Colorado never really was a red state, as I’ve argued here many times before, so it was never really the GOP’s to lose. We’ve always been a purple state. But the last few years Colorado really has looked like a blue state, with the Republicans in disarray (to put it mildly) and the Democrats in Denver doing everything they can to cement themselves in place.
But a rightward breeze may be blowing:
The latest Quinnipiac University Poll finds Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper trailing his opponent, former GOP congressman Bob Beauprez, by 10 points.
“Pundits were predicting that Gov. Hickenlooper faced a close race for re-election,” said Tim Malloy, an assistant poll director. “Instead, he’s got a mad dash to make up a double-digit deficit.” To be fair, other polls have shown the race closer, including an NBC News/Marist poll that found Beauprez with a four-point lead.
Hickenlooper’s troubles include his signing a controversial package of gun-control measures that led to the recall of two Democratic state senators and a general sense that, as a former mayor of Denver, he has ignored or downplayed the concerns of more rural voters.
Worse, Hickenlooper betrayed the suburban voters who are the ones who really put him into power. Denver and Boulder were always his, and the rural areas never would be. But he convinced enough suburban voters that he’d govern the state the way he governed Denver — as a business-friendly, reasonably centrist Democrat in the Bill Clinton mold.
That is not how he’s acted as governor, and I hope my fellow Coloradans kick him out on his lying ass.
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