a fundraiser for O’Dea later this month. In 2018, Bush showed up in Colorado in October to raise money for Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, who went on to lose to Democrat Jared Polis by nearly 11 points. Bush isn’t even going to bother coming to Colorado for O’Dea; that fundraiser will be held in his home state of Texas.

In fact, there’s more reason to believe that 2022 might actually be WORSE for Colorado Republicans than it has been in recent cycles. The GOP’s top-ticket candidate, gubernatorial nominee Hiedi Heidi Ganahl, is a complete lunatic whose campaign somehow gets worse the closer we get to Election Day and threatens to drag other Republicans down with it. Even Republican Rep. Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert could be in trouble in November, and CO-03 is a district that last elected a Democrat in 2008.

Ganahl isn’t getting any financial help from national Republicans, and neither is O’Dea; the top two Republican campaigns in Colorado are running on fumes. Republicans are pouring millions of dollars into states like Georgia (for Herschel Walker) and Pennsylvania (for Dr. Oz), both of which have terribly-flawed Senate candidates but are still considered more winnable than Colorado. This is the most telling stat of all: National Republicans have spent all of about $100,000 on O’Dea; they’ll spend more than that in Georgia today.

Again, none of these national stories about O’Dea have translated to an increase in support, because nobody actually believes that O’Dea has much of a chance. Polling consistently shows Bennet with an 8-10 point lead, and the incumbent Democrat has outraised O’Dea by orders of magnitude. O’Dea’s campaign has, for several weeks, been buying television ad time on a weekly and sometimes daily basis because it doesn’t have the resources to do anything else.

Thus, The Hill ends up right where all of the other national publications land: In reality.

Indeed, Colorado has not been particularly kind to Republican candidates in recent years. Hillary Clinton won the state against former President Trump by roughly 5 percentage points in 2016, and President Biden won it in 2020 by more than 13 percentage points.

The last time Republicans won a Senate seat in the Centennial State was back in 2014, when Cory Gardner ousted Sen. Mark Udall (D). Gardner later lost reelection to Sen. John Hickenlooper (D) in 2020…

…While Democrats — and even some Republicans — believe that Bennet will ultimately prevail in November, they note the political headwinds their party still faces. [Pols emphasis]

Taking a dozen different positions on abortion rights or supporting Trump makes O’Dea different than some other GOP candidates, but it doesn’t make him any better.

All of these national stories start out with an interesting premise but end up with the same inevitable conclusion. In that way, at least, they have captured the true essence of O’Dea’s campaign for Senate.