In 2004, George W. Bush won Colorado. Since then, if you look at the four top-tier offices (presidential, both Senate seats, and the governorship), Democrats have won 13 of 14 statewide races.
Democrat Ken Salazar won the Senate race back in 2004. Democrat Michael Bennet replaced him and won in 2010 and then again in 2016.
On the presidential level, Barack Obama won Colorado twice, Hillary Clinton won, and now, Joe Biden has won. The governor races since 2004 have all gone Democratic: Bill Ritter in 2006, John Hickenlooper in 2010 and 2014, and Jared Polis in 2018.
In 2018, Democrats also won every other statewide office: treasurer, secretary of state, and attorney general.
Tonight, Hickenlooper defeated Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, keeping the streak going for Democrats. But how was there a GOP senator? Thank Mark Uterus.
In this whole stretch, only one Democrat has lost a top-tier statewide race in Colorado — which just goes to show you why you shouldn’t run for Senate on birth control.
Mark Udall in 2014 ran for reelection as the contraception candidate. So many of his Beltway liberal friends and Planned Parenthood donors were outraged that employers such as the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby might be allowed to not cover 100% of all contraception that they convinced Udall he should run on the issue. It was so absurd that he earned the nickname Senator Uterus.
As I wrote back then:
“Udall’s campaign website mentions ‘contraception’ on 38 different pages, according to a Google search of the site. That’s more mentions than the ‘environment,’ ‘immigration,’ ‘climate’ or ‘insurance.’ ‘Contraception’ shows up on more pages than ‘deficit’ and ‘unemployment’ combined.”
“On top of that, Udall’s campaign website mentions ‘birth control’ on 71 different pages — that’s more appearances than the word ‘America.’”
“Udall’s first three ads of the general election were about birth control. ‘My opponent Congressman Gardner led a crusade that would make birth control illegal,’ Udall said in one. His campaign’s YouTube page has 26 television ads, and 10 of them are about contraception.”
“An OB/GYN stars in one ad. His Spanish-language ad begins by promising Democrats ‘will always protect the rights of a woman to decide when she has children.’”
“In debates, when Udall has gotten questions about the economy, he has actually pivoted to contraception and abortion. Birth control is in his stump speech.”
Udall tried to pretend Gardner was trying to outlaw contraception. Udall’s allies ran ads with young couples about to get it on but realizing that condoms were now unattainable because Gardner had been elected to the Senate. It was Barack Obama’s 2012 “War on Women” messaging boiled down to its stupidest nugget.
Now, Hickenlooper, who did not run on birth control, has taken back that Senate seat for Democrats.
