Over the course of four recent spring days, Colorado hosted three 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — an unusual amount of political traffic so early in the election cycle for a swing state that is more familiar with a blitz during the run-up to Election Day.
Get used to the unseasonable attention.
Colorado Democrats and unaffiliated voters can expect to play a new and critical role in choosing the party’s next presidential nominee.
Political experts in the first four nominating states suggest that the field of at least 18 candidates won’t be narrowed easily, which means the states that vote in early March 2020 — including Colorado — will have a crack at vetting them.
While Colorado has not yet set a date for its presidential primary — the first since voters agreed in 2016 to abandon the caucus system — there is a strong possibility the state will vote on Super Tuesday, according to Colorado Democrats and state officials. Super Tuesday occurs the first week in March and is the day that sees the single greatest number of state primaries.
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Colorado isn’t the largest state that will vote in early March, as it will share the stage with the likes of California and Texas, but the state is still a valuable primary prize, observers agree.
The state’s size, changing demographics, location in the West and status as a national bellwether all make it appealing.
“I’d expect every serious Democratic candidate competing on Super Tuesday to compete in Colorado,” said Jeff Berman, a 2008 campaign aide to then-Sen. Barack Obama.
The puzzle
The way Sue Dvorsky, the former chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party, sees it, the presidential primary is a jigsaw puzzle. The earliest states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — have a history of putting that puzzle together for the rest of the nation, but that’s not going to happen this time.
“We don’t even know if it’s a 500-piece or a 1,000-piece puzzle yet,” she said.
The way the nominating system works is that each state gets a certain number of delegates who will cast votes for the nominee at the Democratic Party’s national convention. The number of delegates each state has is based on a formula developed by the national party. The bigger the state, the larger the number of delegates.
All state delegates are awarded to candidates on a proportional basis. However, a candidate must receive at least 15 percent of the vote in either a primary or a caucus to be awarded any delegates. To win the nomination, a nominee must lock up 51 percent of the vote at the national convention — or about 2,000 delegates.
These rules coupled with a large field have several candidates and observers expecting a protracted primary, making Super Tuesday an even more critical test.
Combined, the four early states only account for an estimated 155 delegates. Meanwhile, nearly 1,500 delegates, including Colorado’s estimated 67, could be up for grabs in more than a dozen states on March 3.
The states that have already confirmed they will vote on Super Tuesday stretch from Massachusetts to Utah and beyond, challenging candidates who have survived the early states to fan out across the nation.
Presidential candidates who recognize the mathematical reality of earning 51 percent of the party’s delegates have already made trips to Puerto Rico, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Candidates eyeing Colorado
Before she took the stage Tuesday night at the Stanley Marketplace in Aurora, presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren met with Ami Prichard, a Jefferson County teacher, and nearly a dozen other educators.
Huddled in a brewery on the second floor, Warren asked Prichard what was important to her and what sort of national policies would lead to better schools.
“I thought that Warren’s approach was different than previous primaries,” said Prichard, who represents Colorado in the National Education Association, the largest teachers union. “She listened. That was very unique. Usually, you just get a handshake. I thought that was very impressive. And she stayed for hours for every person who wanted a picture.”
That type of intimate interaction with a candidate wouldn’t be out of place in Iowa or New Hampshire, where voters expect candidates to discuss policies in their kitchen. That it happened in Colorado is fresh evidence that presidential hopefuls are seeking new ways to grab an early stronghold in other states.
“Elizabeth’s decision to forgo high dollar fundraisers and call-time means she’s doing the work of building a grassroots movement — state by state, face to face,” a Warren spokeswoman said in a statement. “She’s talking to people everywhere about the big, structural changes we need to make to put power back in the hands of the people.”
Prior to Warren’s visit, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs. While on stage, the Daily Camera reported, the Minnesota senator joked that Colorado and her home state have a lot in common, attacked President Donald Trump and discussed how climate change — a top priority for Democratic voters — has led to destruction across the United States.
John Hickenlooper isn’t taking his home state for granted, either. The former Colorado governor held a pair of events Tuesday in which he met with survivors of gun violence and announced an endorsement from the Greater Denver Ministerial Alliance, an organization of mostly African American churches.
Bishop Jerry Demmer, president of the alliance, said it was important for his organization to send a message to African-American voters in Colorado and across the nation that Hickenlooper would work on their behalf.
“This man reaches out, and he’s personal,” Demmer said. “He’ll reach out to everyone on a personal level. We’ve seen him stand up for justice.”
And U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won Colorado’s 2016 caucus, is another candidate working early to win Colorado’s votes. The campaign is planning events statewide later this month and is celebrating more than 26,000 donations from Coloradans.
“In 2016 Coloradans overwhelming supported Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for president and since then our grassroots movement has only grown stronger,” Jeff Weaver, a senior campaign aide, said in a statement. “Looking ahead to the 2020 primary, we plan not only to compete in Colorado, but to win the primary and complete the political revolution we started in 2016.”
New system, new appeal
Colorado Democrats have in recent election cycles participated in Super Tuesday. However, 2020 is going to be different as the state moves from a caucus run by the parties to a primary run by the state.
Supporters of primaries say they allow more voters to participate. However, caucuses have played a crucial role in elevating lesser-known “activist” candidates such as Obama.
Voters approved the change after both parties had a disastrous caucus that made headlines and caused great umbrage among rank-and-file party members — including some Democrats whom were turned away on caucus night. Part of the new system that makes Colorado an appealing state to win, campaigns and political insiders said, is that unaffiliated voters are allowed to choose either party’s ballot.
Unaffiliated voters are the largest voting bloc in Colorado, and in 2018 they overwhelmingly voted with Democrats. Any presidential candidate who can capture those types of voters in a primary could use it to bolster their case that they’re the most electable in a general election, which attracts more of the same type of voter, said Paul Teske, dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver.
“We’re still purple — shading toward blue. That makes us an interesting state for candidates,” Teske said. “It could foreshadow how they would do in Pennsylvania or Ohio.”
Colorado is also more representative of the nation than other Super Tuesday states, with its growing Latino population, bustling suburbs and urban core popular with millennials.
“We’re a swing state. We represent a state that is up for grabs that is on neither coast — we’re the West. We do things differently and unconventionally here,” said Morgan Carroll, the Colorado Democratic Party chairwoman. “If a candidate can’t win Colorado, they may not be able to win.”
Gov. Jared Polis has until September to choose which Tuesday in March the primary will be held on. However, a spokeswoman for the governor said an announcement could come within weeks.
For now, Carroll is operating under the assumption that Colorado Democrats will be part of Super Tuesday. The date, along with a few other crucial deadlines, is written out on the whiteboard in her office.
“It ups our status,” she said. “It improves the chance that we’re an early target and get to help shape the conversation.”
