Photo: Pexels/Rosemary Ketchum
The county clerks in Colorado are working overtime this week, getting ready to mail out the November ballots, which must be mailed by Friday.
Not that it matters much.
Colorado hasn’t contributed its Electoral College delegates to a Republican presidential candidate since 2004. Like, 20 years ago. Our Governor and both houses of the General Assembly are dominated by Democrats. Ditto every elected state office.
The state has turned embarrassingly Blue.
The online Colorado Sun did an analysis of the state’s shift to the left, following the 2020 election:
Colorado’s political map is looking more and more blue. The 2020 election continued the decades-long shift toward Democrats in Colorado, led by voters in suburban counties and punctuated by huge turnout in the party’s strongholds of Denver and Boulder.
“Colorado is officially blue. Not purple, not periwinkle, not powder blue,” says Steve Welchert, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Will the GOP claw back seats and races from time to time? Sure. But this is not a temporary shift.”
The landscape gave Joe Biden the largest presidential victory for any candidate since 1984 and carried John Hickenlooper into the U.S. Senate by the biggest margin in more than a decade.
Let that sink in, folks. In 2020, Colorado gave Joe Biden the largest presidential victory since 1984. Like, Joe Biden!
When I wrote my first rough draft of this column, I included this paragraph:
Have any of the presidential candidates visited Colorado this year, or last? I don’t believe so. Why waste their time. If Joe Biden can win in Colorado, obviously someone like Kamala Harris can win here as well. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump don’t need to visit Colorado. They’re busy campaigning in the so-called “swing states”. Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin. The states that will decide the Electoral College; the states that could go either way. The rest of America? Either hopelessly Red, or hopelessly Blue.
Then I saw the article in yesterday’s Daily Post, that Donald Trump is planning to hold a rally in Aurora.
Aurora, Colorado. A city the former President claims has been overrun by Venezuelan gangs.
But Colorado is now hopelessly Blue. A rally in Aurora is not going to help. Likely, the gang members won’t even bother to attend.
It can certainly take all the fun out of an election, when your state is hopelessly Blue.
Luckily, Archuleta County is not hopelessly Blue. We’ve been Red pretty consistently, as far as I can tell. But we’ve got such a small population, no one pays us much attention.
I still intend to vote, but I’m not going to spend money on a postage stamp. I’ll just drop the ballot in the box outside the old County Courthouse and save myself the 73 cents. Sure, that means the Post Office loses 73 cents, but I’ve already lost the chance to vote in a competitive election, thanks to the Denver and Boulder suburbs. The pain needs to be spread around.
There was a time here in Colorado, not so long ago — in fact, in 1996 — when a Republican Presidential candidate like Bob Dole could barely beat a Democrat like Bill Clinton, by less than 20,700 votes.
Those were the good old days, when races were close, and my vote really meant something.
Back when elections were still exciting.
Sure, November is coming. Big deal.
Maybe I can get excited about Halloween instead…
I could dress up as Bob Dole.