In Colorado, a seismic shift

Democrats' last display of electoral dominance was 72 years ago during the era of FDR

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 5, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Joe Mahoney / The Rocky

Democrat Jared Polis, winner of the 2nd Congressional District seat, celebrates his victory at the downtown Denver Sheraton Hotel. Polis easily defeated Republican Scott Starin.

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You'd have to go back 72 years, to the soup lines of the Great Depression, to see the sort of electoral dominance that Colorado Democrats secured in this election.

Not since 1936 has Colorado voted for a Democratic presidential candidate and allowed that party, led by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to control two U.S. Senate seats, the majority of the U.S. House of Representatives delegation, the Governor's Mansion and both houses of the state legislature.

Therefore, Colorado's 2008 election results represent an astounding turnabout, considering that only four years ago the state GOP held not only the top state offices, but both U.S. Senate seats and an overall 7-2 advantage in Washington, D.C.

Now the score is 7-2 Democrats.

While that is bad news for Republicans for the moment, it puts big pressure on Democrats to produce results before the midterm elections in 2010.

"Never wish for something too much. You just might get it," cautioned Sean Conway, chief of staff to retiring Republican Sen. Wayne Allard. "The pressure will be on the Democrats to perform."

It continued a seismic shift in the congressional delegation that began with Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell's surprise retirement decision in 2004.

Campbell's farewell was followed by a long string of unforced Republican departures: Rep. Scott McInnis in 2004, Reps. Joel Hefley and Bob Beauprez in 2006, and Allard and Rep. Tom Tancredo at the end of this year.

Campbell and McInnis were replaced by two Democrats who share the same popular last name: Salazar - as in Sen. Ken Salazar and his brother, Rep. John Salazar. Then, in 2006, Beauprez's ill-fated bid for governor handed the state's most competitive congressional district, suburban Denver's 7th, to Democrat Ed Perlmutter.

That gave Democrats a 5-4 edge and the majority of seats on the delegation for the first time since the start of 1983.

And now, Democrats have stretched that advantage by replacing the retiring Allard with Rep. Mark Udall and by ousting Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave with Democratic challenger Betsy Markey.

Meanwhile, the departures of Allard and Tancredo will drastically alter the personality of the D.C. delegation.

Allard, the senior senator, has been a mild-mannered fixture in the D.C. delegation for 18 years, both in the House and the Senate, known in the past eight years as one of the more reliable backers of President Bush's agenda.

Tancredo has turned his back-bench congressional seat into a megaphone for fighting illegal immigration and for a host of other conservative causes.

But starting in January, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, will begin her seventh term and replace Allard as the "dean," or longest- serving member, of the delegation. At the same time, seniority is raising her profile on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and in Democratic Party leadership. And right out of the starting gate next year, the new Congress and new president are expected to grant final approval for her signature issue of expanding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Meanwhile, unless a rumored Cabinet position becomes reality, Sen. Salazar is in line to become senior senator - and probably a more active one, considering Democrats will have a larger majority and will be able to move legislation more quickly than in the earlier era of divided government.

Pollster and political analyst Floyd Ciruli marveled at the state's Democratic turnaround: "If it turns out the way we think it may turn out, they have just completely changed the partisan leadership of the state in four years, and, frankly, left Democrats struggling to come up with new jobs to take."

And so ends the Tancredible journey.

Tuesday's election is the beginning of the end for Rep. Tom Tancredo of Littleton, the conservative Republican firebrand who launched his political career with his mom's Italian spaghetti sauce recipe, became the best-known immigration critic in the U.S. and saw his "crusade" fizzle in the snow-covered cornfields of Iowa.

Starting in January, the tract home havens of Denver's southern suburbs will have a new congressman, Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a man who, despite his experience with real-life combat in Iraq, is considered decidedly less combative than Tancredo.

If Coffman wants to match Tancredo's bombastic legacy, it won't be easy.

Tancredo, a former schoolteacher, first ran for public office as a dare from his students. He began his first campaign with folksy fliers that included a spaghetti sauce recipe from his mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, on one side and a "recipe" for good government on the back.

In the state legislature, he was part of a close-knit, conservative group dubbed the "House Crazies." When he became a member of Congress in 1999, the first legislation he co-sponsored was one bill to make English the official language of the federal government and another to impose a moratorium on most immigration.

Within a few years, he had become leader of the conservative caucus advocating stricter immigration controls and was known for hurling colorful criticism at Democrats and Republicans. The criticism reached its crescendo after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when Tancredo implied that President Bush and Congress would have blood on their hands if the borders weren't secured and another attack occurred.

Though Tancredo also worked on tax and spending issues and focused on international concerns such as Sudan and Taiwan, his crusade against illegal immigration inspired his long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

After nearly two years stumping through Iowa, however, he was stuck in low single digits in the polls last year and quit just days before the long-awaited caucuses.

Throughout that campaign, Tancredo said his message of securing the borders was more important than his own political ambitions. And so, he said at the time, "For the same reason I launched the campaign, I must end it."

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