November 07, 2016 12:59 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Fractured and Flummoxed

• 7 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As Dave Weigel reports for the Washington Post today, there is a stark difference in Colorado when it comes to GOTV efforts that does not bode well for Republicans. As Weigel writes, Republicans “are counting on voters to come home; the Democrats are simply counting voters.”:

…The gap between strategies is visible everywhere, even at the early-vote rallies the parties have held to close the campaign. On Friday afternoon, former president Bill Clinton made three stops across the state, joined by Democratic leaders. The subject, each time, was how to turn in votes. Every attendee was given a sheet with possible volunteer times, and staff members flitted around to pick them up….

The same day, the campaign of Republican nominee Donald Trump sent two of its surrogates, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), to a faith group’s get-out-the-vote event in an Aurora senior living center. There was no one at the door urging people to volunteer. Two boxes of Trump campaign rally signs in the back of the room went largely untouched. In their speeches, Carson, Fallin and state party chairman Steve House focused less on the mechanics of the election than the need to defeat Clinton…

…Despite big victories in 2014, Colorado’s Republican Party has been riven by infighting, the cruelest of it pitting House against state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. Her husband, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo.), represents a district that covers Aurora. He is one of a handful of Republicans running explicitly anti-Trump ads.

Well, would you look at that: Another Coffmangate reference!

Setting aside the infighting narrative for a moment, Republican problems with field operations in Colorado (and across the country) have been a consistent theme in 2016. The GOP has had serious problems with its turnout operation in Colorado for several cycles now, and as Weigel’s story shows, not much has been done to address the issue. This was the first election cycle we can recall in which Republicans did not outpace Democrats in early voting returns, which is a problem even without a Republican Presidential nominee who is about as interested in field operations as he is in fact-checking.

You can certainly blame an enthusiasm gap for some of the GOP’s voter turnout problems, but polls have shown that Democrats aren’t all that thrilled about Hillary Clinton, either. For whatever reason, Colorado Republicans just aren’t adapting to the changing electorate in Colorado.