Colorado's elections are shaping up to be some of the most interesting in the 2014 election cycle with a high-profile Senate contest between Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Cory Gardner and a gubernatorial campaign coming off the heals of last year's heated gun policy debate at the state capital.
So, you might expect guns to be a major issue that the electorate wants to hear about from the candidates. But despite what you may have read from pro gun advocates on Daily Kos and elsewhere, guns are not the issue in Colorado.
The state GOP held its precinct caucuses this week and in the counties that held straw polls (and the counties that did, are the ones you would expect to include a lot of pro-gun sentiment), the most pro-gun GOP candidate for governor did not win.
In fact, that candidate didn't finish second, nor third, not even fourth. The most pro-gun GOP candidate for governor — the state Senator who holds an annual watermelon shoot where guests and politicians blast away with AR-15s and 30 round magazines, the candidate who has his wife and kids pose for family pictures with assault rifles — finished fifth out of six, or seven if you count "other".
Also noteworthy: Sen. Greg Brophy had very little support in the counties that held straw polls. We would think such an outspoken conservative as Brophy would have had a bit more support among GOP caucus-goers.
http://coloradopols.com/...
In fact, Tom Tancredo, Colorado's former long-time GOP congressman, beat out Brophy for third place in the polls. Tancredo, of course, voted for gun control policy after the Columbine tragedy in 1999.
More below
It should be noted that the GOP did not conduct a statewide poll, and only certain counties decided to conduct their own polls:
To its discredit, Colorado's Republican Party chose to NOT conduct a statewide straw poll on any of the primary races in 2014. What are they afraid of, I wonder? To their credit, however, many counties chose to conduct straw polls independently. My county of Weld was one of them as was Douglas County, whose website has conveniently aggregated all of the county by county straw polls from. ... Douglas, Broomfield, Pueblo (partial), Yuma, Larimer (partial), Adams (partial) Montrose, Weld, Teller (governor only), and Boulder. http://www.threesources.com/...
So, if GOP caucus-goers (the heart and soul of Colorado's conservatives) don't put guns at the top of the list, you can be certain it is not at the top of the list of a majority of Colorado voters.
Brophy chalked up his poor showing to people not knowing who he was:
But Brophy said he plans to spend the next month trying to “close the deal” with the delegates because “it’s clear from the people who watched the debates I’m doing well.” He added his fifth-place showing Tuesday night was a “function of name ID.”
http://blogs.denverpost.com/...
Precisely — no one knows who Sen. Brophy is because most voters put the gun issue at the bottom of their lists, especially in a state wide race for governor.