"Change begins in Colorado's Seventh District"
That is what Ed Perlmutter said was his campaign's mantra, and it was a theme that resonated with both his old friends from the Colorado Senate, and with the rising talents who filled his new headquarters.
He had been introduced by Mike Feely, who had lost the seat in '02 to Bob Beauprez by 0.07%, a mere 121 votes in a race that gave 9,422 votes to third party candidates. Mike reported that he had always said the only reason he ran that year was that Ed wouldn't. That Ed was running this time seemed to give him a sense that vindication was at hand. He seemed confident that this time his side was going to win.
There was muttering in the back of the room that there may even be icing on this cake. Beauprez' attempt at a step up might just be a step off a cliff. The Governor's mansion could just be a mirage on his horizon.
Feely introduced many people around the room, glancing from time to time at a list he had made to make sure that everyone in the long litany was acknowledged and thanked for their support and the differences they had made to their communities. Afterwards, I asked him if I could copy the list for a political blog, and he handed me the list itself and happily dictated out a few late additions.
He hesitated over giving me one name. It was a past member of the State Senate who had served with Mike and Ed and several others in the room. Mike wasn't sure if the gentleman would want his name associated with the campaign. The man was a colleague and a respected friend, but he was also a Republican, so it seemed inaccurate to call him a supporter. It was a strange paradox. Even people who don't support Ed, respect him, like him, and well... support him.
Many of the names on the list are familiar to anyone who has followed Colorado Politics, Baca, Pascoe, Keller, Matsunaka, Martinez. I think it was Sen. Keller who said that if we had any more legislators there, we would risk violating the open meetings act. I looked over at Deputy Attorney General Renny Fagan to make sure he was laughing.
Some of the names are the vanguard of the slow but visible transformation of this swing district in this swing state. People like Mayor Jerry Ditullio of Wheatridge who won by 51.5% of the vote, Aurora City Council Member Larry Beer who managed to win with a 47.2% plurality, and Sue Marinelli of the Jefferson County School Board who won a three way race with 38% of the vote.
Change was starting in the 7th, and these people intended to keep it moving across the map.
In fact, if they could stop the map itself from moving on them, they felt the Republicans had no hope. The Republicans are attempting a last minute gerrymander that could dissolve away the Democratic advantage in the seventh. The people around me were confident that the Supreme Court would not decide to load the dice, and they expressed it with an optimistic fire that too many years of Bush makes hard to kindle in my heart. But they were sure that the GOP would have to ultimately resort to their standby solution for electoral problems and try to drown them in dollars.
The word was that this could be a very expensive race. Feely tossed out a guess of 1.5 to 2 million dollars. I heard that advertising might cost, "225 a point," a phrase that, while absolutely meaningless to me, strikes me as an incredibly high amount.
Checkbooks fluttered open and donors stepped to the plate. I am a man of humble means, but I made it a point to
give a little something to the fight. But I also started thinking about where my personal talents are, and I started thinking about grass roots, and I started thinking about how amazingly large of a lawn we share.
I think there is a possibility that the real agent of change is not on the map at all. I think it can begin in the everyhere-and-here of the internet, and then leap from Blog to Ballot, and create change in the places that are ready to be leveraged. I think that Colorado's seventh is ready. I think there is a good team wanting to win the fight. I think we are the secret weapon.
Where do we go from here?