Colorado State Open Thread:
Usually happening Sunday mornings!
Oh, hi! It’s another beautiful early fall day here in Colorado. It’s gonna be in the mid 70s today, & the Broncos are undefeated despite uncertainty at quarterback. After some roller-coaster polling over the last two months, Team Blue is regaining our footing: after giving back all of a 14 point lead, Clinton is now showing signs of a post-debate advantage, although slim. Former Senate President, black belt, and all-around great person Morgan Carroll is lookin’ good against incumbent Mike Coffman (R-Kochlandia) in CO-6: Aurora-Brighton-Henderson-Thornton, and Gail Schwartz is fighting hard against incumbent R Scott Tipton in C0-3: Western Slope and Pueblo.
Meanwhile, in CO-4 and CO-5, we have our valiant contenders in solid Republican Congressional districts. In CO-5; Colorado Springs-El Paso County, Misty Plowright got notice for being the first transgendered federal House candidate, going up against Tea Party loon Doug Lamborn.
And in CO-4, Greeley-Longmont-Douglas County-Eastern Plains, Bob Seay--a music teacher and marching band director living in the Plains community of Lamar--is challenging the incumbent: noted prosecutor (unless he believes your rape was buyer's remorse) Ken Buck, who ran for Senate in 2010--narrowly losing to Michael Bennet--and who won this House seat in 2014, when incumbent Cory Gardner ran for and sadly won a Senate seat from Mark Udall.
While CO-4 is a daunting R+12, many of those Republicans don’t really like Ken Buck. It can be said, and is frequently said, that Buck is not interested in representing much of CO-4 outside of fracked-over Weld County, especially those residents who live south of I-70.
Are you here? You should get in touch with me to Seay how you can help. Seay what I did there?
If you haven’t met me yet, I came to this here site in 2008 all FIRED UP! and READY TO GO! And now, here I am... managing Bob's campaign. I've been active in local politics, but this is my first effort to manage a campaign, and it’s at Congressional level. While some days I feel overwhelmed, this experience is really something special and rare. This job fell to me because the experienced pros are working the races that Dems are competing to win; this isn’t considered one of those races, I get it. Bob & I want to win more than we fear losing. We care about people on the Plains; these people should matter, they should be listened to and represented, instead of ignored. These towns have serious economic challenges, and no lack of paths to economic revitalization, but rather, an advocate for those ideas & solutions.
Bob is committed to representing the ENTIRE district, not just the pro-fracking and recently secessionist parts of it. No really, read that piece and listen to the residents. These people may be on one hand reacting to the chafe of cultural progress in urban parts of the state, but more significantly, they generally do not feel represented. No one is going to them; no one is listening. They will be the first to say that in their small towns, their chief export is their kids. They want a better life, they don’t feel represented, and that means we can get some of, if not all of, their votes.
Yes, really. We can get the votes of Republicans who, while sometimes/often disagreeing with Bob Seay on policies like choice, cannabis, healthcare, fracking vs clean energy etc, will still vote for the guy who actually shows up and listens; who lives in a farming community in the neglected southeastern part of the state, and who is a genuinely good guy who wants to do right by ALL his constituents. He is really the antithesis of Buck, a man who said publicly that he didn’t want to be asked about Obama’s citizenship on camera.
Bob had his first chance to debate Buck this week on Colorado Public Television’s show Colorado Decides; it first aired Friday night, and you can watch it here. When you watch, you see Bob’s sincerity and Buck’s attempt to seem reasonable, while repeating the same discredited ideas about improving healthcare by making it more free-market oriented, and attacking government spending while having failed to bring federal money to the starved communities of the eastern Plains.
So, if we are seriously talking about taking back the gerrymandered House this cycle, we’d do well to fight in these districts where a local can tell you we have more of a chance than is superficially evident. The crosstab from an August Marist poll shows that in the portion of Colorado labeled East, which is overwhelmingly in-district, Trump’s disapproval rating was 64%. Pence as a less known quantity has a net unfavorable rating, and Senate GOP candidate Glenn was ahead of Bennet by only 2 points. A Democrat won this district only once in my lifetime; that was in 2008, the Obama Wave. This year, we are banking on a Trump Trough.
I am biased, but I see a real opportunity, one we must be prepared to seize fully depending on how the rest of October shakes out. What we need is what every campaign needs: volunteers and money. We don’t need a lot of money, but we do need to be able to fund relatively cheap ads on social media and local radio. We are making inroads with locals, and with groups who have a stake in the district. Won’t you pitch in for these fights, for good people working hard in places we aren’t supposed to bother competing in?
Close it out, Bob:
Not an official campaign hoodie. It is cool, though.
I am running because I believe that in the United States in 2016, people should not be bankrupt or dying because they can’t afford healthcare. They should not be locked out of college. They should not be denied the right to a dignified retirement. I am running so we can reclaim our democracy and take back our government. As a teacher, I see the promise of America’s future every day. I am running so we can realize that promise.
BobForColorado.org
