Ok, people say - a State House level seat, so what? Well, the story is a little different here.
HD-21 sits in the heart - the belly - of neo-con country. It is the west side of El Paso County - the county that is home to New Life Church, Focus on the Family, Dobson and Haggard. HD-21 is not on their side of town, it is on the side of town with the high money houses, the old money fiscal conservative but social moderate Rs. Why focus on a race here?
Because, for the last six election cycles, Colorado statewide race winner and the state electoral college votes can be correlated almost 100% to one item - whether a D gets more than 38% of El Paso county votes.
2008:
Gov. Bill Ritter - 39.73 % - win
SoS Ken Gordon - 36.02% - loss (38% would have given him a win)
Treas. Cari Kennedy - 37.98% - win (ok, almost 38%)
AG Fern O'Brien - 25.7% - loss
The outlier is that Ken Salazar won the US Senate with 36% of El Paso County (he did get better rural voting in traditional R areas) but his AG races did correlate.
More below:
HD-21 is a district that is 48% R, 31% I, 21% D. In the last election, 9,103 votes were cast for Anna - 12,845 for her opponent. That is 41.4% of the vote. That was also 24.1% of the votes for Bill Ritter.
Michael Merrifield - the only D Colorado House member from El Paso County (we also have one D State Senator) and Anna's mentor - received 11,412 votes - 60.8%. There were 18,777 votes in his district. Between the two of them they represent almost 55% of the D votes in the county. These two districts should be a core focus for the presidential and Senate race - not just for El Paso County but for statewide efforts.
HD-17 in El Paso County actually has better registration numbers - 1/3, 1/3 1/3 roughly. It is an easier pick up. But that is because the total turnout was less than the number of votes Anna got in 2006 - Anna got 9,103, HD-17 cast 6,196 votes total.
In 2006, the candidate walked over 125 miles knocking on doors - understand the perimeter of the district is almost 300 miles - this is not central Philly doorwalking. This year, Anna's goal is to knock on all R and U doors - all Ds will be contacted by phone - the issue for Ds is not getting them to vote for Anna - it is getting them to the polls (almost 40% of registered Ds in her district did not vote - in 2006, there were over 5,700 Ds and Us that did not come to the polls).
The goal this year is to get her message to every D voter, to get them to the polls and to get the dissatisfied Rs to vote for Anna and the rest of the D ticket. The goal is to get Anna the win, to get Mark Udall the win and to get Barack Obama the 9 electoral votes from Colorado.
So I am asking for your support - donate here - and let's really make a difference.