1972 Marked a New Era in Colorado Politics

The death of political activist and campaign consultant Jim Monaghan provides a moment to remember the tumult of the early 1970s when he and a cohort of Baby Boomers, angry about the war (Vietnam), idealistic about civil rights and advocates for the nascent environmental and feminist movements, burst into the national and Colorado political scenes.

As the national Democratic Party establishment collapsed after the 1968 Chicago Convention, new Democrats took over, changed the rules and nominated George McGovern for his ill-fated run against President Nixon.

In Colorado, 1972 was the turning point year with a host of new politicians and activists entering the process and changing the Democratic Party. Environmentalism was the main theme, and the 1972 referendum to stop a bipartisan establishment proposal to host the Winter Olympics was the vehicle. When it passed by a resounding 61 percent, it marked the state’s change in direction and became the platform that allowed legislative backbencher Dick Lamm to emerge as a serious candidate for governor and push aside longtime Democrats, Mark Hogan and Tom Farley.

It was Monaghan who committed the coup de gras on the party establishment by managing the defeat in a party primary of Democratic Congressman Wayne Aspinall, the long-time chair of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, and the bête noir of the environmental community. Monaghan was 25 years old at the time; Aspinall had been in Congress 24 years.

Nationally, it was Watergate and the Nixon resignation in 1974 that brought Democrats everywhere to power. The new team was ready in Colorado: Dick Lamm became governor; Gary Hart, George McGovern’s campaign manager, became U.S. Senator; Tim Wirth, environmental advocate, won a U.S. congressional seat; and Sam Brown, organizer of the 1969 Moratorium against the war, was elected State Treasurer.

Although this group’s control over the state’s politics during the next forty years waxed and waned, they were the new Democratic Party.

In Six Years, Coloradans Go From No to Yes on Civil Unions and Marijuana Use

In 2006, Colorado voters rejected civil unions and approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage. They also defeated a recreational marijuana initiative by 59 percent.

Today, Colorado is one of the first states where voters legalized recreational marijuana and a newly installed Democratic legislature approved civil unions. Polls show a majority of Coloradans approve both. What happened in a decade?

Colorado voters and opinion in the country shifted during the decade on legalizing gay relationships and the use of marijuana and, most importantly, new faces came into the electorate.

Volumes are being written concerning the extraordinary shift in opinion on gay rights, including the effectiveness of repositioning what was considered a mental or moral defect or, at best, a bizarre lifestyle choice into a civil right. Keep in mind, Colorado’s ban on gay marriage and defeat of civil unions in 2006 wasn’t unique. In 2004, banning gay marriage was a national movement and, by most accounts, contributed to the re-election of President Bush. 

But even at that point, a powerful countermovement was taking hold, led by advocates, like Tom Gill and his gay rights foundation, and political contributions here and around the country, powered by frequent and sympathetic treatments in film, television and books, and advanced by gays’ personal affirmations; i.e., coming out.

Peoples’ opinions shift due to personal experiences and relationships. Today, almost everyone knows someone who is gay – a friend, relative or coworker – or sees them perform often at the top of their art, profession and increasingly their sport. National polls show gay marriage now has majority support.

Marijuana legalization has not had the same level of attention from activists or media, but it has effectively used medical marijuana as a platform to argue the drug is not dangerous and it’s no worse than alcohol and should be treated the same.

The other significant factor creating political change in Colorado since the early 2000s has been the surge of new voters in the electorate, which has moved the state to the left. More than 422,000 voters have joined the roles since President Bush won re-election with 100,000 votes in 2004 and President Obama did so with 138,000 votes in 2012 – many of those new voters helped gay rights and marijuana use reach majority acceptance.

Colorado Politics Leads the Nation in Change

At the recent national conference of polling professionals, Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic and National Journal political guru, said the 2012 election was a turning point event for how the two parties conducted national campaigns, how the media reports and tracks them (polling), and the strategies of the two parties in assembling their respective coalitions.

He called it a “brick through the window.”

Colorado has also witnessed an extraordinary change since the last Republican president victory in 2004 and Barack Obama’s and the local Democratic power sweep in 2012. And to a large extent, many factors that put Colorado Democrats in power presaged what would change in the country. It may also be true that 2012 will mark a turning point in Colorado’s politics and campaigns.

It was only eight years ago that Republicans went into the 2004 presidential election holding the Colorado governorship, both senate seats, five of the seven congressional seats and both houses of the state legislature.  But, on Election Day in November, the first signs of the shift were apparent. Although President Bush carried the state, Democrats won a senate and a congressional seat with the Salazar brothers and both houses of the legislature by narrow margins.

By the 2012 election, the Colorado Republican Party was devastated. It had already lost both senate seats and the governorship. It did control four of the seven congressional districts after being down to just three seats, with a slight recovery in 2010. However, President Obama won re-election by a convincing margin and Democrats’ control of the legislature was by large margins in each House, leading to the most liberal legislature in Colorado memory.

What caused the Colorado shift in tandem with, and somewhat ahead of, the national Democratic recovery from its low points in the early 2000s will be the subject of a series of blog posts.

Tancredo’s Message is Ten Years Out-of-Date

Tom Tancredo will be lucky to get the 35 percent of the Colorado electorate he won last time out.  His message and approach had some resonance in the early 2000s, but is now a mostly secondary issue, and for Republicans, counter-productive.

“A Tancredo run for governor would put him at odds with a national Republican strategy of courting more Latino voters.  With comprehensive immigration reform being seriously discussed in Washington, Republicans are making a concerted effort to appeal to more Latino voters – a critical and growing demographic in the electorate.” (Denver Post, Kurtis Lee, 5-16-13)

Tancredo is only able to promote himself because the party has no significant figure able to either run against Governor Hickenlooper or Senator Udall or lacks a leadership group able or willing to recruit a candidate. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Tancredo love to fill them.

Hickenlooper, at one time, might have been competitive in a Republican primary.  But after the recent legislative session, he has managed to convince most Republicans that he’s a poor substitute for a veto-wielding governor or at least one house of legislature under Republican control.

The Republican Party is still struggling to start a process to get back into Colorado’s normally competitive elections.

Colorado Joins the Lean Democratic Era

Rhodes Cook in his latest analysis describes the current era of presidential politics as “lean Democratic” after 20 years of a Republican “lock” on the Electoral College. From Richard Nixon in 1968 to George H. W. Bush in 1988, Republicans dominated presidential politics.

The current 16-year era (assuming it continues to 2016) began with Bill Clinton’s 1992 election and is described as lean Democratic because, as the table below shows, the victories in popular and electoral votes have been more narrow than the previous Republican era.

Colorado started the lean Democratic era giving Clinton a win in 1992 due to the Ross Perot reform movement vote. But, the state then returned to its Republican presidential history. Bob Dole carried Colorado in Clinton’s 1996 re-election and the state stayed with G. W. Bush in his two elections.

Finally, Colorado joined the trend and Democrats took command of the state’s presidential politics with Obama’s win in 2008 and re-election 2012, both with vote margins greater than his impressive national wins.

The state, which came into the union with Lincoln and the Republicans, has been dependably Republican at the presidential level since the Second World War. Until Bill Clinton’s serendipitous win in 1992, only Lyndon Johnson managed to carry the state for Democrats since 1948. Colorado went for Truman. Colorado even voted Republican in Roosevelt’s last two elections. 

Will the Democrats maintain control of Colorado’s politics? It appears red states are getting redder and blue bluer. But, the Colorado popular vote totals are closely balanced over the last 16 years, with Democrats surging toward end. And, Colorado has a history of fierce competition between the two parties and for independent voters.

Two Western Senate Seats in 2014 Fight

In the thirteen western states, only a handful have competitive appearing races in the 2014 midterm. Already attracting national attention are the senate seats in Alaska, where Democrats will be defending an incumbent (Mark Begich) and in a newly open seat (Max Baucus) in Montana, both states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

There are several Republican governors and senators defending seats in western states that gave Barack Obama their electoral votes. Governors Brian Sandoval in Nevada and Susana Martinez in New Mexico must defend their first terms in states Obama won (7 points Nevada and 10 points New Mexico).

Also interesting races to watch, even though they may not appear competitive, will be the replacement for Jan Brewer in Arizona, which is open due to term limits. The senate race, which Jeff Flake finally won after a tough race, indicates the state is competitive if the Democrats can find a good candidate.

Although Governor John Hickenlooper and Senator Mark Udall do not appear threatened today, Colorado’s transition to a left-leaning state is so new that if the Republicans could figure out how to deal with independent voters while holding their base, they could be competitive.

Finally, Jerry Brown will slide into the second term of his second career as governor without working up a sweat. If he combines his political prowess with righting the ship of state, Democrats would be so thankful that Brown would once again be a national player.

Breaking the Seam – Obama Woos Texas

Texas is the only large state not in the Democrats’ lock on recent presidential elections. The state is the anchor of a six-state seam of Republican states that divide the country down the middle, starting with North Dakota on the Canadian border and touching the gulf in Texas.

With 38 electoral votes, Texas is the biggest haul that has eluded the Democrats in their building national electoral coalition that equals 242 electoral votes that have voted Democrat since 1992 and Clinton’s first election. Dependable Democratic states are: California (55), Illinois (20), Michigan (16), New Jersey (14), New York (29) and Pennsylvania (20). The remaining big states are battlegrounds: Florida (29 electoral votes), Georgia (16), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13). Democrats and especially Obama have been more competitive in these battleground states than Republicans.

Texas is a key state that Obama is targeting.  His latest trip was to Austin (Travis Co.), which he won by 92,000 votes in 2012, while losing Texas 57 percent to Romney. Democrats tend to carry population centers. Obama carried Houston (Harris Co.) by less than 1,000 votes, Dallas by 109,000 votes and San Antonio by 23,000. The only big Texas city he lost was Fort Worth (Tarrant Co.) (95,000).

Texas can expect to see a lot of Obama and Democratic attention from now to 2016.