Both Democrats and Republicans held statewide conventions (known locally as “assemblies”) in Colorado on Saturday, though the most noteworthy developments came in the GOP race for governor.
For Democrats, the vote played out largely as anticipated. Former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy won the party endorsement with the support of 62 percent of delegates, while Rep. Jared Polis was a distant second with 33 percent, enough to get him to the primary ballot. (Polis had also collected signatures, so if he'd failed to hit the 30 percent threshold at the convention, he might have still made it to the primary.) Former state Sen. Mike Johnston and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, meanwhile, did not compete at the convention and instead chose to gather signatures. Election officials have verified that Johnston has enough valid signatures to make the primary ballot, while Lynne’s petitions are still being processed.
On the GOP side, however, things were definitely a bit crazier, though state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, the presumptive frontrunner, won his party’s endorsement by earning the support of 43 percent of delegates. That not only ensures him of a place on June’s primary ballot but also gives him the top slot. And that can matter a great deal: Research by political scientists has demonstrated that appearing first on the ballot can add several percentage points to a candidate’s vote totals, even in high profile races.
But while the outcome for Stapleton was expected, second place yielded a surprise, as former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez took 32 percent of the vote, just clearing the 30 percent threshold needed to advance to the primary. That, however, left some major players out in the cold, particularly state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, who won a mere 6 percent. Coffman had chosen not to collect signatures, so along with businessman Barry Farah and Larimer County Commissioner Lew Gaiter, her campaign is now kaput.
Until last week, Stapleton had planned to collect signatures to make the ballot, but he’d also considered competing at the convention anyway in the hopes of blocking Coffman from winning enough support to move on. But on Tuesday, Stapleton took the unusual step of asking Colorado’s secretary of state to toss the signatures his campaign had collected, charging that the company he'd hired, Kennedy Enterprises, had engaged in fraud. That left Stapleton with no choice but to make his case to convention delegates in order to keep his campaign alive, but he got some high-profile help at the last minute. Former Rep. Tom Tancredo and Rep. Ken Buck, who both have followings among party activists, both endorsed him in the days leading up to the assembly.
By contrast, things never seemed to go right for Coffman throughout her campaign. The attorney general spent months keeping the political world guessing about whether she would run for governor or seek re-election, and she only announced her plans in November. (While Stapleton only announced he was running in September, he telegraphed his plans long in advance.) Coffman then found herself having trouble raising money in the short amount of time she gave herself, amassing a meager $85,000 war chest at the end of last year. Coffman originally planned to collect signatures rather than go through the assembly, but she announced in February that she was switching course: Going the petition route can cost $250,000 in Colorado, money she simply didn't have
But Coffman was always going to face as tough a time making inroads with the conservative delegates who dominate the convention as she had with donors. In particular, Coffman’s stance on gay rights might place her in the American mainstream, but she was very much on the outs with right-wing activists: She’d taken part in a 2017 LGBT PrideFest event, and her office had appeared in a high-profile case before the U.S. Supreme Court to defend the state's decision to penalize a baker who had refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Coffman also described her position on abortion as "a libertarian view that a woman should have a right to have an abortion that is legally guaranteed by the Supreme Court decision," which only further upset social conservatives. At the convention, Coffman used her speech to attack Stapleton for his petition problems and a DUI from the 1990s, which got her booed. In the end, Coffman’s feeble 6 percent support from delegates meant a dramatic end for a campaign that never made much sense to begin with.
But former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, whom we hadn't even mentioned before, had a very different experience. Lopez had just $23,000 in the bank in March, and his last campaign for public office went badly. In 2016, Lopez ran for the Senate, but his bid ended at the convention when little-known and under-funded candidate Darryl Glenn wowed the delegates with a speech and secured so much support that no one else competing at the assembly advanced.
But this time, it was Lopez who gave a strong speech that impressed delegates, some of whom admitted to knowing nothing about him when the day began. Lopez, who is the son of migrant farm workers, notably declared, "Like President Trump, I support legal immigration, not illegal immigration," and portrayed himself as a "different" type of Republican candidate. (Interestingly, that approach followed a pattern laid down two years earlier by Glenn, an African-American whose biggest applause line was, "All lives matter!") Lopez probably still has too little money and outside support to win in June, but we'll see if his strong showing affects the landscape.
As with Democrats, though, two notable GOP candidates, investment banker Doug Robinson and wealthy former state Rep. Victor Mitchell, eschewed the convention. Both are still waiting to hear if they filed enough signatures to make the ballot, which they’ll find out no later than April 27.