Political Vets Square Off in Colorado

By Scott Moss

Originally published in Politico on March 31, 2008

Note: Council for a Livable World has endorsed Mark Udall for Colorado's open Senate seat. For more information, click here.
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Despite voting Republican in nine of the past 10 presidential elections, Colorado is emerging as the classic “purple state,” neither reliably Democrat blue nor Republican red on the political map. In the close 2000 presidential race, George W. Bush won Colorado by 8.4 percent, but in his stronger 2004 victory, he won Colorado by much less (4.7 percent), and 2008 polls show both parties with a chance to claim the state’s nine Electoral College votes.

In Colorado state elections, both parties have had successes over the years, but a recent string of Republican dominance seems to be ending. After eight years of a Republican governor, Colorado elected Democrat Bill Ritter in 2006; after 10 years of having two Republican U.S. senators, Colorado elected Democrat Ken Salazar in 2004, and the second Senate seat is open this year. That Senate race is currently a dead heat — none of six polls show either candidate with a lead outside the margin of error, with 15 percent to 20 percent of voters undecided. A Democratic win could give Colorado an all-Democratic slate of the top three officeholders (governor and senators) just four years after an all-Republican top three.

Interestingly, the 2008 candidates — Rep. Mark Udall (D) [Endorsed by Council for a Livable World] and former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) — initially pursued the open Senate seat in 2004. But the eventual 2004 candidates — then-Attorney General Ken Salazar (D) and businessman Pete Coors (R) — ran as moderates without extensive records on controversial issues. Between Udall’s and Schaffer’s clear legislative records, the dead-heat polling, and the potential of a close Senate race both to alter the state’s political landscape and to pad the current one-seat Democratic Senate majority, Udall-Schaffer may end up the most hotly contested 2008 Senate race in the nation.

Also making the race a national bellwether is polling showing that Coloradans’ concerns track national worries. To borrow James Carville’s words, “the economy, stupid,” is by far the No. 1 issue, followed by Iraq as No. 2, with No. 3 the national wildcard issue, immigration. Yet in a close race, either candidate could gain the edge by winning over the other party’s voters with effective positioning on hot-button local disputes, like the federal-state feud over local oil drilling or a planned Army base expansion in southeastern Colorado.

Perhaps appropriately for a state with so many transplants, neither candidate is a native Coloradan. But Udall, a native Arizonan, belongs to a regional family dynasty, essentially the Kennedys of the Rockies. Mark’s father, Morris “Mo” Udall, was a three-decade Arizona congressman, an early leader of the environmental movement and the runner-up to Jimmy Carter for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination. Mark’s uncle Stewart Udall, also a congressman, was secretary of the interior to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

This year, Mark’s cousin Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) [Endorsed by Council for a Livable World] will be his party’s nominee for New Mexico’s open Senate seat. And a hotly contested Senate race in Oregon also includes a family member: Sen. Gordon Smith (R), Mark and Tom’s second cousin. So to a large extent, Democratic control of the U.S. Senate in 2008 depends on one family in three key races.

Mark Udall consciously opted out of the family political tradition, spending two decades as an employee (eventually becoming director) of Outward Bound in Colorado. Then, like a Western (and more law-abiding) Michael Corleone, he found himself pulled back into the family business and riding a wave of rapid success, elected to the Colorado state legislature in 1997 and then to Congress in 1998. Unsurprisingly, given his outdoorsman background and his family’s environmental credentials, Udall’s work in Congress has included a wide range of environmental, natural resources and renewable energy legislation, some of it bipartisan protection of Colorado land and resources.

Udall draws Republican fire as a Boulder liberal who votes against tax cuts and other Bush programs, but Udall’s mixed political persona draws liberal ire, as well. Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District includes the famously liberal college town Boulder, “the Berkeley of the Rockies.”

But Boulder is not nearly large enough to fill a whole congressional district, so Udall also represents many conservative Coloradans in rural mountain towns and Denver-Boulder exurbs. Perhaps not as liberal as some Boulder constituents, Udall sees his offices picketed by anti-war liberals upset that even though Udall voted against authorizing the 2002 Iraq invasion, he has since voted to continue funding the war. Liberals and conservatives both criticize (for opposite reasons) Udall for once supporting, but then opposing, Dennis J. Kucinich’s proposal for a Cabinet-level department of peace. Less ideological is the dispute over U.S. Army plans to more than double the size of its Pinon Canyon training grounds in southeastern Colorado — possibly by seizing private lands by eminent domain. Udall doesn’t support the plans but hasn’t staunchly opposed them either, voting for a one-year delay while supporting an Army proposal to study the issue further. With local ranchers, local businesses and environmentalists bitterly fighting the Army, this is exactly the sort of local firestorm that could have an unpredictable impact across ideological lines.

While Udall came to his Senate nomination as a late addition to a family dynasty, Schaffer came to be his party’s standard-bearer via early ambition that made him a Republican wunderkind. An Ohioan until he graduated college, Schaffer moved to Colorado, was appointed at age 25 to a state House seat (which he later won outright) and nabbed a congressional seat at 34. Schaffer’s 4th Congressional District, a Republican stronghold covering Colorado’s rural eastern plains and several smaller cities, may be a “feeder” into the Senate seat Schaffer seeks: Previous 4th District representatives were current Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, whose retirement is paving the way for the Senate contest, and Allard’s Senate predecessor, Republican Hank Brown.

Yet Schaffer’s 2008 race may be shaped less by his meteoric rise than by his one political failure: his 2004 Senate primary defeat to beer magnate Pete Coors. The Schaffer of 2004 was a cocky social conservative who openly cited Mel Gibson’s controversial film “The Passion of the Christ” for his campaign mind-set: “I saw ‘The Passion’ ... and it really put me in the right frame of mind for launching a campaign,” he told the National Review in 2004. “It taught me that there’s no way I can lose.” Yet lose he did, running as the truer conservative with mailings blasting Coors “for granting benefits to same-sex couples”; pro-Schaffer ads also attacked Coors’ beer ads as “nearly pornographic” for portraying bikini-clad women.

The 2008 Schaffer, a member of the state Board of Education who is active in various businesses and nonprofit organizations, seems to reflect 2004’s lessons in cultivating moderate appeal. While not running from his socially conservative record — he voted to expand public school prayer and to restrict abortion, contraception and gay adoption — he now presents himself as a conciliator, extolling the virtues of a “big tent” Republican Party where “pro-life and pro-choice people can work together” on economics. His campaign website lists only economic issues on its front page: “I’ll fight to eliminate pork-barrel spending and restore real fiscal discipline in Congress. Holding the line on your taxes will be a top priority.” Schaffer’s liberal bogeyman no longer is a bikini-clad Coors model offending religious sensibilities; it is an overzealous tax investigation of a coffee shop offending business sensibilities (an actual example he cites).

But Schaffer’s new cautiousness raises its own risks. His campaign website, up for months, still has no “Issues” page, largely limiting its offerings to a biography, statements of economic conservatism and campaign clichés such as “Bob Schaffer is the rare individual who still believes deeply in America’s ability to build a better future.” Democrats have put up a parody website mocking Schaffer’s failure to take positions on key issues, including federal legislation expanding children’s health care, local oil and gas drilling allowed by the federal government over the state’s objections, and the Pinon Canyon land controversy in which Udall is embroiled.

Carrying the sorts of clear congressional records that Ritter, Salazar and Coors lacked in recent elections, neither Udall nor Schaffer can run the classic “Rorschach candidacy” of painting a blurry ideological picture and hoping voters see what they want in the ambiguity. With the lines drawn long ago, the battle at a standstill so far, Colorado a swing state in the presidential race and Denver hosting a Democratic convention that could turn bloody, Colorado politics is in for a long, hot summer and fall.

Scott A. Moss is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School.