Sen. Michael Bennet narrowly ducked a nationwide Republican wave Tuesday, passing Republican Ken Buck’s totals in the wee hours of Wednesday morning by combining “extremist” charges against Buck with a surging get-out-the-vote machine.
Bennet, appointed as a relative political unknown 22 months ago by Gov. Bill Ritter, is projected by The Denver Post as the winner in the U.S. Senate race and declared victory in a press conference at Denver’s City Park this afternoon.
Buck’s campaign said the Weld County prosecutor called Bennet with congratulations this afternoon. “My Senate campaign has been the experience of a lifetime,” Buck’s statement said. “I will be forever grateful to the thousands of Coloradans who helped make this grassroots journey possible.”
Bennet holds a 47.7 percent to 46.8 percent lead — about 15,400 votes as of 1 p.m. — which is beyond the automatic recount threshhold.
Even before Buck conceded, Democrats held a giddy, sleepless party on the plaza behind City Park’s Museum of Nature and Science. Backed by governor-elect John Hickenlooper, Sen. Mark Udall and other party leaders, Bennet told the crowd, “This is definitely a race for the record books.”
Nodding to Ritter in the crowd and mentioning the appointment, Bennet said, “Let’s face it, most people thought he had lost his mind.”
Bennet was flanked by Reps. Ed Perlmutter and Diana DeGette, two Democrats who survived, while invoking the names of two who didn’t, Reps. John Salazar and Betsy Markey. National pundits, he said, are “not going to know what happened. They’re going to scratch their heads.”
Buck spokesman Owen Loftus said this morning: “We are still looking where returns need to be reported, as well as provisional ballots before making any decisions. We will have further comment later today.”
Buck appears to have lost his lead for good in a single week in late October, when he equated homosexuality with alcoholism on “Meet the Press,” polls tightened up and key newspaper endorsements went to Bennet, said independent Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli.
Buck joins Republicans Sharron Angle of Nevada and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware as other tea party Senate candidates who came up short on Election Day.
Colorado tea party groups may have made some gains, he said, but Bennet’s win is a lesson that “campaigns and character and positions make a difference, it’s not just ‘the wave,'” Ciruli said.
The Bennet comeback win also proves Democrats know where to find their votes, he added. “Democrats in Colorado understand the ground game,” Ciruli said.
Those who helped push Bennet over the top came forward quickly Wednesday morning.
The University of Colorado’s Boulder campus and Colorado State University voting precincts were jammed with students Tuesday afternoon.
Kristin Green, a senior at CU Boulder who volunteered with nonpartisan ReEnergize the Vote and New Era Colorado, said: “Students on our campus were really fired up. It was the first time I’ve seen so many different people in different classes standing up and making announcements about voting. It was awesome.”
Colorado public opinion analyst Lori Weigel said Bennet avoided the fate of some other incumbents by successfully arguing he hadn’t been in Washington that long and was ready to fight the gridlock.
Bennet’s win over Buck vindicated, if narrowly, his appointment as a relative political unknown 22 months ago by Gov. Bill Ritter. The former Denver Public Schools chief raised tall piles of campaign money from his first month in Washington, and exploited White House ties without spotlighting them too brightly for wary Coloradans.
Bennet drew deeply from the national Democratic political bank from his first day in office, while staying at arm’s length from President Obama himself at the end of the campaign. National Democrats provided the newly-appointed Bennet a framework for his staff and prodigious fundraising, and made a late push in his primary against Andrew Romanoff.
The former Denver Public Schools chief raised millions for his campaign in his first few months in Washington. He raised and spent more than $6 million to beat back Romanoff’s challenge.
Cascading money was a theme throughout the campaign, as Colorado became the most expensive race in the country for outside spending by both conservative and progressive groups. Pro-business, union and other groups spent more than $32 million in Colorado, on top of the more than $15 million expected from the Bennet and Buck campaigns. Senate attack ads dominated local TV.
In the general election, Bennet basked in visits from more dynamic names like former President Clinton, who drew the biggest rally crowd of the Colorado elections, and First Lady Michelle Obama, who raised $270,000 for Bennet on one October afternoon.
While Bennet benefitted from the in-place Democratic machinery, he was also immediately saddled with the Democrats’ perceived responsibility for high unemployment and ballooning deficits. From the first day of the general election, campaign manager Craig Hughes laid out a strategy shifting the focus to Buck’s allegedly extreme views.
The Democrats had spent the primary collecting “tracker” video footage of Buck veering right with friendly audiences, attacking the Department of Education, abortion, earmarks and Social Security. It was time and money well spent. The footage forced Buck to waste valuable campaign time defending those positions or appearing to back away and flip-flop. “Buckpedal” became a favorite verb of progressive bloggers.
That Buck came close was a sign of how strong the anti-incumbent, anti-establishment wave has gripped not only the Republican base but the state’s unaffiliated voters.
The state’s voters are a moody lot – particularly the independents.
Since 2004, the state has shifted blue, electing that year Sen. Ken Salazar, and then two years later Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter. In 2008, the state rode the national wave and turned out for both President Obama and Sen. Mark Udall, who won by 10 percentage points, or about 225,000 votes.
In many ways, Buck’s bid to become the state’s next senator was highly flawed since Aug. 10. He changed a number of positions he took to win the Republican primary — his support of the Personhood Amendment, the consumption tax, supporting a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion and using an abortion litmus test for federal appointments.
He was gaffe-prone during debates. Twice, once in Denver and once in Washington, D.C., Buck said he wanted to “grow government” instead of “grow business.” He also repeated an earlier statement that a woman whose rape case he didn’t prosecute in 2006 had “buyer’s remorse and during Meet the Press, he compared the roots of homosexuality to alcoholism.
Bennet also played up women’s issues, convinced he could sway independent suburban voters deciding late in the campaign. Surrogates touted Bennet as “Mr. Education” to suburban and Hispanic audiences. The tactic left Bennet vulnerable to charges he was ignoring jobs and the economy, but Colorado Democrats stayed closer, later, than in most nationally-known races.
Bennet’s cerebral approach to the campaign trail didn’t always connect with voters. His lament that America had $13.5 trillion in federal debt “with nothing to show for it” was downbeat and complicated, without offering details on how he would reverse it.
But Bennet stuck to his stump speeches and town hall themes for better and worse, largely avoiding the gaffes that plagued Buck.
