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Analysis: Obama's message wins

By David Montero, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 5, 2008 at 9:25 p.m.

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How much of the West — and Colorado — was won for Barack Obama could be boiled down to two words.

The war.

An analysis by pollster Floyd Ciruli showed the Illinois senator tapped into the state's angst about the war while Sen. Hillary Clinton focused on health care and the economy.

By filling his stump speech early and often with references to pulling troops out and criticizing Clinton's vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he found a sympathetic audience here.

"He carried Denver and all the counties in the metro area, and so his win was pretty much across the board," Ciruli said. "There were a few counties with high Hispanic populations and heavy union presence that Clinton won, but Obama clearly captured the spirit of what Colorado Democrats like, and that is a candidate that offers a new approach."

It was also a conscious strategy by the Obama campaign to zero in on caucus states such as Colorado to pick up delegates and keep the overall race tight between himself and Clinton. However, Clinton did win California, though both candidates would end up with delegates from the state.

David Plouffe, Obama's national campaign chairman, said an organized, grass- roots effort planted early in the state also helped galvanize support for the senator. In fact, the Obama campaign had offices throughout Colorado beginning late last year, and he came to the state last week to campaign at the University of Denver.

Clinton did not come to Colorado between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday but did have President Clinton campaigning on her behalf last week.

Obama also spent time in states such as Idaho and Kansas — a strategy Plouffe said was a choice to not necessarily go after the high-profile, delegate-rich states but to try to take more than half of the delegates from medium-numbered delegate states such as Colorado.

Colorado has 71 delegates on the Democratic side, and Plouffe predicted Obama would walk away with two-thirds of them. The state was the 10th richest state of the 22 doling out delegates on Super Tuesday.

With the Democratic National Convention coming to Denver Aug. 25-28, the party chose Colorado as part of its strategy to loosen the Republican hold on the West.

The West was also key for Mitt Romney, who may have been seeing the beginning of the end of his bid for the Republican nomination. The fomer Massachusetts governor suffered a series of setbacks early in the evening along the East Coast and lost a cluster of Southern states to Mike Huckabee.

Ken Bickers, political science chairman at the University of Colorado, said Romney needed to do well in Western states to stem the bleeding. But, even by taking states like Colorado, Utah, North Dakota and Minnesota, Bickers said, Romney still needed to win in California.

He didn't.

Sen. John McCain was declared the winner in California late Tuesday, sealing his position as the clear Republican front-runner.

"I don't see how he continues," Bickers said referring to Romney. "He's winning states without many delegates. There may be bragging rights for that, but not a lot of delegates."

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who endorsed Romney along with U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard and former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, agreed and said if Romney lost California, "It's over."

Romney had a strong presence in Colorado, campaigning last week at a car dealership in Denver while he was traveling to Utah to attend the funeral of Gordon Hinckley, who was president of the Mormon Church, of which Romney is a member.

Bickers said that probably helped Romney more in Western states because the Mormon church has a large presence in the region. "It's not an unusual religion out in the West," he said.

McCain and Huckabee had no presence in Colorado either, and Bickers said that allowed Romney to talk about an issue that is very important to Westerners — immigration.

With Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo endorsing Romney in Iowa, Bickers said that probably helped Romney with the Republican base. Tancredo was an early contender for the Republican nomination and based his candidacy around stopping illegal immigrants from entering the country.

Comments

  • February 6, 2008

    8:51 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Diff writes:

    Impressions of My first Caucus in over 14 years:
    I attended a north Jeffo/Westmister Democratic Caucus at Moore Middle School.
    1)The numbers of people.
    Parking was a problem but people arrived in good moods anyway!
    2)The Enthusiasm for A. Candidates B. The Process and participation
    3)The number of younger caucus goers; 20 somethings and early 30's
    -Very encouraging!
    4) How very knowledge and well informed many of the attendees were.
    5) Some good debate on issues and candidates
    6) Stronger showing (about 75%) for Obama than I expected.

    It was fun, informative and exciting to be there, I am now more encouraged for the next election, and more hopeful that we CAN and WILL change the course of this nation in this historic election November 2008!

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