The Colorado Model
BARNES, FRED
The Colorado Model The Democrats’ plan for turning red states blue BY FRED BARNES Last January, a “confidential” memo from a Democratic political consultant outlined an ambitious scheme for...
...We didn’t seize the center, and we didn’t seize the imagination of Colorado voters...
...He ordered a frontpage editorial that criticized Ritter harshly...
...In 2004, in their fi rst offensive against Republicans, the rich liberals worked surreptitiously...
...Then, late on a Friday afternoon last November, Ritter issued an executive order permitting state workers to join a union...
...On many levels, 2004 was a disastrous year for Republicans in Colorado...
...It works quite simply...
...The fourth, Pat Stryker, is heir to a medical products fortune and runs her family’s foundation...
...If he does and also wins New Mexico, Democratic consultant Mike Stratton points out, “Obama doesn’t need to win Ohio...
...Conservatives fervently opposed suspending TABOR...
...And there’s a school to train new liberal leaders, the Center for Progressive Leadership Colorado, as well as new media outlets with bloggers and online news and gossip, including ColoradoPols.com and SquareState.net...
...It probably is...
...And Republicans made critical mistakes and squabbled among themselves just as Democrats were uniting...
...Republican hopes of a renaissance rest largely on winning the governor’s race in 2010...
...Feminists tried to fi nd a pro-choice Democrat to oppose him but failed...
...One bit of progress: Schaffer faces no serious opposition for the Republican nomination to hold the Senate seat of Allard, who kept his promise to retire after two terms...
...The act makes it diffi cult for unions to organize new workers...
...org, founded in 2005...
...Owens, whose backing was critical, initially endorsed conservative congressman Bob Schaffer for the Senate seat being vacated by Campbell...
...There’s something unique going on in Colorado that, if copied in other states, has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide...
...That was only the beginning of the buildup...
...Like Salazar, Ritter had gotten the Democratic nomination without a struggle...
...They quietly targeted a handful of Republican state legislators (particularly social conservatives opposed to gay rights), polled to fi nd out what issues might work against them, and promoted their Democratic opponents...
...Democrats, for now anyway, seem wary of touting it...
...The fi refi ghter had obviously not paid for the expensive piece of campaign literature...
...That won’t be easy...
...One reason for their reticence is that it depends partly on wealthy liberals’ spending tons of money not only on “independent expenditures” to attack Republican offi ce-seekers but also to create a vast infrastructure of liberal organizations that produces an anti-Republican, anti-conservative echo chamber in politics and the media...
...The state was strongly affected by waves of newcomers...
...They were more conservative...
...House seat...
...Another clone, this one a local version of Media Matters known as Colorado Media Matters, was created two years ago to harass journalists and editorial writers who don’t push the liberal line...
...Democrats not only took over the legislature, but a gregarious rancher named John Salazar, a Democrat, won the U.S...
...And the bitterness of Marc Holtzman versus Bob Beauprez in 2006 persists...
...Udall, by the way, lists his residence as Eldorado Springs, not Boulder...
...Eric O’Keefe, chairman of the conservative Sam Adams Alliance in Chicago, says there are seven “capacities” that are required to drive a successful political strategy and keep it on offense: the capacity to generate intellectual ammunition, to pursue investigations, to mobilize for elections, to fi ght media bias, to pursue strategic litigation, to train new leaders, and to sustain a presence in the new media...
...For the fi rst time in 44 years, Democrats gained control of both the state senate and house...
...In recent years, Republican female voters have tended to stray...
...He’s still on the air...
...The Colorado Model The Democrats’ plan for turning red states blue BY FRED BARNES Last January, a “confidential” memo from a Democratic political consultant outlined an ambitious scheme for spending $11.7 million in Colorado this year to crush Republicans...
...That’s a remarkable indictment of Republicans by a leading Republican...
...The chamber refused...
...So had Rutt Bridges...
...But his prospects could be further hampered by an antiabortion referendum on the ballot this November declaring that life begins at conception...
...Bush’s margin of victory was cut in half from 2000...
...And that’s part of the problem for conservatives and Republicans...
...Armstrong is president of Colorado Christian University...
...Armstrong doesn’t recall the incident...
...Colorado Media Matters complained, and Caldara says ProgressNowAction.org sought to get advertisers to drop his show...
...The money would come from rich liberal donors in the state and would be spent primarily on defeating Senate candidate Bob Schaffer ($5.1 million) and Representative Marilyn Musgrave ($2.6 million), who are loathed by liberals for sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage...
...Again, unity behind one candidate prevailed...
...Championed by National Review as America’s best governor, Owens was viewed as a logical Republican presidential nominee in 2008...
...Udall doesn’t have that advantage,” Schaffer says...
...Republicans were fl ummoxed, having been caught totally by surprise...
...Explains Caldara, “Build an echo chamber and the media laps it up...
...For Republicans, it offers an excuse for their tailspin...
...Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a conservative think tank based in Denver, says Republicans around the country should be alarmed by the success of the Colorado Model...
...They downplayed its signifi cance, though it memorably declared the plan would “defi ne Schaffer/foot on throat...
...But the band of rich liberals are assumed to be the biggest contributors...
...Term limits, enacted in 1990, forced experienced Republicans out of state offi ce, leaving open seats easier for Democrats to win...
...For one thing, they lack a candidate...
...The mainstream media eventually picked up the story, and Colorado Ethics Watch fi led a formal complaint...
...We don’t need this,” Wadhams says...
...If abortion becomes a major issue, Schaffer, who is prolife, might lose the votes of suburban Republican women...
...It’s unclear exactly who is funding these outfi ts, since they don’t have to disclose their donors...
...Starting in the 1970s, Colorado elected Democrats Gary Hart, Tim Wirth, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell to the Senate, Pat Schroeder to the House, and Democrats to the governor’s offi ce for 24 consecutive years...
...Count them...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Another bitter primary, this one for governor, pitted congressman Bob Beauprez against Marc Holtzman, the ex-president of the University of Denver...
...The leaked memo said a budget of $11.7 million was “little more than our own thinking about what a successful [independent] operation for the presidential, U.S...
...For the fall ballot, Ritter is pushing a referendum to impose a $300 million increase in the severance tax on the mining industry, further alienating the business community...
...In Colorado, Democrats are third in registered voters (31.2 percent), behind both Independents (34.19 percent) and Republicans (34.14 percent...
...Things got worse for Republicans in 2006 as the Colorado Model began to take hold...
...But by 2004, the Republican heyday had begun to unravel...
...Caldara, too, has been targeted by the liberal groups...
...To their distress, Republicans have discovered how skillful the liberal collective is at bedeviling them...
...Watch out,” he says, “it’s coming to a state near you...
...And it should continue to be a powerful political force in Colorado (and other states) for many years—that is, until conservatives and Republicans come up with a way to counteract it...
...Democrats are wisely running candidates, statewide and locally, who campaign as centrists, not as liberals...
...That covers all seven capacities...
...Neither of them had a voting record...
...The Colorado Model, by nearly all accounts, is working in 2008...
...He personally called leaders of the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce in the faint hope he could persuade them to back the referendum...
...Beauprez won the nomination, but the “Both Ways Bob” label slapped on him by Holtzman stuck, and Democrat Bill Ritter won the governorship in a landslide...
...That something is the “Colorado Model,” and it’s certain to be a major topic of discussion when Democrats convene in Denver in the last week of August for their national convention...
...The episode didn’t help his current campaign for a U.S...
...Highlands Ranch, a town south of Denver, was nicknamed Orange County East because thousands of newcomers from conservative Orange County, California, settled there...
...They’d been brought together by Al Yates, the former president of Colorado State University, and later were dubbed the “Gang of Four” by the press—or, sarcastically, by Republicans, the “Fab Four...
...To propose drilling, Udall might have to defy his wife, Maggie Fox, the state director of the Sierra Club, the ardent environmental group...
...Republicans and conservatives missed our moment to be the next wave of the Reagan revolution at the state level...
...At the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington a few weeks later, Ritter was confronted aggressively by Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr., who told him “all of labor is upset...
...This was all the more amazing because he ran as a pro-life, probusiness Democrat...
...For all his problems, Ritter will have what Republicans do not have, if he seeks reelection: the full force of the Colorado Model engaged on his behalf...
...According to a former aide of Bill Armstrong, she has the distinction of being the only person Armstrong ever ordered to leave his Senate offi ce...
...Organized labor was pleased, but Denver Post publisher William Dean Singleton wasn’t...
...Republicans are demoralized, disorganized, and more focused on averting further losses in 2008 than on staging a comeback...
...The question is whether he can effectively respond to Schaffer’s call for exploiting Colorado’s vast oil shale reserves...
...First, there are the think tanks such as Bighorn and Bell and supposedly nonpartisan political advocacy groups like the Colorado clone of MoveOn.org called ProgressNowAction...
...After Campbell switched parties in 1995, Republican Wayne Allard won the other Senate seat in 1996, and Republican Bill Owens was elected governor in 1998, giving the GOP all the top statewide offi ces, four of the six House seats, and the state house and senate...
...An even bigger blow to Republicans was the U.S...
...Schaffer’s position is increasingly popular, and he intends to dwell on it relentlessly...
...With enough money, its main elements can no doubt be replicated in other states...
...Bill Clinton won the state in the 1992 presidential race...
...Republicans rallied in the 1990s when a fresh infl ux of immigrants from western states arrived...
...Moreover, Andrews says, “I’m not sure our party has learned the lessons it needed to learn...
...Colorado voters tend to view Boulder as a haven for hippies and out of the Colorado mainstream...
...This is synergy at work...
...The initial results of that test are favorable...
...But Owens and a handful of Republican leaders joined with Democrats to pass the referendum in order to fund education and transportation initiatives...
...The Gang of Four had spent an estimated $2 million...
...Democrats gained legislative seats as well...
...The bitterness of Coors-Schaffer in ’04 still exists,” says John Andrews...
...George W. Bush won Colorado by 9 percentage points in 2000, and Republican control appeared to be fi rmly entrenched two years later when Owens was reelected over a hapless Democrat opponent, 63 to 34 percent...
...How much they’re actually willing to spend against Musgrave and Schaffer is unclear...
...Senate and [Musgrave] elections might look like...
...Gill, who is gay, is also active in opposing foes of gay rights in other states...
...There’s nobody on the Republican side putting in that kind of money,” says Republican consultant Walt Klein...
...They tried to fi nd a way to Imus me,” Caldara says...
...We’re not a very ideological state or a very partisan state,” former Republican senator Bill Armstrong says...
...Owens and his wife had a highly public separation and later divorced...
...House seat west of the Rockies, where Republicans have an overwhelming edge in voter registration...
...Colorado voters tilt slightly to the right, though you’d never know it from recent elections...
...The fi refi ghter lost, but other Democratic challengers won...
...Later, an offi cial audit found no wrongdoing, but only after Coffman had been publicly pilloried...
...Finally, the mainstream media are forced to report on it...
...Schaffer worked for an energy company after he left Congress...
...Schaffer is already being trashed in TV ads by an environmental group, the League of Conservation Voters, as “Big Oil Bob...
...Udall will get to where he needs to be,” says Eric Sonderman, a public relations executive in Denver...
...It certainly was the end of Ritter’s warm relationship with the newspaper...
...But a day later, after a tumultuous 24 hours of negotiations, Udall and Bridges appeared at a press conference to endorse Salazar, who ran as a moderate and an “independent voice” for Colorado...
...So the notion the current rise of Democrats is a historic, unprecedented breakthrough—that’s pure myth...
...The most prominent ones—Armstrong, Owens, former senator Hank Brown—have retired...
...And that effort draws powerful support from a liberal infrastructure that conservatives aren’t close to matching...
...Two of the four, Tim Gill and Rutt Bridges, made millions in computer software...
...The Republican bench of attractive candidates with statewide recognition is bare...
...In 2005, Republicans split over Referendum C, designed to waive the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (known as TABOR) for fi ve years...
...Republicans often trail during the summer before the election, and Schaffer is no exception, running behind Mark Udall in public polls...
...This may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor,” the editorial said...
...Hannah Sternberg provided research assistance for this article...
...And a new campaign fi nance law limited individual contributions to $400...
...Senate victory by Salazar’s younger brother, Ken...
...As for the 2008 race, that confi dential memo, dated January 23, fell into the hands of a Republican activist and was fi rst reported on January 29 by Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News...
...Undeterred, Udall is running to the center, saying he plays a bipartisan role in the House...
...The wind’s at our back here,” says Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic House speaker...
...For years, the Independence Institute, founded in 1985 by John Andrews and headed by Tom Tancredo before he was elected to the U.S...
...At the very least the memo showed the magnitude of the effort to drive Republicans deeper into the minority in Colorado...
...The bitterness of Referendum C persists...
...Jared Polis, along with his parents, grew rich from building and selling Internet companies...
...Aides of Allard have hinted he could be talked into running, but that’s a long shot...
...Colorado, for the past half-century anyway, has not been a solidly Republican state...
...Barack Obama is a slight favorite to win Colorado in the presidential election...
...Among Democrats, unity prevailed, and Ken Salazar won...
...At the same time, his Republican rival is bound to be tormented by the phalanx of liberal groups and targeted by the rich liberals, who are free to spend an unlimited amount of money...
...There’s a “public interest” law fi rm, Colorado Ethics Watch, established in 2006, plus an online newspaper, the Colorado Independent, with a team of reporters to ferret out wrongdoing by Republicans, also begun in 2006...
...In 1999, Rutt Bridges started the Bighorn Center for Public Policy, and a year later the Bell Policy Center was created specifi cally to counter the Independence Institute—prompting the institute’s Caldara to quip, the Bell center should be called the Dependence Institute...
...Dan Haley, the editorial page editor of the Denver Post, told me he realized a clever, new tactic was being pursued when he received a glossy mailer late in the campaign backing a fi refi ghter who was the little-known Democratic challenger of a Republican incumbent...
...But in the last two election cycles—2004 and 2006—they’ve routed Republicans, capturing the governorship, both houses of the state legislature, a U.S...
...Hoffa warned the Democratic convention might “blow up” if other issues were not resolved in a way favorable to labor...
...Republicans desperately need Schaffer to hold Allard’s seat to avert a fi libuster-proof Senate in Washington, a Senate in which Republicans can’t block or even modify liberal legislation...
...While the Colorado Model isn’t a secret, it hasn’t drawn much national attention either...
...The Democratic surge in Colorado refl ects the national trend, but it involves a great deal more...
...Then Owens changed his mind and supported beer company chairman Pete Coors, insisting he was the only Republican who could beat Ken Salazar, then state attorney general...
...By working together, they generate political noise and attract press coverage...
...Two policies helped set the stage for the emergence of the Colorado Model...
...That will be news to House Republicans...
...After promising labor leaders he would sign legislation gutting the Labor Peace Act, he bowed to business pressure and vetoed it...
...Leaked memos have a way of revealing who’s on top and who’s not in politics and which party has energy and momentum...
...Passed in 1992, TABOR limited spending hikes to infl ation and population growth, required any surplus to be refunded to taxpayers, and mandated a referendum to raise taxes...
...In 18 months as governor, Ritter has managed to anger business, labor, and the Denver Post, which had promoted him as a candidate...
...It had been drafted by Democratic strategist Dominic DelPapa and sent to Al Yates, the guru of the rich liberals...
...Gill and Stryker, the wealthier half of the Gang of Four, remain determined to drive Marilyn Musgrave out of offi ce after she narrowly won reelection in 2006...
...The bitterness of the Coors-Schaffer race was in contrast with Salazar’s undisputed claim on the Democratic nomination...
...But it strikes me as a fair assessment...
...House, stood alone as an infl uential intellectual and political force in Colorado...
...Democratic congressman Mark Udall had announced for the seat the moment Campbell said he would retire...
...And Republicans, even more than Democrats, say that it’s working impressively...
...Then Ethics Watch steps in and demands an offi cial investigation, and ProgressNowAction.org jumps on the story...
...Colorado is being used as a test bed for a swarm offense by Democrats and liberals to put conservatives and Republicans on defense as much as possible,” says Andrews...
...Schaffer and his campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, insist Udall is vulnerable as a “Boulder liberal” who can’t credibly pose as a moderate as Salazar and Ritter did...
...He used the phrase “bitch slapped” on his late-night talk radio show...
...In 2008, Republicans are still reeling from the string of setbacks and show few signs of recovery...
...This allowed independent TV and radio ads and direct mail fi nanced by the Gang of Four to have a disproportionate impact on elections...
...Later Andrews was Republican leader of the Colorado senate...
...Coors defeated Schaffer in the Republican primary, only to run a poor campaign against Salazar...
...Absent the Democratic headwind, Schaffer would have a reasonable chance of winning...
...But a large measure of political shrewdness and opportunism is also required, political traits that have eluded Republicans in Colorado while becoming the hallmark of their opponents...
...House seats...
...They don’t have a cadre of what Caldara calls “super spenders” to tap for money, and Republicans have lacked the gumption and foresight to build a comparable conservative infrastructure...
...Senate seat, and two U.S...
...Colorado liberals have now created institutions that possess all seven capacities...
...He was reelected in 2006...
...Colorado is where this model is being tested and refi ned...
...Democrats are on a roll, and that’s not likely to change this year...
...The overarching aim: Lock in Democratic control of Colorado for years to come...
...In 2006, Gill and Stryker escalated their spending to $7.5 million, and Democrats won the governor’s race...
...Schaffer is a likable conservative from northern Colorado who retired from Congress in 2004, honoring his promise to serve only three terms in the House...
...It spurs political chatter...
...The investigative arm uncovers some alleged wrongdoing by a Republican candidate or offi cial or plays up what someone else has claimed...
...Salazar was state attorney general, Ritter the Denver district attorney...
...Labor leaders were apoplectic...
...Republican secretary of state Mike Coffman was hounded for months by Colorado Confi dential, now the Colorado Independent, for allowing a state employee to run a side business and not reporting a supposed confl ict of interest too microscopic to be worth explaining...
Vol. 13 • July 2008 • No. 42
