Hotly contested races make for fun primary days.
Plagiarism? Check. Gender politics? Check. Charges of Wall Street coziness? Check. Competing presidential endorsements? Check. Bicycle-sharing as a United Nations plot? Check. Selling house for campaign cash? Check.
Add to that the last-minute gubernatorial candidacy of an independent party spoiler in the name of former five-term conservative Rep. Tom Tancredo, and the political situation in Colorado is "pandemonium," says Denver-based pollster Floyd Ciruli.
The pandemonium on the Republican side is more of sideshow for now, though. The self-destruction in the Republican gubernatorial race seems to make the way clear for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, the Dem candidate vying for governor's office. And the Republicans vying for the Republican Senate nomination haven't been able to compete in generating interest with their colleagues in the governor's race. So tonight's real race to watch is the Dem Senate primary.
The Democrats' Senate contest pits Obama-endorsed Bennet against Andrew Romanoff, who secured former President Bill Clinton's endorsement — and recently sold his house to infuse cash into his insurgent campaign.
Romanoff, a former state speaker of the house, has used a series of hard-hitting and controversial advertisements — criticized as unfair by some in the party — to link Bennet with Wall Street interests.
The other good part about hotly contested races? Voter enthusiasm.
The Secretary of State's Office says of the 1.5 million ballots were mailed out and more than half -- 600,000 -- are already turned in. That's almost 200,000 more people than voted in the 2008 Senate primary and there's still got a day to go.....
Many counties reported record numbers for a primary. In Adams County nearly 35,000 ballots have been turned in so far -- 6,000 more than the entire 2008 primary and 13,000 more than the 2006 primary.
This was the first year that Colorado counties had the option of conducting their primary with all mail-in balloting, and it appears to be a big hit. Hopefully Colorado Dems will be able to capitalize on this enthusiasm--which the most recent polling indicates is pretty evenly split--and carry it through November 2nd so that they can beat whichever Republican crazies end up on the general election ballot.
Let's watch for returns here. Hopefully all the early voting will translate into early reporting.
Update: First results in (I'm here, kdvr.biz/public/election.html for lack of a better source). With 14% of precincts reporting, Romanoff leads 51-49.
Update 2:, Ok new site, the Denver Post: http://www.denverpost.com/... With 47% reporting, it's Bennet over Romanoff, 53-46.
Update 3: Two more results-watching links: Politico, and AP. With 58 57% in, it's Bennet 54.1, Romanoff 45.9.
Udpate 4: In other news, the GOP Sen is close, Buck has a 2 point lead over Norton 51-49. For governor, UN conspiracy theorist Maes leads plagiarizer McInnis, 52-48.
Update 5: Via bumblebums in comments, the Denver Post tweets that they project Bennet the winner. That's not quite calling it for Bennet, but may as well be.
Update 6: AP is calling it for Bennet, and Politico reporter Dave Catanese tweets that Romanoff has called Bennet to concede. That was fast.