On Monday—Women's Equality Day—six Democratic women who are running for Senate in Colorado co-signed a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, asking the DSCC to rescind its endorsement of former Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Late last week, the committee gave its backing to Hickenlooper in unusually tepid form, simply taking note of his candidacy in a cryptic tweet that HuffPost reporter Kevin Robillard had to confirm in fact actually constituted an endorsement. A DSCC spokesperson later insisted, apparently in response to the joint letter, "John Hickenlooper is far and away the strongest candidate to beat Cory Gardner, and we’re proud to support him in his run for Senate."
That's exactly what the signatories contest, though. The authors, who include two of the higher-profile candidates in the primary, former state House Majority Leader Alice Madden and state Sen. Angela Williams, observe that they've all "seen well-qualified women passed over for male candidates in the workplace time and again," and they note the important role women voters and politicians have played in turning Colorado blue over the last 15 years.
They also cite Hickenlooper's hostile rhetoric toward progressives, but most searingly, they point out, "Washington Democrats have recruited candidates with profiles similar to Governor Hickenlooper with much fanfare, only to see those candidates come up short in the general election," specifically highlighting failures in Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee.
All three of those states saw once-popular former governors—Ted Strickland, Evan Bayh, and Phil Bredesen—begin as highly touted Senate recruits in the last two cycles, only to watch them fall in the end to Republican opponents. Of course, all three of those states are red (and getting redder), while Colorado has trended in the opposite direction.
However, a poll last week for former state Sen. Mike Johnston (another Democrat who's shown no interest in leaving the race) suggests that Hickenlooper doesn't possesses any particular advantage other than name recognition: A generic Democrat sported the same 10-point lead as the ex-governor in matchups against Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, and Hickenlooper's favorability score was just 46-42
And that's at the core of the argument made by the letter's authors. They say that, by its actions, the DSCC "is implying that we should defer to a male candidate because you seem to believe he is 'more electable.'" Even if the committee were right that Hickenlooper really is the stronger bet, its involvement on his behalf still sends an unwelcome message to core Democratic constituencies.
But even the former governor's supporters are struggling to make that claim: A poll from 314 Action, a group backing Hickenlooper's candidacy, found him leading Gardner by 13 points, a margin not much better than what Johnston's internal showed, and with a favorability rating of 45-38—again, very similar numbers. If there's polling out there showing that Hickenlooper is a world-beating candidate no one can match, we haven't seen it. And even if there is, a lot can change between now and November of next year. Just ask Strickland, Bayh, and Bredesen.