Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., thought he could coast to victory in 2014 by focusing on the Left’s 2012 “war on women” narrative and nothing else.
He was wrong. At 10:18 p.m., the Associated Press projected that Udall lost.
Once Republican Rep. Cory Gardner entered the race in February, Udall seemed sure to have a tough road to reelection. But his laser-like focus on supposed “women’s issues” made him the joke of the election cycle. He was dubbed “Mark Uterus” by Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels, who also joked that a movie about the campaign should be set in a gynecologist’s office.
Udall’s focus on birth control became so overwhelming that his own megadonor heckled him at a campaign stop on Monday.
Despite the negative press and the fact that he trailed in 19 of 21 consecutive polls by the end, Udall never gave up on his message. The race was a case study in how not to use the war on women narrative. Udall attempted to paint Gardner as anti-woman, and it backfired.
In 2008, according to exit polls, Udall won female voters by a 15-point margin, and they made up 50 percent of the electorate. But as of this writing, CNN exit polls in Tuesday’s race found Udall winning the demographic by just 9 points, and women comprised 48 percent of the electorate.
It is also a case study for the GOP in how to respond to such attacks.
Udall claimed that Gardner would ban birth control for women. A lesser candidate might have left the issue unaddressed as an effective cudgel for his opponent, or even worse, fallen into a Todd Akin-style trap and embarrassed himself. But Gardner was prepared. He effectively set the issue of contraception to the side by announcing that he wanted to make birth control available over-the-counter – an effective counter-narrative that could be a model for the GOP come 2016.
