April 09, 2009 08:10 PM UTC

Colorado Pols Political Tourney - The Final Four

by: Colorado Pols

We haven’t moved along as fast as we should have with the first annual Colorado Pols Political Tournament, so after presenting the Sweet 16, we decided to skip ahead all the way to The Final Four.

We’ve updated the bracket (CLICK HERE to download the updated PDF) and picked a few upsets, so click below for more commentary and to view how we got from the Sweet 16 to the Final Four.

Note: Here’s how to fill out your bracket: Consider the Political Tournament a race towards a big final political office. But in the meantime, in each matchup, consider the two candidates in a hypothetical statewide political race.

For example, if Mark Udall and Betsy Markey were running against each other for a statewide office in a general election, who would win? You choose the winner of that race and move them on to the next round.

Now, here’s how we came up with The Final Four (keep in mind that, just like the NCAA Tournament, there are always upsets–so we had to pick a few):

The Elite Eight matchup between Gov. Bill Ritter and former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff might be a different story if it were a Democratic primary. But since we plot this out as a hypothetical general election race, Ritter seems more likely to emerge here.

Rep. Betsy Markey and Sen. Mark Udall were easy choices to advance to the Elite Eight, but we like the up-and-comer Markey in a statewide general election. Udall hasn’t been particularly impressive thus far as a Senator, while Markey has been blazing a trail through the freshman ranks. We could have gone either way with this, but we like Markey in an upset.

Rep. John Salazar is just too tough, and has too much name ID, for Marc Holtzman to take out in a statewide election. In fact, we think Salazar could be tough for anyone statewide.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter vs. former Gov. Bill Owens was the toughest choice left. We think Perlmutter would easily dispatch the unknown Bennet, but Owens would just squeak by over Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. In the end, we went with Owens over Perlmutter for The Final Four because of the former’s name ID and the fact that he’s still the only real formidable Republican politician left in Colorado.

So, how did we do? Where did we go wrong? Where did we go right? And who do you think should win it all?

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Colorado Pols Political Tourney - The Final Four

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