Nov. 6 will be national presidential midterm Election Day, and it will also be the day Coloradans elect their next governor. Who will replace John Hickenlooper, our governor? He serves another six months until early January.
Democrats have held the governor’s office for 36 years — or nine terms — in the last 56 years. Republicans have held it only 20 years — five terms. There also have been more Democrats than Republicans in the governor’s office going back to the state’s founding in 1876.
This year’s race for governor promises to be just as competitive as it was four years ago when former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez came within 3 percentage points of beating incumbent Gov. John Hickenlooper.
State Treasurer Walker Stapleton handily defeated three lesser known Republicans in the recent June 26 party primaries. He did so even though he was heavily outspent by outsider businessman Victor Mitchell. Stapleton won even as his campaign stumbled a few times, especially when it was discovered that the firm he hired to collect petition signatures was alleged to have improperly gathered signatures.
Stapleton pivoted quickly and successfully to win delegate endorsement at the Republican Party state convention, but it was a near miss and hurt his political reputation.
Stapleton is a moderately conservative Republican and a relative of the two George Bush presidents. He has been a low visibility statewide official for the past eight years. He is known as a fiscal conservative and a champion of putting the state’s public employee pension system on a more sound financial footing.
Stapleton and his advisers are well aware this year’s November election will be in many ways a referendum on the Donald Trump presidency. But it will also be about vital Colorado state policies and which candidate is best qualified to provide state leadership.
There are big challenges for Stapleton. First, Trump is unpopular, more so in Colorado than in most states. Trump is also less popular among well-educated independent suburbanites, and they happen to be the crucial swing vote in Colorado’s electorate.
Stapleton has downplayed his stands on conservative social issues and seems resigned rather than antagonistic to Colorado’s legalized recreational marijuana. But his conservative base in the Republican Party may push him to be harder right on social issues, a problem that harmed previous Republican statewide candidates such as Dan Maes and Ken Buck. Stapleton needs to run as a moderate if he is to win his way into the Governor’s Mansion.
Stapleton is handicapped in another way. He cannot run against Democrat John Hickenlooper’s gubernatorial leadership of Colorado. The state’s economy is one of the best in the nation, and unemployment at a historic low. Budgets are balanced, and Coloradans are proud to be Coloradans. Hickenlooper may be quirky, but he is personable and popular and provides Stapleton little or no target to campaign against.
Stapleton’s biggest advantage will be that his Democratic opponent will be portrayed as too liberal for Colorado.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis won an impressive victory over three well-qualified rivals in the Democratic primary. Most people, including us, were surprised by his 20 percentage point win over former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy. She was, in addition to being a former state official, a veteran policy adviser at both the state capitol and in Denver City Hall. She was the favorite of activist Democratic Party regulars at March’s local precinct caucuses and at the party’s April State Assembly.
She ran as a champion of public education, yet she was running against Polis and former state Sen. Mike Johnston, both of whom had a record as educators dedicated to improving education.
The Democrats were mainly in agreement on most issues. They were left of center progressives, but they carefully avoided being tagged as far left wing Bernie Sanders Democrats. All of them had supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and Barack Obama before that.
What explains the Polis victory? First, he has served as the 2nd District congressman the past 10 years. Before that, he was an elected member of the Colorado State Board of Education. He had considerable experience and more name recognition than his rivals. He is also very wealthy. He helped found startup technology companies.
Polis donated at least $11 million to his campaign for governor. He had more television ads, more internet ads, more mailings, and more paid campaign workers. This was just too much, even for Kennedy and Johnston to overcome. Money doesn’t always win elections, yet it assuredly played a major role in Polis’ margin of victory.
A few other things about the recent primary election. At least 100,000 more people voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican one, even though both parties share about the same percentage of state registered voters. More women, maybe more than 100,000, voted than men. And many more unaffiliated voters chose to vote in the Democratic rather than the Republican primary.
Republican Stapleton will have to run a better campaign in the general election than he did in the primary. He will have to satisfy the Tom Tancredo-Trump Coloradans as well as the traditional pro-trade and anti-tariff business community. He will have to attract suburban women. He will have to hope for some mistakes and gaffes in the Polis campaign.
Democrat Polis will have to assure Colorado voters that he is not “too Boulder” for the rest of the state. Even though he was not in the Bernie Sanders camp, he can be assured of that group’s vote in November. What he needs is the type of business community support that Hickenlooper and former Gov. Roy Romer regularly received. That will be a challenge.
Polis has actually had greater success as an entrepreneur than even the successful Hickenlooper and Romer had, but he now needs to convince potential voters that his business and congressional skills will make him a better governor than Stapleton.
Polis will have to work hard to unify his party. Popular former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar endorsed and campaigned for Cary Kennedy in the primary. Former Gov. Richard Lamm and former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart backed Mike Johnston. Teachers unions supported Cary Kennedy. Polis has begun these efforts by designating respected former state Rep. Dianne Primavera as his running mate. But Polis plainly needs more enthusiastic backing from his former rivals and vigorous campaign support from Hickenlooper, Romer, Salazar, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and other Democratic stalwarts. Colorado is a purple, not a blue state — and every statewide race, especially for governor and U.S. senator, can go either way.
Meanwhile Stapleton has said that he has selected a running mate as required, but has delayed announcing who it is.
Three cheers for all those who ran for governor in 2018. There were more than a dozen men and women in the race at one point. It takes enormous stamina and courage to run. Coloradans should be grateful so many talented people were willing to take the time and raise the money to run.
Buckle up. The 2018 governor race in Colorado will likely be hotly contested, highly partisan, probably nasty and doubtless record-setting expensive.
Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are political scientists at Colorado College.
