Posted on 11/03/2010 1:31:20 PM PDT by Kartographer
Sen. Michael Bennet has narrowly defeated tea party Republican Ken Buck to win a hard-fought Senate seat in Colorado.
The victory for Bennet allows Democrats to hold onto a seat once viewed a prime opportunity for the GOP to make gains.
Bennet provided a crucial firewall against further Republican gains in the Senate during midterm elections. The race attracted more out-of-state campaign money than any other Senate contest this year.
In a victory speech, Bennet called it a "race for the record books."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
First off, Colorado has always been a politically split state with many independent minded individuals who don't follow conventional patterns.
Having said that, there has been a significant migration to Colorado over the last 15-20 years of liberal leaning voters. Even though Buck carried 35 counties to Bennet's 29, Democrat enclaves like Denver County with 71% of the vote and Boulder County with 67%, went big time for Bennet.
I figured conservative El Paso County would give Buck enough votes to put him over the top. In the end, Buck received 60% of the votes here in El Paso County. Even though Rep Doug Lamborn was reelected with 66% of the vote. Even with that extra 6%, Buck still would have come up short.
The truth is, the Colorado GOP is not the force it once was. And like most Republican candidates running for office in Colorado in recent years, Buck did not run a good campaign and had a very weak closing effort. Buck allowed endless negative adds in the last month to go completely unanswered. Ads that lambasted him with innuendo, half truths and outright lies.
Colorado did pick up two seats giving them control of the state contingent to the House of Representatives in DC. Looks like Republicans might win control of the Colorado state House, after all votes are counted in two remaining races.
Another legacy of Dan Maes, but it is my understanding that Buck ran a really poor campaign, unlike the women candidates in DE and NV who did the best they could under impossible circumstances. CO is much more liberal, and very secular, not the conservative state that it was in the days of Senators Dominick and Allot.
Maybe the CO GOP should move its headquarters to Cheyenne to learn how to secure Republican victories in the Mountain West.
Didn’t Mr. Buck at one point lash out against people who were inclined to support him anyway? Or was that Johnson in WI?
Candidate quality matters...
Some of these people who were “outside the beltway” candidates didn’t have what it takes. sad.
We live and we learn. But I hope we do better vetting of conservative candidates next time. I want conservative candidates who can WIN
What we need to do is go over the ballets in just one fairly large city that has a university carefully. We need to spend the money and find out if each and every vote casted in that city is legitimate to the point of cross checking the college student’s votes with the locations of their parents homes and find out if they voted twice. We need to find out if each person that said they voted is a legal citizen or if they are on parole. We need to find out if they are dead or if possible if they even in deed did vote. We need to take the election apart in just one suspect city and find out just what went on. We need to find out just how much cheating is going on. Whatever mechanisms for cheating are going on in that city you can be sure are going on in countless places. It wouldn’t surprise me if countless elections are lost not because of votes but because of vote fraud. We MUST get a firm grip on this situation and put it to a stop. This has to be our priority and we must do all we can and put as much of our resources on this as necessary.
Have the military votes been counted yet?
Isn’t it just amazing how when elections are real close they always seem to come out on the democrats side.
You can say that again!!!
Demand one whether it is automatic or not.
And we need to go through the time, trouble and expense and find out if the votes that are there are legit. We MUST get to the bottom of this!
I vote social issues first. You want to pander to rich homosexuals, go for it.
Going off message into social issues means your candidate loses the election. Where does that get you and the issues you care about?
I’m not hard-hard line, but if you’re talking lid-lite, I’m outta here.
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