May 20, 2011 10:12 PM UTC

Worst-Kept "Secret" Ever: Dems Itching To Take on Tipton, Gardner

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• by: Colorado Pols

Both Colorado House Minority Leader Sal Pace and Senate President Brandon Shaffer are strongly considering runs against freshman Reps. Scott Tipton and Cory Gardner in 2012. This isn’t news to us, of course, and it’s not likely to be news to most of our readers. But the confirmation by Chuck Plunkett of the Denver paper yesterday after House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer met with the editorial board will allow us all to discuss these matchups in less hypothetical terms. That said, nothing is certain until candidates formally announce.

The most interesting part of Hoyer’s conversation with the Denver paper was not the disclosure that Shaffer and Pace are interested in running, but the enthusiasm of potential candidates here compared to his experience in other states. According to Hoyer, it’s often necessary to make multiple trips to recruit against incumbents, but “none of yours have to be convinced.”

Watching Scott Tipton bumble from one embarrassment to the next as we and eager Democrats in Washington have, it’s very easy to understand Sal Pace’s enthusiasm. We do think that of the two freshmen in Colorado, Rep. Cory Gardner will prove to be the harder target, being somewhat more cautious and smarter generally than Tipton. Favored by GOP leadership, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) will probably put up more of a fight to defend Gardner than Tipton. It’s important to remember that these presumptions necessarily rest on the present districts, and could change based on the new map we’ll see this fall.

On the subject of redistricting, we will concede that Tipton’s vulnerability is one reason why some Democrats were less than enamored with certain details of their own map proposals, especially early maps that made CD-3 harder for Democrats to win. But we’ll say again: the 10-point GOP advantage Democratic maps drew in CD-4 makes Frank McNulty’s broken-record allegation that Shaffer tried to “manipulate the map” to his advantage quite silly–not to mention how clear it is now why McNulty was so fixated on Shaffer. He’s worried about his friend Cory Gardner…

Bottom line: what Steny Hoyer “let slip” yesterday was not that Pace and Shaffer are likely to run; they’ve been on our 2012 Big Line (left) for months. The real news from Hoyer is how national Democrats are excited about their chances in Colorado next year–and that ought to make both of our Republican freshmen quite nervous.