Colorado Springs: Ground Zero for Battleground Colorado

"Without votes in El Paso County, Obama won't win Colorado," says Michael Merrifield, the county representative to the Colorado General Assembly. He is speaking to the small band of Obama volunteers gathered in CJ's Bar & Grill to watch the second presidential debate. Everybody knows what Merrifield means, for they are sipping beers in McCain Country. CJ's is in the heart of El Paso County, in Colorado Springs, which is one of the most conservative communities in the nation. According to the El Paso County clerk's office on October 3, three days out from the close of voter registration, the county has 64,083 active Democrat, 82,245 active Unaffiliated and 131,249 active Republican voters. It's a given that the McCain-Palin ticket will take Colorado Springs and El Paso County. The question is by how much. Three days before the debate, walking up a flight of stairs to the McCain Colorado Victory Headquarters in "the Springs," I can hear the office manager and secretary talking, their voices carrying through the near-empty building. The ladies are discussing a recent phone call from regional HQ up I-25 in Centennial. "They said Obama is going to take Denver and Boulder big," one lady said to the other. "So we have to make up those votes here."

If Colorado Springs is ground zero in the battle for Colorado, the terrain is tricky and shifting. Folks in the Springs have a strong independent and libertarian streak. In the 1992 Election, Ross Perot took 22.6% of the vote here (23.32% in the state). Many of the citizens today are newcomers, and the demographics, like in Colorado as a whole, are trending younger, despite the city's reputation as a haven for retired people. The presence of four military installations in the county creates a significant transient population, as well. (Members of the military themselves are usually registered to vote in their home towns.) In the 1980s, Colorado Springs was Silicon Mountain; after the high-tech bubble burst, non-profits moved in to share the Springs with what remains of the Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Agilent world. Today there are hundreds of non-profits, thirty-two of which are religious--the most famous being James Dobson's Focus on the Family. According to John Morris, the chairman of the El Paso County Democratic Party, "Family is no longer the spokesperson for the Evangelical vote." Morris says, "Colorado Springs is no longer a black hole of Republican extremism. And our county is changing--to the surprise of outsiders." Indeed that very day Focus on the Family announced the lay-off of 46 workers. The heart of its business is Christian book sales, which Wal-Mart is now winnowing as surely as Obama is voters. .

Morris and I speak at a women's small business roundtable at the Penrose Library in downtown Colorado Springs. The room is crowded with local Democrats come to hear Colorado Governor Ritter and Kansas Governor Sebelius stump for Obama. "Not everyone here is a Democrat," crows Carol Sturman, co-founder of Sturman Industries, which makes energy-efficient industrial valves west of Colorado Springs in Teller County. "I'm sitting here as a registered Republican," Sturman says, "but my husband and I will vote for Barack Obama." The roundtable is just as much about Green Tech as politics. Governor Ritter talks about the Colorado farmers making $4,000 to $5,000 a year leasing land for wind turbines. In answer to a question about the geothermal possibilities in the San Juan River area, Ritter speaks knowledgeably and in detail. "Colorado is the fourth best state for that," he says, with the caveat that developing geothermal energy is still a decade or two in the future. Even now, however, Colorado and its governor are all about Green Tech, which is beginning to move into El Paso County and in the process bring about further change.

The promise and the threat of change, the tension between old and new, ripples up and down the I-25 corridor, from Pueblo and Colorado Springs in the South to Denver and Fort Collins in the North. Here along the Front Range of the Rockies is concentrated most of Colorado's population. The sparser eastern plains and western farms and ranches of the state have been reliably Republican, although this election year Democratic senatorial candidate Mark Udall has a 2% lead over his Republican opponent Bob Schaffer in Western Colorado, even as John McCain holds onto a one-point lead over Barack Obama there. According to Dr. Polly Baca, former State Senator, speaking in a conference call with Michelle Obama last week, Democrats in traditionally Republican Eagle County in Western Colorado are within 350 votes of tying the registration numbers there. "We've had an enormous 501c4 [political committee] drive registering Hispanics," she says. "68% to 70% of Hispanics [statewide] are for Obama."

At the close of voter registration, even though the detailed numbers have not yet been tallied, it is already clear how volatile this election will be in the Centennial State. There are 217,160 newly registered voters. At the same time, about 5,000 registration applications have been returned because on each a small box has not been checked to indicate that a Social Security number is used to verify citizenship--the requirement itself possibly illegal. There have also been questions raised about the dropping of voters from the rolls. In the three weeks after July 21, for example, 37,000 voters were purged from the Colorado rolls, but only 5,100 moved and 2,400 died in that period. More importantly, Colorado election officials do not have the resources to handle a very large turnout. Fortunately, at least a third of voters have requested mail-in ballots. (At the Obama rally in Westminster two weeks ago, almost everyone raised his or her hand as a mail-in voter.)

In the past, Colorado Springs has provided more polling booths in wealthier neighborhoods than in the poor southeastern part of the city, according to Brian Kates, who runs the city's parks and recreation centers. Citizens have had to wait in line seven and eight hours, says Andy Dunham, Professor of Political Science at Colorado College. This season, however, Democrats and Independents have been proactive. For the first time, Colorado College, which is an island of liberalism in the Springs, will have its own polling place. "My students are excited; they want to hold a beer party at the polls," Dunham says, "but I tell them, 'no, no, vote early, vote by mail.'" Professor Dunham is an Obama supporter, and he is worried, thinking that Obama should have more of a lead over McCain in Colorado. (The latest polls: Mason-Dixon October 1, tied 44/44%; FOX/Rasmussen October 5, Obama up 6 points 51/45%; Insider Advantage October 6, Obama up 6 points, 51/45%.) After all, as of September, Democrats had come within 73, 634 voters of Republican dominance. This latest breakdown shows Colorado with 955,428 registered Democrats, 1,029,062 Republicans and 1,022,575 Unaffiliated. The post-registration deadline October tally could be even closer.

The unaffiliated voter is the wild card. At this point, Coloradans can only speculate how that one-third of their electorate will swing, although, as Professor Dunham says, "probably only ten percent of the Unaffiliated are really undecided now." According to the Mason-Dixon poll, the unaffiliated vote is favoring Obama by an 18 point margin. What gives one pause, however, is the data showing that these voters are going for a third party, probably Libertarian Bob Barr, by a significant 9 percent. True to their western heritage, Coloradans like the idea of being independent spirits.

"As a political scientist, I am rarely optimistic," Dunham says. "There is profound cynicism about government here." Douglas Bruce, one of the most famous denizens of the Springs, is an example. "To understand Colorado Springs, you have to start with Bruce," several locals tell me. In 1992, Bruce, a "Ronald Reagan Republican," chivvied TABOR, a state constitutional amendment, to passage. This Taxpayers' Bill of Rights greatly restricts city, county and state tax increases. This November, Colorado Amendment 59 attempts to allocate more money for public education by eliminating certain tax rebates mandated under TABOR. Opponents of 59 are calling it "a permanent tax increase." Even before the current economic crisis, this amendment has been unlikely to pass in November. This resistance to the encroachment of "tax and spend" government is another example of the state's western character that a wash of blue will not change in a season.

In Colorado Springs, where the era of Bruce began, it is already over, however. The libertarian-spirited community has finally approved a few tax increases, "to buy urban space," as Dunham describes it, and, ironically, to improve education. In fact, I meet Brian Kates, the city recreation supervisor who works with middle schoolers in southeast Colorado Springs, at a fundraiser attended by both city Republicans and Democrats, benefiting the "Multicultural Male Retention Initiative" at Pikes Peak Community College. At last, Colorado Springs has awakened to the fact that 80% of its minority male students drop out of college in the first year and has determined to do something about it. Furthermore, the Springs has rejected Bruce himself, appointed last year to a vacant seat in the Colorado House of Representatives but defeated in the 2008 Republican primary by Mark Waller. In its choice for the U.S. House of Representatives, as well, Colorado Springs is poised to reject another incumbent Republican. Doug Lamborn, "roundly hated," according to all the locals with whom I speak, is losing so far to Democratic challenger Hal Bidlack. There are more than a few Bidlack yard signs around town, as there are Obama-Biden signs. Driving around two of the wealthier Springs neighborhoods, I count McCain and Obama yard signs in a ratio of 7 to 3.

The cooling of conservative sentiment in Colorado Springs is a temperature gauge for the state. The harbingers of change--a younger demographic, the waning of old-school Evangelical leadership, the promise of new technology, a willingness, however tentative, to begin rethinking the issue of taxes, a rise in social consciousness and the empowerment of Democrats, with the election of Democratic Senator Ken Salazar in 2004 and Governor Ritter in 2006--should have been a warning to John McCain and his campaign that he needed to secure his western base early on. Despite the fact that Colorado has gone Republican nine times in the last ten presidential elections, the Centennial state, especially given its quixotic attraction to outsiders like Perot, is no longer an Old Reliable for the Republican Party. In the first presidential debate from Oxford, Mississippi, McCain lambasted Obama for not knowing the difference between strategy and tactics; but it is McCain, in his failure to secure Colorado, who has not mastered strategy in 2008. Last March, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were still hotly contesting the Democratic primaries, John McCain, already the presumptive nominee of his party, should have begun to roll out a western strategy. It was clear that, however long the Clinton-Obama contest, Obama would prevail in the end. Even if McCain and his advisors assumed, as they genuinely may have, that Obama would accept public financing for the fall campaign, the size and strength of the Obama operations already on the ground should have signaled that states like Colorado would this time around not be level playing fields.

Tactically, McCain should have used his spring advantage to court Hispanic leaders in Colorado (as he should have done in New Mexico and Nevada as well). With the failure of his immigration bill, this rapprochement would take time; but in April, May and June McCain had time. Despite the differences in their views on domestic drilling, McCain and Obama are equally passionate about a new energy policy for the country that creates jobs to develop emerging technologies. While Obama was mired in a "he said/she said" argument with Clinton over who most strongly opposed storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, McCain should have been wooing the green techies in Colorado. McCain could even have demonstrated his oft-vaunted "bi-partisanship" by praising Democratic Governor Ritter's efforts to bring alternative energy to his state. Instead, in a meandering conversation with The Pueblo Chieftain last August, McCain called for renegotiating the 1922 Colorado River Compact and thereby dramatized his obliviousness to the contentiousness of that classic western energy, geographic and political issue: water rights. McCain's recanting a week later not only didn't convince the locals (they brought sipping straws to the McCain rally last week in Pueblo) but also stamped the Western Senator as inauthentic and erratic. Together these two flaws in the McCain persona are a major reason he is losing the presidential race, and the riff in Colorado on the River Compact was at the time a portent of bigger trouble.

Not everything going against McCain in Colorado is his fault. His in-state operations have been slow to mobilize because so many Colorado Republicans supported McCain's opponents, particularly Romney. Only after the Republican Convention and Sarah Palin's acceptance speech did Colorado Republicans start volunteering in force for McCain-Palin. The corollary on the Democratic side would have been if Barack Obama had won the Democratic nomination as a dark horse candidate, much as Lincoln did in 1860, and consequently the organizers and volunteers who had worked so hard for Hillary Clinton had to readjust, rethink and turn themselves around to work for Obama. It takes time to develop momentum anew, and that's what's happened with the RNC ground game in Colorado. Furthermore, the McCain Campaign in Colorado is relying on the tactics that have worked well in the past but may not suffice now.

The Republican get-out-the-vote effort here centers on phone banking. No question the phone banks are more sophisticated than those run by Obama field operatives and volunteers. The RNC has detailed and targeted voter lists (the famous Voter Vault database), and Republicans, seemingly by their very nature, are better organized. The Colorado phone bank events have been elegant affairs, accompanied by "Iron Chef" cook-off dinners, each week a different witty ingredient, such as pork, "for Barack Obama's record of pork barrel spending." These volunteer efforts will culminate in a big voter push the day before the election. The Obama volunteers at CJ's Bar & Grill, by contrast, scramble Crickets and call lists, with a football game blaring in the background, to try to talk to a hodge-podge of voters, many of them McCain supporters, some annoyed at how many times they have already been called.

The McCain troops may be experienced, but they are thin in the ranks. When McCain HQ in Centennial and its press liaison never return my phone calls, I resort to staking out the Victory office in Colorado Springs. Over a weekend, few volunteers come and go. The Obama Campaign, on the other hand, has not only its central office but several outlying locations in Colorado Springs, all with a steady stream of volunteers. A week ago Saturday I tag along for a canvass with two of the Texans who have arrived in town to volunteer for Obama. The sixth Obama canvass I've observed since June 2007, this one unfolds predictably: half the door knocks and rings unanswered (and clearly folks are home, for windows are open), voters moved or absent, whole blocks not receptive to a second opinion. What's remarkable about this canvass is that Joanne and Sara, good friends who have driven from Dallas only the day before, turn three McCain leaners to Obama. There's just something about Texas charm, as many Americans know now only too well. These leaners, retired citizens of modest means who are also consumers of TV political ads, believe that Obama will raise their taxes. Joanne and Sara work patiently to correct this misimpression. After four-and-a-half hours, the ladies have worked through half their canvass sheets. These painstaking, often discouraging neighborhood trudges are what it takes to get out the vote and turn an election. Three votes, even one vote at a time--that's how the Obama Campaign, lifted by the local winds of change, is eroding the Republican vote in El Paso County.

At CJ's Bar & Grill, before the bartender switches one of the big screens from ESPN to CNN for those of us waiting to see the Nashville debate, Julia, the young organizer of the watch party, describes the shift in Springs sensibility. "People are actually saying out loud they are for Obama. I've lived here twenty years, this has never happened. People say, 'I'm thinking about him. Isn't it great we have a choice?'" The context of Julia's remarks is the long-held local fear and hesitation, especially among the older generation, about expressing minority opinion. Just minutes before, Brooke, an Obama supporter and retiree whose mother named her after Brooke Hayward, has said that she and her husband "don't talk politics" with their friends. For older Democrats, silence has meant survival. At the women's business roundtable with Governors Ritter and Sebelius the previous week, longtime resident and local activist Dottie Harmon explained this older community. "Most of my friends are Republicans, so we don't talk politics. But people are quietly saying they're for Obama--especially women--and they're just not telling their husbands." Harmon, like Professor Dunham, went on to express her fears. "We [local Democrats] are a small little group. Sometimes it's like we're talking only to ourselves. What if we don't see what's really happening? Tell me--does Obama have a chance?"

The answer to Dottie Harmon's question lies in the numbers. There is no better example of the laws of inexorable consequence than math. This election season, the quantities--the newly-registered Democrats, the preference of the Unaffiliated, the Republican Obamacans--make it difficult to solve the Colorado equation in any way but for Obama. The story of the change that has come to Colorado Springs merely gives a human dimension to the figures.

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**Note: As I snaped the photo, the "Obameter" staff said: "Wait! We haven't colored it in up-to-date!"

Next week--Postcards from Colorado: Change Comes to The Holy Land; Centennial Women Against Palin, Or Not; More Texas in Colorado

Comments

[blkcfy]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for this post. I grew up in Colorado Springs, worked in the non-profit and community organizing arena there but am now in Texas. I recognize a lot of the names, even more of the issues and felt like I was right back in the thick of things in the Springs. It's interesting comparing the work for Obama here with the work there. I'll be checking your post regularly!

[JaneQCitizen]

Don't forget, Coloradoans, to mention McCain's intention to steal Colorado's water via the Arkansas River.

He wants to change agreements that have been in place for generations so that Arizona can take the water.

[TurnToTheLeft]

Wow Mayhill! This post marks a huge shift in Colorado since your last post of October 3. When you start reporting a change of the political winds into Obama's sails; I believe it. Many of your previous posts have dashed my hopes of favorable change in the Southwest towards Obama. So, if you are now starting to report on it - I believe it is real.

[albanaeon]

I personally think the truest sign of the times down here is that B ush bumper stickers outnumber Mc C's stickers by a fair margin.

[larmarch5]

What happened there in 2006. Who ran for Congress and what was the spread? What was the trend from 2004? How us Udall doing? CO has a dem gov, right?

[Aspenbreezes]

I live in Mesa County on the Western Slope. To our wonderful surprise the Obama rally in Grand Junction resulted in over 6,000 enthusiastic folks. There has been great excitement for Obama in this normally Republican area. One note ... all Obama signs have been mysteriously 'disappeariing' from folks yards ... so one can only guess what is happening to them! Thus, one can not always judge the suppport for a candidate by the signs in the yards! However, If I were to judge by the local politicians yard signs which are NOT being stolen there appears to be a LOT of Democratic support and I am very hopeful this area will go Obama.

[Willow712]

I grew up in C. Springs, and I believe C. Springs will also go to Obama. We must remember that C. Springs and Pueblo are a majority of spanish speaking Hispanic people. Pueblo is 68% Proud spanish speaking. The great majority of Pueblo has family in colorado for over 4 generations, and they still speak spanish most of the time. I grew up in the southeast of Colorado Springs. It is a very diverse area, my high school was the most diverse in C. Springs. The only areas that I could say would be for McCain would be Briargate and Monument. Colorado College, Manitou, Teller county, even the Broadmoor area (they are so charitable to help the huddled masses). I can see c. Springs go blue.

[NoSillyName]

I lived in CO for a total of about three decades. Mostly in Denver, but also in rural Elbert and Lincoln Counties and spent plenty of time in the Springs.

There is hope that CO will lost its "red state" status this year, though its hard to believe C. Spgs. would as well. So many evangelicals, the christianity-brainwashing at the Airforce Academy, all the military.... What a coup that would be!

Seems a lot of military family, in general, are going for Obama so maybe they will in the beautiful city of Colorado Springs as well.

[Tannim]

Uh, hate to tell you this as a 20-year resident, but Merrifeld, as good of a guy as he is, is only one of seven Assemblymen in the county...and the only decent one now since outspoken fiscal commonsense stalwart and economic savior of Colorado (I'm not kidding!) Doug Bruce lost to the GOP machine. Amendment 59 is Amendment 23 on steroids--both were totally horrible ideas.

Also, if Colorado College is an island of liberalism in Springs, then Manitou Springs next door, in Merrifeld's district, BTW, is Nirvana--Boulder without the whackjobs and with character.

BTW, if Obama has a 59-41 advantage on the million unaffiliateds, he wins the state.

[mjc]

Having grown up in the far West I was always astonished at the conservatism in some of the pockets of the states in that area. For some reasons there are many upstate New Yorker who have moved to Colorado Springs, either because of their children the University or because they were impressed with the skiing in that area. These folks weren't necessarily conservatives either but think some of them became more conservative.

[serena1313]

First I want to thank all the Coloradans for your personal stories. I love reading them.

Mostly Obama has kept ahead of McCain in the polls. The last time McCain crept ahead [3 points] in Colorado, according to 538.com, on 24 September 2008. Since Obama has steadily led. Both Rasmussen and Insider Advantage on 5 October and 6 October respectively showed McCain trailing Obama by 6 points.

PPP's newest poll today shows Obama ahead by 10 points.

I believe Obama will win Colorado that is if the names purged off the voter rolls do not cancel out the number of new voter registrations.

Go Colorado!

[gopnot4me]

I am a Michigan Democrat who lives in a predominatly Republican area. I am driving to Colorado this week, and have a bumper sticker on my car, "REPUBLICANS FOR OBAMA". I sure hope this gets me thru Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado safely!

[NoSillyName]

I bet you'll find some like-minded people along the way.

[DereksDontRun]

Stick to the major urban centers and you'll be just fine.

[WAstateliberal]

I must have missed it in the piece, but what percentage of the votes does Obama need to get in Colorado Springs to win the state?

[albanaeon]

From what I've heard, 40%. Shouldn't be too hard.

[GirlsRule]

I lived in Denver for many years. It did go blue for Clinton in 1992 yet that same year passed Amendment 2 which discriminated homosexuals. (the US Supreme Court would overturn that in 1996). The push for that Amendment did in fact come from Focus on The Family and other organizations in large part from Colorado Springs. A call for a worldwide boycott of the state occurred and the state was dubbed a hate state. But that was many years ago and I think the State of Colorado has evolved enormously and will go Blue in 2008.

[IndependentInColorado]

I live in Douglas County, just north of El Paso County, and home to a great many people who vote only according to who has an R next to their name. However, I am astounded and very pleased to report that my bumper sticker poll (as well as my wonderful and dedicated friends who are stumping door-to-door) that the northern end of the county is about evenly split. I am guessing Colorado will easily go Blue this year.
That One/Biden '08