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November 04, 2015 02:36 PM UTC

Has National Media Misread the 2015 Election?

  • 24 Comments
  • by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Colorado Results Counter Claims of Republican “Coast to Coast” Victories as 2016 Omen of Success

Colorado is a purple, and divided, state. Yet 2015 could show a shift.

This blog will be a bit of a contrarian view regarding the 2015 elections. Much of the media is reporting the national results as a rebuke to Democrats and President Obama.

Of course, there are no national results but many local and state ones. And looking more closely at those might tell a different tale.

Certainly a deeper dive reveals a more muddled story than simply declaring a “Coast to Coast” conservative sweep, as this over-eager headline writer at the Washington Post did.

The Daily 202: From coast to coast, conservatives score huge victories in off-year elections

THE BIG IDEA: Just like the midterms one year ago, it was another awful night for Democrats.

Hyperbolic headlines aside, or articles that inflate not altogether surprising results in conservative states and misread results such as the defeat in Ohio of the Constitutionally mandated marijuana monopoly, by looking more closely at the details, results may not be the favorable Republican omen some hope it is for 2016.

Take my state, for instance, purple Colorado. Generally considered a political bellwether and always a swing state, 2016 will see another sure-to-be hotly contested U.S. Senate race, as well as a certain fight for the Electoral College votes that are up for grabs.

This year usually by strong margins (albeit a low turn out) Colorado voters across the state,  from both red and blue counties, overturned TABOR (Taxpayer “Bill of Rights”) limits and voted for new taxes to fund  transit, schools and infrastructure; defeated or recalled ultra-conservative school-board candidates; and exempted local jurisdiction from the state law prohibiting local broadband development without relying on the telecom companies.

The 2005 law that jurisdictions have exempted themselves from received strong Republican and enough Democratic support to pass in narrowly divided and split chambers.

That telecom friendly law (SB-152) was passed against strong opposition from local governments and most other stakeholders. After this year’s results, that portion of the law –  for all intents and purposes –  is on life-support if not yet completely dead.

Convicted of tax fraud, Douglas Bruce is the author of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

TABOR, passed after several failed attempt by voters in 1992, has long been the poster-boy for the “shrink the government” anti-tax crusaders in the state. It requires that any new tax or change that results in new tax revenue go to the voters to be “De-Bruced.” That term comes from the main proponent of TABOR, Douglas Bruce who is more recently known for his erratic behavior as a legislator and a conviction for tax fraud.Taxpayers have usually voted against tax increases since TABOR passed.

But this year, in both a statewide vote and on numerous local ballots, Colorado voted to get out from TABOR limits and to fund new transit, new schools, and new public infrastructure.

In two closely watched races from opposite sides of the state, conservatives lost hotly contested school-board races. From deep in the red of the Western Slope in Mesa County, where the teacher union backed and progressive candidates defeated the more conservative contenders. To suburban Jefferson County, perhaps among the state’s most fought-over swing districts, where a recall dumped three ultra-conservative members out of office.

Those members came to power as a bloc in the last election, then quickly began to institute what their supporters called reforms – such as threatening to rewrite the AP American History curriculum to be more “patriotic.”

Finally, in a decisive rebuke of the legislature, voters across the state overwhelmingly approved – from blue suburbs to dark red rural counties – over-rides of the state law that blocked localities from developing, or leveraging monies to develop, broadband that left much of the state under-served, if available at all.

The margins were not even close, regarding one set of races, the Grand Junction Sentinel reported:

The closest vote was in Delta, where 71 percent supported the measure versus 29 percent opposing it. Votes in the other cities weren’t that close. Delta County also approved the telecom measure, in addition to the municipalities.

The national pundits, meanwhile, are basing their claims of resounding conservative victory on races like the troubling setback of equality rights in Texas, the election of Republican governors in Kentucky and Mississippi, and the marijuana vote in Ohio.

Yes, the Houston vote is a blow for human and civil rights and for anyone that champions those values including progressives.

And the election of soon-to-be Governor Bevin in Kentucky is especially worrisome given the possibility that many poor Kentuckians are about to lose their health coverage, even as new studies show many of these people are the Americans most at risk from preventable deaths.

But looking forward to a Presidential election in 2016 few expect Kentucky, or Mississippi, or Texas to end up in the “blue column.”

Colorado, on the other hand, is a swing state. While it went decisively for Obama in 2008 and 2012, in non-Presidential elections, with lower turnout, it often returns Republicans to power – as happened in 2010 and again in 2014.

In 2010 Gov. Hickenlooper won – against a very weak Republican and a third party spoiler – but Republicans did well in other statewide, and in Congressional and Legislative races.

In 2014 Sen Cory Gardner defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Udall, while the State Senate changed over to Republican control, once again splitting the chambers of the Legislature.

Does anyone think this would be a Bernie Sanders voter anyways? Or that Kentucky is going to flip the Senate blue?

In 2015, however, that trend may have reversed. Colorado’s more progressive forces seem to have won the day overall, even with low turn out that has traditionally favored conservatives.

Even in reddest parts of the state voters rejected extremist candidates, supported higher taxes, and even approved local marijuana sales where they rejected them just a few years before.

And to Republican prognosticators peering at the TEA leaves, the trends in a state like Colorado should bring more concern looking toward 2016 than any reassurances they may glean from an ugly, bigoted win in Houston, or by keeping the governor’s mansion in Mississippi.

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24 thoughts on “Has National Media Misread the 2015 Election?”

  1. The lesson in Colorado (and Ohio and Maine and Washington State) at least is that voters are paying attention!  Always a bad sign for ideologues on the right.  People are tired of a radical minority tail wagging the dog of legislatures.

    I think Congress will start to feel that impact next year, and even more so in 2020

  2. The national press wants a nice, tidy story – someone won, someone else lost. 

    The reality takes a little more work to report and will bore attention-span challenged readers and their eyeballs. 

    There were plenty of bright spots for progressives/liberals/Dems. 

  3. They should remember how often Colorado has been on the leading edge of shifts. Wasn't it a great Republican year elsewhere when we went against the grain with a strong election for Dems including sending the Salazar brothers to Washington just for starters? 

    Even though the Jeffco school board election got a lot of national attention, all you hear about now is Republican wins in Kentucky and Texas and the defeat of a pot legalization law in Ohio that even many legalization supporters opposed because they objected to the mechanics which they thought would give a few rich people complete power over the industry.

    You don't hear much about the Jeffco parents' (yes parents not union) revolt or the fact that almost all white suburban Douglas, though not going as far as recall, took every regular election opportunity this time to boot rightie extremists from their school board too or about the reign of the anti-taxers showing cracks in Colorado Springs with passage of a new sales tax to fix roads. Or the statewide win for the state keeping, rather than returning, extra (according to TABOR) pot tax revenue. And these weren’t close but decided by large to huge margins.

    We've pointed the way to shifts before and we're a state with a huge block of the growing demo of indie voters, not to mention Hispanic voters and younger voters. We are at the leading edge of what  the country is going to be looking more like very soon. They really should have learned by now to pay attention to what's going on in Colorado.

    1. My only concern is that sometimes we're a bellwether state, and sometimes we're just a small outpost of sanity adrift in a sea of voters voting solely out of fear.

  4. PeteK, you should consider posting diaries on Kos, if you don't already. You can cross-post from here, they let you use graphics from a common user library, and you can reach millions more people.

      1. I love Rachel.  She reports on subjects the rest of them won't report on.  She isn't lazy and doesn't just report on the same the same thing the rest of them do.

        1. And her fact checking is extremely conscientious. On the very rare occasions when she passes along a fact in error the correction is timely, usually her very next show, with no deflecting excuses. Just a my bad mea culpa with the corrected info provided.

           

    1. I'm getting a "gone" message when I click on these but can easily look them up myself. I guess the media narrative is "Rs crush it, Dems crushed" and they aren't interested in anything that interferes with that narrative. Never mind how much less significant or surprising R electoral victories in red states or the defeat of progressive ballot measures in red states may be than the widespread revolts against so recently triumphant extremist conservative"'reformers" on school boards and other very notable triumphs over the wacko right agenda.  

      And not just here in Colorado, a state that the national pundits and political ops still just don't "get" but nationwide. I guess this one sided reporting and commentary is more evidence of all that left wing media bias we hear so much about…… at least in a universe where Fox really is fair and balanced and who knows what color the sky is.

       

  8. In addition to the Ohio win to prevent partisan gerrymandering, big wins for clean elections in Maine, and for public financing in Seattle. And in a school board election that got a lot less attention (and less money), pro-public school candidates beat a "reform" slate in the Colorado Springs Public Schools (Dist. 11).

    1. While I am thrilled with our win in JeffCo and don't downplay the efforts of thousands here, DougCo and the Springs are the school board races that really give me hope.

      As forJeffco, AFP has got to be taking ahard look at their vetting process.   To work that hard and end up with three of the most offensive individuals that set your cause back 10 years.  That has to be frustrating, shame.

      1. Exactly…..if the Crotch Brothers are smart, they'll go out and recruit a bunch of Cory Gardner clones (i.e., rabid extremist on the inside but with a pleasant smile and cheerful demeanor outside) for future races.

  10. Hohmann appears to be a Republican-leaning columnist. He's been on Hugh Hewitt's show, was a writer for Politico (which in my kindest assessment leans toward Third Way false dichotomies…) – I wouldn't take his article to be representative.

    But – Dems kept the MS AG's office, did okay with MS State House, kept KY AG and SoS as well as the State House, and gained in New Jersey legislature against Chris Christie. We swept the PA Supreme Court seats – which means a lot for the state's next state legislative reallocation and eventually Congressional redistricting.

    We won a weak but still better than nothing improvement in Ohio's legislative redistricting law (which we might be able to improve before 2021), clean elections improvements in GOP Gov. LePage's Maine (that he opposed)…

    It's really not that bad for Democrats this year.

    The Ohio MJ defeat wasn't so bad – it gave a 4-year monopoly to big out-of-state interests, which caused a good number of advocacy groups to oppose it. Not picking up the Virginia Senate was a disappointment. Losing the KY governorship could be Really Bad for the people of the state – Bevin is a radical nutcase.

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