The Colorado Springs Gazette final

TRAIL MIX

as a player in a state where it’s been mostly relegated to the sidelines.

The Republican primaries are between state Rep. Ron Hanks and construction company owner Joe O’dea for the chance to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet; between Greg Lopez, a former mayor of Parker, and Heidi Ganahl, an at-large member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, for the nomination to take on Gov. Jared Polis; and between Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson and business consultant Mike O’donnell for the GOP nod to face Secretary of State Jena Griswold in November.

In a midterm election where the party that occupies the White House also runs the show in Colorado, unhappy voters ought to be ready to oust the incumbents and start with a clean slate. This year, that means Democrats are preparing to confront the wrath of voters made livid by soaring inflation, pain at the pump and the lingering effects of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

But it might not play out that way, in Colorado at least.

It’ll all depend what voters decide in the June 28 Republican primary, and to hear political insiders tell it, the marquee statewide contests are very much up for grabs heading into the final stretch before polls close.

Will voters anoint the more traditional, establishment-type Republicans in the statewide primaries or go with their less conventional, more Trump-aligned rivals?

In each primary, the Republican who earned the GOP’S stamp of approval and topline designation at the party’s state assembly in April — Hanks, Lopez and Peters — is the candidate both Democrats and the Republican Party’s consultants, major donors and veteran politicians consider the weaker general election candidates.

O’dea, Ganahl and Anderson, by contrast, all petitioned their way into the primary, though Ganahl also went through the assembly, where she came in behind Lopez but won enough delegate support to qualify both ways.

Election forecasters and the national parties are keeping tabs on Colorado — mindful of its relatively recent status as one of the country’s leading battlegrounds — but so far haven’t pegged the state’s top races as truly competitive or toss-ups.

Depending how voters in the GOP primary tilt, the November general election could test the proposition that Republicans haven’t really fallen as far behind in Colorado as the cumulative results of the last three elections suggest.

Contrary to Democrats’ string of wins, the argument goes, the state’s electorate remains solidly centrist with a streak of ornery Western independence, open to voting for Republicans if only Donald Trump hadn’t been exerting his gravitational pull on the GOP while simultaneously repelling Democrats and the bulk of the state’s unaffiliated voters.

The vast majority of Coloradans

— by at least a 3-1 margin, polling has consistently shown — don’t buy Trump’s contention that he really won the 2020 presidential election, though the reverse is true among the state’s Republicans. The disconnect could put the party’s picks at odds with state voters, though GOP stalwarts insist that if voters are angry enough at the party in power, it won’t matter because voters will be anxious to turn out anyone with a D next to their name.

If this primary is remembered for anything, it’ll likely be for the mountain of cash Democrats have shoveled into the Republican primaries for governor and U.S. senator, attacking Hanks and Lopez as “too conservative” for Colorado voters in TV ads and mailers that double as dog whistles promoting the underfunded candidates to rock-ribbed GOP primary voters.

Republicans have howled in outrage over the tactic, even threatening to take legal action against the Democrats behind the onslaught of advertising. That’s in spite of both parties having a history of meddling in the other’s primaries in Colorado, including last cycle when the GOP Senate’s national campaign arm tried without success to boost the Democrats’ U.S. Senate primary’s more progressive hopefuls and tear down the more moderate front-runner.

Heading toward November, both Hanks and O’dea are set to test a longstanding habit among Colorado voters, who haven’t elected a U.S. senator in nearly 50 years who wasn’t already a member of the U.S. House or held statewide office.

Elected to his first full term in 2010 despite never having run for office before, Bennet qualifies with an asterisk because he was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat to fill a vacancy nearly two years before he stood for election, so, technically, he met the statewide office-holder requirement.

Hanks and Lopez stand to benefit if another long-established pattern plays out this election.

Over the past 40 years, only one Republican has won nomination to Colorado’s top two statewide offices — governor and the U.S. Senate — after making it onto the ballot by petition.

The lone exception was Bob Beauprez, a former congressman and previous gubernatorial nominee, who emerged as the party’s nominee after petitioning his way into a four-way primary for governor in 2014.

While Beauprez’s candidacy doesn’t exactly come with an asterisk, his reason for petitioning onto the ballot instead of going through assembly that year had more to do with a tight calendar, since he didn’t declare his candidacy until days before precinct caucuses, by which time many of the Republican activists bound for the state assembly had already chosen a favorite. After gathering petition signatures in near-record time, Beauprez carried the primary over fellow petitioner former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, former state Sen. Mike Kopp and then-secretary of State Scott Gessler but failed to prevent then-gov. John Hickenlooper from winning a second term.

Walker Stapleton, a former two-term state treasurer and the 2018 GOP gubernatorial nominee, proved the rule in an unusual way, first petitioning onto the ballot but then, after his signatures had been certified and he’d qualified for the ballot, withdrawing his petition and instead going through the assembly after questions arose about his signature-gatherer’s integrity. Winning top-line at the assembly, Stapleton kept several potential rivals off the ballot, with only Lopez squeaking into a four-way primary that also included a pair of petitioners. Stapleton won the primary but lost to Polis.

It’s been a different story on the Democratic side.

Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators both petitioned their way into the primary before winning the nomination over the candidate who won the assembly and topline on the ballot.

In an odd wrinkle, both Bennet and Hickenlooper — who won his Senate seat by defeating Republican Cory Gardner last cycle — prevailed over the same assembly-winner, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, in their respective primaries for their seats a decade apart, Bennet in 2010 and Hickenlooper in 2020.

LOCAL & STATE

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2022-06-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-06-27T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/281870122123974

The Gazette, Colorado Springs