The blue tsunami of the midterm elections nationally was felt here in Colorado.
Currently, there's the potential for a 7-to-1 congressional map, all statewide offices remain Democratic, and the state legislature is also now a supermajority for the Democrats.
What does this mean for the state? Where does it leave Colorado Republicans?
Marty Lenz spoke with Kelly Maher, Republican political strategist and communications consultant with more than two decades of experience in Colorado politics. She runs a bipartisan consulting, communications, and advocacy firm and co-founded Restoring Standards.
Lenz: I want to start by playing fill in the blank. If I ask you "the state of the GOP in Colorado is...," your response?
Maher: Non-existent? I mean, I don't know. A couple of years ago, Marty, we hit a situation where we had lost the house and the state house and the state senate and had lost all the statewides and I said it was an extinction level event. So this year I was trying to come up with a term that is bigger than that, and I'm not really sure exactly, like nuclear winter? We are now at a point where, as of today, we have more people in the state house who identify themselves as Democrat socialists than who are registered Republicans.
Lenz: Are you surprised about what looks like the potential ouster of Lauren Boebert at this hour? It still hasn't been called, but she's still 3,000 votes behind Lawbacher. Does that surprise you?
Maher: Congresswoman Boebert's lawyer, Scott Gessler, who you will remember as the former Secretary of State, and also he was a Trump lawyer, came out yesterday evening with a statement. He said, and I'm going to read it directly. He said, "A significant number of votes remain outstanding in the race. We are fighting for every vote and continue to ensure every legal vote is counted." Since election night, ballot returns have been trending in Boebert's direction, consistently lowering the margin to under one percentage point. Then Gessler continued, "We are investigating some very unusual voting patterns and expect this election to head to a recount one way or the other."
Now, I think that making claims like that and walking the edge of that without saying exactly what it is that you think is unusual is deeply concerning, and also tends to like foment the concerns that people already have about institutions, including voting institutions, and we have to be very careful and very responsible about that. In some ways, he's not wrong. Like every county commissioner holds back a certain number of votes for anonymity purposes. There are still the military and overseas votes, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for Congresswoman Boebert to make up that difference. If what he's referring to is a significant undervote, then no, that's not something that's particularly surprising because we saw this huge enthusiasm gap and Republicans not turning out in the ways that we expected to, and we saw huge swings of Republicans who either didn't vote or were willing to consider a different party for the first time ever.
Lenz: I know a lot of the focus is on Boebert and CD 4, but I think you mentioned to me that the race that most compelling to you is CD 5, where Jeff Crank lost to Jessica Killin.
Maher: I was really, really surprised about that. At one point, about six or eight months ago, we were talking in the state about whether or not we were going to look at our entire congressional map. Colorado has eight congressional members. Previous to this, Republicans had Jeff Heard, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans, and Lauren Boebert, so we had a four-four map, is what we call it, and I was watching some of the trends that combined with some of the money that we saw that was coming in, and I said to some of my Democrat counterparts, we could not touch the map, and we could end up with what we call a 7-1 map, or even potentially an 8-0 map at the time, but I would have thought that because Lauren Boebert was generally so safe that she would have been the one. But the CD 5, which is Colorado Springs primarily, and some areas around that, it goes up almost into Douglas County, CD 5 has been held for 54 years by a Republican. Colorado Springs has always been known as kind of a conservative touchpoint in Colorado, and I was very surprised that Jeff Crank lost that.
We saw El Paso County swing. It was a plus four Trump district, and it swung plus 10 for Jessica Killin, so that's like a 14 point swing in two years. So that really speaks to a huge, huge change.
Lenz: I wish we had more time, Kelly, but we've got just a moment left. I just want to ask something about Phil Weiser. Does he have a tough job because the state legislature now is a supermajority? Does he have to be able to crack the whip against his own party? Can he do that?
Maher: He's gonna have a really, really hard time. And the thing is, he's gonna be the guy at the top of the ticket. And John Hickenlooper said that the worst time when he was governor was when Democrats had both chambers, and now Phil Weiser is gonna have that, except on steroids.
