December 31, 2008 10:21 PM UTC

2008 Top Ten #2 (Tie): "The Pink Lady Sings"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Image courtesy Progress Now

Ousted Rep. Marilyn Musgrave had a target on her back in 2008, but it was nothing she wasn’t used to.

Having built her base of support around a focus on conservative social wedge issues, once even declaring “the marriage issue” the most important facing America, Musgrave provoked the wrath of liberal funders like Tim Gill and Fort Collins philanthropist Pat Stryker in a very personal way. Musgrave faced a hard challenge in 2006, barely staying ahead of challenger Angie Paccione by a combination of shrilly negative ads and a third-party candidate who drained away what may well have otherwise been Paccione’s victory.

Perhaps seeing a lesson in her narrow 2006 escape, Musgrave embarked on an ambitious–and for awhile, seemingly successful–image rehabilitation program, morphing from the nutty bedroom-fixated “Pink Lady” into the pragmatic “New Musgrave,” who suddenly discovered issues like the Pinon Canyon Army base expansion and even headlined an event hosted by the Progressive Democrats of Colorado at 777 Santa Fe.

But it didn’t work–Musgrave couldn’t, and had no real desire to take back any of her previous moral grandstanding. As time went on she ultimately backslid on her newfound pragmatic image. And when threatened as opponent Betsy Markey emerged as a credible threat, her most over-the-top negative ads yet saturated the airwaves. The result? An electorate that might have honestly given her a pass if she had kept to what she was doing in ’07 tossed her unceremoniously, as the Fort Collins Coloradoan recounted a few days ago:

Musgrave’s own campaign focused almost exclusively on allegations that Markey violated federal ethics laws while working as an aide to Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. Musgrave alleged that Markey’s family business, Syscom Services, improperly won government contracts while she was on Salazar’s staff…

The General Services Administration, the government’s purchasing arm, reviewed contract awards to Syscom and said there was no evidence of improper contracts by Markey or anyone else on Salazar’s staff.

Musgrave continued to push the issue and aired commercials that suggested Markey could face prison time. The incumbent’s final campaign ad had an actress portraying Markey hooked up to a polygraph and answering questions about Syscom’s dealings.

Those ads were a bit much for voters and wound up backfiring on Musgrave, said Bob Duffy, chairman of Colorado State University’s political science department.

“Her TV ads were relentlessly on the attack, and many people thought the last two ads were simply over the top,” Duffy said. “She never offered a positive agenda for what she would do if re-elected. Those campaigns worked in the past – but not this time. I think the negativity was out of sync with the electorate’s mood this year.”

There are those who argue credibly that if President George W. Bush had not been such a horrible president, possibly the worst in all of American history, that the voters of America could not have elected Barack Obama to replace him. A similar trepidation haunts Democrats looking at Markey as she takes office next month, hoping she can garner the credibility in the next two years to hold her seat in a district where Republicans still outnumber Democrats by some 40,000 registered voters. But there’s no question that as much as Marilyn Musgrave’s tactics were “out of sync” with the electorate this year, the same can be said of Musgrave personally and a big chunk of what she stands for.

Between the decisive ouster of Marilyn Musgrave and the death of Jesse Helms earlier this year, it’s possible the era of manipulating voters into voting against their interests through wedge-morality exploitation really is ending.