< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
When I read the paper Wednesday morning, I was sure that Colorado's voting system had gone totally haywire, as some people feared. Thousands of ghost ballots must have been mysteriously cast and counted. That was the most sensible explanation for the headline which stated that Democrats had gained control of both houses of the Colorado General Assembly.
There weren't many other surprises. John Kerry did better than I expected, although I had hoped he would win. He easily met the two criteria for my presidential vote in 2004: he had a pulse, and he wasn't named Bush.
I keep wondering how long the Republican coalition can hold together. It did well on a national basis this year, with Bush's election and gains in the U.S. Senate and House.
But how much longer can the fiscal conservatives keep supporting a party that runs record deficits with a President who never vetoes a spending bill? How much longer will the small-government conservatives support a party that encourages more federal snooping into every aspect of our lives? How much longer with the isolationist conservatives support a foreign policy of pre-emptive invasion based on bad intelligence? And how much longer will the social conservatives support a party which talks a lot but never delivers on abortion, school prayer and other issues dear to those fundamentalists who insist on minding other peoples' business?
Somehow they stay together. It's as mysterious as the way that Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party got the support of both northern blacks and southern whites.
In Colorado, Ken Salazar's Senate victory was no surprise, although I expected him to win by a larger margin, since he had already won two statewide elections, and Pete Coors came with a lot of baggage, as well as no campaign experience.
John Salazar's victory in the Third Congressional district was also something I expected. Greg Walcher signed away his chances when he supported Referendum A last year.
Those two Democratic victories will make life a little
more difficult for the Republican spinmeisters who claim
that the GOP is the party of the American heartland, while
the Democrats represent only the coastal elites.
And when you get down on the ground in rural Colorado, Democrats are doing pretty well. Like most counties, we had two commissioner seats up in this election. Democrats captured both, and now the entire board is Democratic.
They had some help from the Republicans, though. One commission candidate, Frank McMurry, had served two terms before losing a primary in 2000. That meant he had a lot of opposition within the party, so even though he came back to win the primary this year, he didn't have a lot of support from his own party, let alone Democrats and independents.
The other, Nelson Fleming, had been convicted of a felony 20 years ago, and had a DUI last year. If he had announced that at the start of the campaign, it wouldn't have been an issue. But when it comes out a few weeks before the election, you have to wonder what else he hadn't been telling you.
One race I really felt bad about was for our House District 60, which had been represented by Republican Lola Spradley, who had to step down on account of term limits. The Democratic candidate, Emily Tracy of Cañon City, had run against her two years ago.
Emily is knowledgeable and energetic, and I thought she'd make a great legislator. The state Democratic party apparently disagreed, since she got no help there. She lost, but two other smart and hard-working Democrats -- Kathleen Curry of Gunnison and Gary Lindstrom of Summit County -- won in adjacent rural districts.
And now Democrats control the legislature. This could mean tough times for a columnist, having a legislature that worries about health and education, rather than magazine racks and the Pledge of Allegiance, but we all have to make sacrifices, I suppose.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >