President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%↑
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
52%↑
48%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
50%
50%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
March 26, 2007 05:57 PM UTC
25 Comments
But I understand his unwillingness to go through the meat grinder again. “Latte Mark” vs. the up from his bootstraps, homespun, public servant McInnis would have been a good show.
You are going to send that “Dobson” dude into apolexy.
McInnis may have been a stronger general election candidate in some ways, but he was facing the same prospect that Pete Coors ran into. He was moderate enough to alienate his base.
That is the classic trait for a party that is “in power”-they forget why they won elections in the first place. I think that Republicans felt that they were in so firmly in power that anyone with a “R” behind their name should be able to walk to victory. If that is the case, then why did they have to support someone who they didn’t feel was a true Republican? Coors came along as a moderate, and Republicans resented that they were having to support a “moderate”, so they didn’t support him.
Meanwhile the Dems who had lost elections looked to someone who was a moderate because they wanted to win. So Dems swallowed people like Salazar and Ritter and supported them, while Dems were throwing up people like Coors. So Dems started to win, and Republicans watched as the power they thought they had slipped away.
This is a cycle that has played over and over again in battleground states like VA, OH, and in other states where Rep’s had started to make ground but then pissed it away (like WA). Has it come full circle already? Are Dems going to nominate a liberal like Udall expecting him to win because they think CO is a blue state now? Have Republicans learned their lesson and nominate someone percieved as a moderate? Or are they going to nominate an arch conservative and win the moral victory?
Yes, I am a Republican but I think I can put that aside and look at the position of this state from a non-partisan point of view. Colorado is a bellweather state. Colorado is an equally divided state. It has some conservative tendancies, but also some liberal heritage. And I don’t see either side providing the other with a knock out blow-both will have some considerable strength for sometime to come.
As for this race, in a Schaffer/Udall race, Udall has the slight advantage because of money, preperation, and perception. In a Suthers/Udall race, Suthers has the advantage because of experience and preception.
Either way, I think this is going to be a close race-certainly closer than our gubernatorial race (not that that’s say much)
If CO’s Democratic statehouse proves its mettle in the next two years, and the public generally likes what it sees, that will give Udall many points.
While there are millions of steps left and right with thousands of races across America over time, the trend has been liberal/progressive. The last 25 years have been a regression (in my liberal eyes) of good government and government for and by Joe Sixpack instead of Pete Coors.
The middle class and small R republican democracy has been under assault since the loss of Goldwater, but really started cranking up with the Reagan years. Despite many billions of dollars invested in think tanks, propaganda, shills like Rush and his many copiers, despite ruining our public education with great intentionality, the American people still haven’t been bought off!
My general observations seem to be supported by this:
http://www.washingto…
The Dems have consistently fought to make public school teachers the most protected job in America – no matter how bad one might be.
and I would guess only a small percentage are “bad”, you still would have the predominantly Republican attacks by cutting funding and cutting curriculum so that our kids graduate pretty well dumbed down.
I don’t claim to know what the answer is. I think back to my public education days; we had art, music, interest clubs, parents didn’t have to buy equipment or uniforms (I recall very modest fees to rent musical instruments), new buildings, etc. My parent’s generation was quite willing to tax themselves for us kids.
From my limited vantage point, it appears that we do spend more on teacher salaries, which was sorely needed. It took many generations to think of teachers as professionals with commeasurate education rather than a school marm who was single and waiting for the right man. We have a lot more bureacracy, I’m sure. When I was a kid we didn’t have social workers, “school resource officers”, dieticians, and Lord only knows what other positions that have been added to the typical school and downtown at the district offices.
Even way back then we had our “bad” teachers. Yet, we mostly got an education that was as good as we were willing to take.
But they also get a lot more money than before too. I think you face a number of big changes:
1) Women who were smart and wanted a career had 2 choices – nursing and teaching. So we got very talented teachers and at a low cost. Now we pay more and most very talented women now go in to business, law, medicine (as a Dr.), etc.
2) Schools now have to address more from teen pregnancy to gangs to everything. So more to cover. And parents now expect the schools to handle all of that.
3) Schools do fine for the children of Yuppies. Fairview has the second highest averave SAT scores in the state – beat only by 1 private school. It’s the kids not as well off, who used to be sent on the factory jobs, who we are failing.
– dave
I’d never thought of #1, but it makes perfect sense. An ex-girlfriend raised in Nebraska in the sixties had those exact options, nursing or education. She chose nursing, but I can tell you – and I’ve told her – she really lacked that empathy so necessary to be a good nurse. Still an RN, but she’s been a counselor and trainer at Kaiser now for 20 years.
“public school teachers, the most protected job in America.”
You really want to eliminate “public” schools and tax the public to support church run schools — as they do in Old Europe — when you adhere to that old saw.
You mistake a record, spotty as it may be, of support of the right of all workers to join together to try to improve their status, no matter their occupation.
How do >you< recognize a 'bad' teacher? Do you feel the bumps on their skull or can you just look at them and tell?
Pshaw!
I would do the same as any other business does – measure their results, put in place improvement plans for those not doing a good enough job, and then fire the ones that don’t improve.
In the last 15+ years not a single tenured teacher in Boulder Valley has been fired. Are you claiming that every single one of them is doing a competent job?
I have 3 daughters who have gone through/are going through and I’ve found about 1/20 (ie 5%) are terrible. Not just poor but terrible. And almost all parents at the schools agree on who those terrible ones are.
The number one influence on how a child does in school is their parents. Number 2 is the teacher. If the 6th grade math teacher does not know that the Pythagorean theorum is only for right triangles (true story) – how do they teach math?
– dave
but was that individual teaching math exclusively? Is 6th grade elementary or middle school in Boulder?
And the tooth fairy lives under the bridge with the Troll.
All the folks running the Boulder Valley schools have advanced degrees from Education Colleges. If the teacher’s union can outsmart them to protect the 5% in the classrooms you call “terrible,” then it sounds like the weeding out should start with the administration.
Perhaps you were around in the days when teachers did not have tenure and the school board could, and did, fire a teacher for buying a car from the wrong dealership (as an example)?
Anecdotes about teachers with incorrect ideas are not nearly as bad as the stuff you can find in the text books. Have you read all your kids textbooks?
For that matter, can you certify everything you have taught your kids? After I got out on my own, I discovered that my folks missed the mark at least 5% of the time – of course it took me 50 years to discover some of it.
I don’t understand the uproar about less than sterling teachers when the business world has at least the same amount of dead weight. Granted, our public ed system is paid with our taxes, but those private industry failures cost us more as consumers.
“the American people still haven’t been bought off!”
Of course, there is the discussion regarding them being ripped off…while distracted…
A lot or Rip VanWinklers in the electorate. But they are waking up.
I think he showed that he was a very poor campaigner in the last election. And I think Udall will be able to sell himself as a moderate – look at his votes on Iraq.
– dave
What state would the republican party be in nationally if it weren’t for Iraq? Would Reps have lost the house and senate?
Suthers has the benefit of never having had cast a vote for the Iraq war. He doesn’t have to worry about “if I knew then what I knew now….” sort of thing. He may have said he supports the war, but so has Guiliani and it doesn’t seem to have hurt him.
Since Suthers can’t be tied into the Iraq war like other memebers of congress can, and his perception as a main stream Rep. (which to me means “more conservative than Chaffee, less conservative than Pat Buchanan”), he has the edge over a Dem as percieved as liberal. Salazar and Ritter have their liberal points too, but Salazar could say “I support the death penalty”, and Ritter could say “I’m pro-choice”. What sort of monkier can Udall say?
As you said, being a moderate and no votes on Iraq is very good for him. But I don’t think he is personally compelling as a candidate. You need that too.
– dave
by himself Suthers isn’t all the exciting, but in a campaign against a DC liberal with a long voting record, then Suther’s vanilla becomes an asset. I’m willing to bet there will be lots of pics of Boulder Mark Rocking climbing while slamming a low fat latte and easting sushi.
He could say, “I support double espressos for everyone.”
Suthers almost lost to a woman who had no known name recognition with a minimal campaign.
Maybe the state R’s (Wad Dickems) would take the Senatorial race more seriously; money, coaching, whatever. But even then he would easily lose to Udall, I think.
Maybe we’re only haggling over phrasing, but 10% isn’t “almost loosing”, though it is very “under-whelming”. Almost loosing in my book is where someone is within a percent or two of winning or loosing…..
“Yes, I am a Republican but I think I can put that aside and look at the position of this state from a non-partisan point of view.”
Then you should be in an excellent position to tell all about what the ‘unaffiliated’ voters are thinking.
“Colorado is an equally divided state.”
Take the number of ‘unaffiliated’ voters and divide by two.
I don’t think so. I think you have to start to poll frequently and throughly. The ‘unaffiliated’ can smack either party flat to the ground. It’s true enough that most of them have strong individual tendencies toward one party or the other, but they – for the most part – reject participation in the dirty, grubby nomination process.
There is where the parties go flying off into a fantasy. All the parties, major and minor, have an activist group which stalled out in Civics 101 and never advanced to Civics 401 where they tell you that controling the people who come to meetings doesn’t control the people who go to the polls. That’s “machine” politics and it doesn’t work in Colorado – well excepting El Paso county, the home of Focus on [?].
So, what do you think about the ‘unaffiliated’ in terms of the major party nominating process?
Will they have the same comfort level with Udall as his party has? Will they continue to find the Republican party apparatus disconnected from their main interests? Will the Republicans nominate an apologist for the Bush Administration who is focused on ‘Christian’ issues?
Throw in a heaping helping of Rove/Wadhams dirty tricks, and it’s going to be an interesting election.
“Take the number of ‘unaffiliated’ voters and divide by two.
I don’t think so. I think you have to start to poll frequently and throughly. The ‘unaffiliated’ can smack either party flat to the ground”
That’s exactly why Colorado is an evenly divided state, the unaffliated voters are the ones that make the difference. The go and have gone either way. But those tendancies that you talked about are slightly more conservative, which is why Dems will never turn CO into a Mass, and R’s will never turn CO into a Utah or Idaho.
The issue is that people are making assumptions as to how a particular party performed which ever cycle. Some will say that Colorado is Rep. because of Bush’s performance in 04 and Ownes in 02. Dems say that Colorado is blue because Dems got the house and sen here in 04 and Ritter won in 06. Neither side is looking at long term trends. You can’t make those assumptions based on short term trends, they could be blips.
The long term trends point to Colorado being winnable by either party and evenly divided.
Again, the variable in all this is the Iraq war. How would Reps have done in 06 if we hadn’t invaded Iraq? How much of an issue will Iraq be in 08? Probably a big one, but in what way? We’ll have to wait and see.