November 14, 2006 07:56 PM UTC

2006 Election: LOSERS

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• by: Colorado Pols

The 2006 Election Winners are here, or click below to read about the other side…

John Marshall, Shari Williams, Cinamon Watson
These three Republican operatives have now been at the helm of two straight cycles of disastrous Republican defeats. Marshall and Williams directed Greg Walcher’s failed campaign for congress in CD-3 in 2004, and Williams and Watson were also players in Pete Coors’ 2004 U.S. Senate race. But as bad as that year was for these three, nothing compares to the magnitude of the Beauprez debacle in 2006. The Beauprez for Governor campaign will go down as one of the worst Colorado campaigns of the last 50 years, and rightfully so. In mid-2005, Beauprez was thought to be such a formidable candidate for governor that Democrats aside from Bill Ritter wouldn’t even throw their hat into the ring.

Republicans once expected Beauprez to win this race, but his campaign ended up being so terrible that he could have conceded to Ritter in late September and nobody would have been surprised. Beauprez supporters can blame Marc Holtzman all they want, but he couldn’t have beat Rollie Heath with that campaign operation. 

Alan Philp
The Trailhead Group was a complete disaster, and Philp was at the helm of this 527 political committee. Trailhead lost virtually every race they were involved with despite raising more money than all but a handful of 527 committees nationwide. Trailhead made poor decisions, received terrible press for its actions, and Philp was leading the way. Philp basically took the wheel of a multi-million dollar company and crashed it into a wall in less than a year. Trailhead couldn’t beat a single Democratic incumbent and couldn’t hold onto several relatively safe Republican seats. Rarely has a political organization spent so much money accomplishing so little. 

The Big Republican Money Umbrella
Republican powerbrokers Bill Owens, Pete Coors and Bruce Benson formed the Trailhead Group as a way to fund Republican candidates around the state, but the idea of centralizing all fundraising proved to be a disaster. Candidates such as Mark Hillman (state treasurer), Lew Entz and Ed Jones (state senate) didn’t bother to raise money on their own until it was too late because they were counting on Trailhead and a handful of other big money political committees to do it for them. But when Trailhead started diverting its resources to other races, the likes of Hillman, Entz and Jones were left out in the rain with little time to raise enough money for themselves. Centralizing the money like Republicans did in 2006 didn’t make campaigns more efficient – it made them less so.

Bill Winter
Winter and Jay Fawcett started their respective campaigns for congress with somewhat similar backgrounds and equally miniscule name ID, but they ended them in vastly different places despite getting the same results at the polls. Fawcett is now a respected rising star in the Democratic Party in Colorado, while Winter’s political career has been severely damaged because of a poor campaign and his incessant finger pointing.

Winter thought that it might take him two or three tries to win CD-6 because of Republican Tom Tancredo’s entrenched position in a heavily-Republican area, but then he went out and ran an awful campaign while burning bridges right and left. The idea, for Winter, was to make gains in 2006 that could help him in 2008, but his failure to even get on television – he was the only serious congressional candidate without a presence on TV – means that he ended up with very little name recognition from which to build on. Winter couldn’t do better than Democrat Joanna Conti did in 2004 despite a nationwide Democratic wave, and he lost a lot of credibility with ill-advised attempts to generate momentum; in mid-October, for example, he tried spreading a rumor that Tancredo had an internal poll showing the race to be very close, which obviously wasn’t true.

If Winter does try to run again in CD-6, it will be like he was running for the first time; he didn’t really do much in 2006 that he could build upon in 2008. It’s also a good bet that he would have a hell of a time raising money or generating any real support for another go at the seat, because he alienated numerous supporters. Winter complained that his poor campaign was everyone else’s fault, whining to the New York Times that Democrats had abandoned him; he cried that state Rep. Morgan Carroll had stolen his volunteers; and he held his Election Night party at a different Denver hotel than the rest of the Democrats to show his anger at the Party. Winter was obviously frustrated at how his campaign dissolved, but it was hard to understand what he thought he was accomplishing by bashing everyone in sight.

Winter actually had more natural advantages than any other Democrat in recent memory in CD-6 (certainly more advantages than Conti), and national Dems and the netroots did a lot for him – he just didn’t do anything on his own. His excuses were laughable, such as blaming former campaign consultant Jim Merlino for his troubles, even though Merlino left the campaign in May. Winter also cried that Democrats didn’t help him raise enough money, but he wasted what cash he did have; Democrat Cary Kennedy, who was elected state treasurer, raised less money than Winter overall but pinched pennies so that she could be on television. Meanwhile, Winter blew tons of money on silly radio buys; there’s a reason why most congressional candidates don’t sink a lot of money into radio – it’s because most of the radio audience doesn’t live in one particular district.

Winter didn’t just lose this election, he needlessly damaged his future political career with his misdirected stone throwing at fellow Democrats. Of all the Colorado politicians running for office in 2006, only Beauprez had a more disastrous year than Winter.

John Hickenlooper
Hickenlooper would almost certainly have beaten Bill Ritter in a Democratic primary and gone on to be governor; and with the 2008 Democratic National Convention possibly coming to Denver, Hick might have even made the list for President or VP as a popular sitting governor. Instead, his Election Day was filled with watching the Denver Election Commission completely botch the voting process in Denver, and `Teflon John’ may not be able to avoid the egg from this one. His October endorsement of Ritter proved unimportant, since Ritter was well ahead of Beauprez already, and his support of Referendum I didn’t make much of a difference, either (nor did his backing of the preschool tax in Denver).

This time last year, Hickenlooper looked like Superman. Today? Just man.

Matt Knoedler
The young and popular Knoedler gave up his House seat in order to run against Democrat Betty Boyd in SD-21 and was beaten handily. Knoedler had been considered a rising star in the Republican Party and might have been the top GOP choice to run for congress against Perlmutter in CD-7 in two years. But now? Now Knoedler doesn’t even have a job. You have to give Knoedler credit for taking a political risk, but he lost a lot when he couldn’t deliver the senate seat.

Denver Election Commission
Popular words used in discussions about the DEC and the 2006 election: `Debacle,’ `Nightmare,’ `Disaster.’

How bad did the DEC screw up the voting process? They weren’t even done counting votes a week later. The ineptness of the voting process in Denver would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so scary to watch. There is absolutely, positively, no reason why we should have this much trouble casting ballots in the United States. The entire commission should be dismantled for what happened on Election Day. 

John Andrews
The former state senator created Amendment 38 (petitions) and Amendment 40 (term limits for judges), and was also a vocal supporter for Amendment 39 and Referendum J (school spending limits). All four measures were handily defeated at the polls. Coupled with the passage of Referendum C in 2005, which Andrews strongly opposed, and his track record as a political savant is less than stellar. Andrews was once a conservative Republican leader, but now he’s little more than a silly nuisance along the lines of Doug Bruce.

Gigi Dennis
The former legislator gave up a higher-paying job last summer to accept an appointment as secretary of state (SOS), which amounted to a $30,000-per year pay cut. She then decided not to run for re-election and was left off the ticket as a potential running mate for Beauprez; in the end, she took a 16-month job with a much lower salary…for what? Dennis made a mockery of the SOS office in her brief time there, proving to be a partisan lackey rather than a principled leader. Her political career was probably over anyway, but she ended it with very little dignity.

Ken Gordon
No candidate for higher office in Colorado was handed a better set of circumstances in 2006, and no candidate blew it like Gordon did. It doesn’t look as though Gordon is going to be able to overtake Republican Mike Coffman for secretary of state once the final votes are counted, but this race shouldn’t have even been close. When Gigi Dennis was in the midst of a shameful display of partisanship in the SOS office this summer, Gordon was nowhere to be found. He could have screamed to the heavens about the need for a principled reformer in the SOS office and rode that horse all the way to victory, but Gordon completely whiffed on it by registering little more than a whimper in the media. His campaign ads were some of the most memorable and effective of 2006, but they were too little, too late against an opponent like Coffman who had good statewide name recognition. In a political year with such a Democratic wave, with a complete hack as the current SOS, there was no reason that a Democrat shouldn’t have won this office going away.

Bill Owens
Pundits will discuss Owens’ legacy as Colorado’s governor in terms of transportation (T-REX) and educational standards, but his legacy within the Republican Party took a major hit in 2006. Owens was completely snookered by Democrats when he called this summer’s special session on illegal immigration, allowing the donkeys to cut the GOP off at the knees on one of their best issues. He went to bat for Beauprez early, but as the campaign wore on and Beauprez wore off on voters, Owens slowly slinked away (although he insisted that Marshall, Watson and Williams remained steering the Beauprez ship). Owens didn’t have enough juice to get his favorite candidate for the state legislature elected (Democrat Debbie Benefield held off Republican challenger Affie Ellis in HD-29); his Trailhead Group was a spectacular failure; and even when he left the state he lost – he stumped for a defeated TABOR-like measure in Maine. His personal approval ratings may be strong, but Owens’ record as a leader of the Republican Party in Colorado in the last three years has been absolutely atrocious. 

John Suthers
With Beauprez losing badly in the governor’s race and Republicans seemingly doomed at every turn, Suthers stood on the cusp of being the next big GOP thing in Colorado. But a funny thing happened on the way to the top: Suthers was exposed as a political weakling. In the race for attorney general, Suthers was the one candidate that Republicans didn’t have to worry about…until polls tightened and he had trouble putting away Democrat Fern O’Brien – one of the meekest statewide Democratic candidates in years. If O’Brien had run even a moderately decent race for AG, she would have pulled off the upset, and Republicans know it. Suthers has a lot of work to do if he ever wants to run for something like U.S. Senate or governor in Colorado; how can you look at him now and think he gives the GOP a good shot at one of those seats in the next several years?

Bob Martinez
The chair of the state Republican Party took the ill-advised step of publicly backing Beauprez over Holtzman in the race for governor (state party officials aren’t supposed to pick sides in a primary), and then watched as his horse broke its leg soon afterward. To make matters worse, Republicans were positively pummeled in the race for control of the state legislature. Martinez should have spent more time worrying about Democrats than battling with other Republicans, and he’ll no doubt lose his job in a couple of months because of it.

Mason Tvert
Tvert may have had the right idea in trying to get marijuana possession decriminalized, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a worse campaign strategy from 2006. Even if you were naturally inclined to be in favor of legalizing marijuana, Tvert talked you out of it.

There are a lot of good arguments for legalizing marijuana, such as taking some of the strain off of the legal system for going after nonviolent possession offenses, but Tvert didn’t rely on any of them. Instead, his `SAFER’ campaign slogan was basically this: “Marijuana should be legal because it isn’t that bad for you.” That’s not a reason to legalize marijuana; it’s an argument you’d make in a seventh-grade debate class.

At one point in a debate aired on CBS4, Tvert tried to insinuate that marijuana was actually safer than drugs like aspirin and Tylenol because these over-the-counter medications kill thousands of people every year. If a marijuana enthusiast is relying on arguments like that, he makes a pretty compelling case for how harmful the drug really is. 

Referendum I
Gay rights groups gave up on Amendment 43 (gay marriage ban) in order to ensure that Ref. I (domestic partnerships) would pass, but they ended up losing on both measures instead. The Ref. I campaign never seemed to generate much enthusiasm, in large part because of a concerted effort to remove the emotional side of the argument from the equation. The most telling part of the demise of Ref. I was the fact that its loss was barely a story on Wednesday; nobody seemed to care whether it had passed or failed…which is exactly why it failed.

Bill Berens
Berens lost his bid for re-election in 2006, and he has only himself to blame for it. Berens took heat for accepting a $20,000 hole-in-one prize at a golf tournament sponsored by the oil and gas industry, but then he inexplicably extended the bad news by two extra weeks because of his inability to keep his mouth shut. Berens threatened to sue The Broomfield Enterprise for publishing a letter to the editor that accused him of being crooked, violating one of the most basic lessons of campaigning: The coverup is always worse than the crime. Berens’ rants turned a small story into a big story, and before he was done, thousands of people were made aware of his poor judgment simply because he kept bringing it up. If Berens had kept quiet and let the story pass, he’d be in the state House again today. Instead, he’ll watch Democrat Dianne Primavera take his seat.

Doug Lamborn and Marilyn Musgrave
Both of these Republicans are winners from 2006 because they managed to stay ahead in their respective campaigns despite strong opposition. But both Republicans are also in the loser category, because their 2006 troubles probably bought them primary challenges in 2008. Lamborn was accused of running a sleazy primary this year, and Republicans like former candidate Jeff Crank will probably be lining up to knock him off in a primary in two years. National Republicans, meanwhile, are upset at having had to spend so much money to defend Musgrave in what should be a relatively safe GOP seat; the demographics and party affiliation of voters in CD-4 mean that a moderate Republican should be able to coast to victory year in and year out. If a credible primary challenger emerges to take on Musgrave, don’t be surprised to see national Republican groups surreptitiously helping out.