Yeah (but we still have to work with them in the general election..sigh). ( ;) I am ALSO happy that Kopp won (btw I helped minimallly on his campaign too,..it was great too wasn't it :D )
A big part of the moderate's death grip on CO politics is based on sneaking moderate R's into power in very conservative districts. They tried to do it in SD22 this year by having Norma Anderson resign and then appointing Kiki Traylor as her replacement, hoping that Kiki could win the primary as the incumbent. Kiki is a really nice, smart lady; but she's not conservative by any stretch of the imagination. They thought they had done the same thing in HD 28 two years ago, but Jim Kerr is turning out to be a pretty good representative.
Of course, the other half of the moderate power base is buckets of money from the RNC to scare conservatives out of running in the primaries or to fight conservatives in the primaries (e.g. Bob Schaffer).