October 03, 2006 05:04 PM UTC

Colorado Roundup: 5th District No Longer Safe for GOP

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• by: TheDeminator

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

http://www.cqpolitic…

Colorado Roundup: 5th District No Longer Safe for GOP
As Election Day nears, CQPolitics.com will periodically provide roundups of the key House races in individual states, highlighting major developments in the contests.

The following is an update of general election contests in Colorado.

• Colorado’s 5th District (Rating change). Several House districts that usually are Republican strongholds are unexpectedly subject to serious Democratic Party challenges this year. Most of these involve a political or personal scandal involving the Republican incumbent.

That, however, is not the GOP’s problem in the contest in Colorado’s 5th District, on which CQPolitics.com has changed its ratings to Republican Favored from Safe Republican.

Rather, it is serious resentment engendered by their nominee, state Sen. Doug Lamborn, during his hard-hitting campaign for the Aug. 8 primary that has made the open-seat race less than a slam dunk for the Republicans in the overwhelmingly conservative 5th — a south-central Colorado district (including Colorado Springs), where President Bush took 66 percent of the vote in 2004.

In the Aug. 8 primary, Lamborn finished first in a six-candidate Republican field, edging out Jeff Crank, a former top aide to retiring 10-term Republican Rep. Joel Hefley. Lamborn went negative on Crank, with backup assistance from the conservative national group the Club for Growth, which endorsed Lamborn.

There would be no unity rally in the wake of the primary. Lamborn’s campaign so angered Hefley that he has refused to endorse the nominee, and was even reported to have briefly considered backing Democratic nominee Jay Fawcett, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in the 1990-91 Iraq war.

Though it is rare for a retiring House member to refuse to endorse his own party’s nominee, it likely will take much more than an irreconciled incumbent to thrust the Democrats into a highly competitive position in the 5th. Along with Bush’s landslide numbers in the district, Hefley took 71 percent in 2004, and received at least 66 percent in each of his 10 House general elections. And Lamborn, despite the hostility he is receiving from some Republican quarters, holds views on issues that are not substantially different from those of the conservative Hefley.

Nonetheless, Democrats have a credible candidate in Fawcett, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, located in Colorado Springs. Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha — an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s strategy in the current Iraq war and a possible candidate for majority leader if the Democrats win control of the House this year — recently campaigned for Fawcett.

The pre-primary reports filed with the Federal Election Commission showed that Lamborn had outdone Fawcett in total receipts, $411,000 to $196,000, as of July 19. But because Lamborn had to spent much more on his primary campaign — Fawcett was unopposed for his nomination — they were much closer at the time in remaining cash: $70,000 for the Republican to $65,000 for the Democrat. New figures including activity in the year’s third quarter, which ended Saturday, must be filed by Oct. 15.