December 12, 2010 04:04 AM UTC

Waak This Way

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• by: redstateblues

This week, in a post-election interview InnerView with editor Jody Hope Strogoff and reporter Ernest Luning of The Colorado Statesman, Democratic State Chair Pat Waak lent some of her insights into the mixed bag Democrats were handed on election night, where she sees the party headed, her Republican counterpart Dick Wadhams (who gave his own InnerView in November) and her future with the party as the reorganization meeting looms. These interviews tend to be very long, so readers should really take in the entire piece if they want to get the full effect, but some of the highlights follow.

On the close Senate election:

CS: How nervous were you about – I think we all kind of expected that John Hickenlooper would win the governor’s seat –

PW: Right.

CS: But how nervous were you about the Senate race?

PW: I wasn’t. I always believed that we would win the Senate race. And I believed that because basically early on when I saw a wing of the Republican Party sort of take over the party, I know how hard it is then to bring things back to a centrist position, which is really what the state is. And so when I saw what was happening there, I was less worried about the Senate race.

…

CS: Were you not a little worried when Ken Buck was ahead in the polls nearly a month out?

PW: (Chuckles.) I never believed that he was ahead in the polls. One of the things that has been so frustrating – there are several things that have pinpointed for me in this campaign cycle, has been the type of polling that was being done, and the people who were doing the polling. You know, we tend to – both in the media and even among campaigns, depending on how the poll’s going – we’re always talking about, for example, Rasmussen, which is a Republican-leaning poll and in some states – we’ve had some intense discussions about this at the DNC and among the state chairs – some states, Rasmussen is all they have. And so you look at the methodology and if you are a real political strategist, you’re constantly looking at, “What is the methodology and what is the universe?”

…

CS: Do you think if Jane Norton had been the nominee it might have been closer?

PW: Yes.

More after the jump

On Wadhams:

CS: That’s one of the things that Mr. Wadhams says is evidence of their great Victory operation and ground operation, is that people like Walker Stapleton and Scott Gessler were able to attract (voters) – without running very significant statewide campaigns.

PW: Well, I don’t think anybody ran a significant statewide campaign outside of maybe the governor’s race.

CS: Cary Kennedy was on the air (with television commercials) …

PW: Well, she was out there doing things, but it still did not have the magnitude that any of the other campaigns did.

CS: To kind of penetrate the morass there?

PW: Yeah. You just don’t see that, and you know, I would say that I think that I would be reluctant to take a position. But that’s up to him – he can spin things the way he wants to.

On the circular firing squad in the Republican gubernatorial race:

CS: Right. I mean it must have been, in a way, not comical but you must have followed the whole governor’s race on the Republican side with maybe a little bit of wonderment or awe or glee or – what were your feelings?

PW: Well, I don’t know whether you would say “glee,” because I am compassionate to some extent, so I sort of felt for what people might be going through. But I was stunned. To watch, from my perspective, a party deconstruct. A party deconstruct. And the way it was deconstructing was amazing to me. It was like it was totally out of control. And so, I guess, yeah, I probably stood around with my mouth open a little bit, saying, “Oh my God, what is happening here?” And that’s why I’ve often said – and I’ve said to Dick (Wadhams), when I’ve seen him – it’s like you get out of bed in the morning and say, “Okay, what’s going to happen today?” And all I can say is, thank God it’s not happening to me (laughs).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I highly recommend reading both this interview, and the one with Dick Wadhams to get the full story.