February 02, 2016 02:58 PM UTC

What Iowa Says About Colorado's U.S. Senate Race

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• by: Colorado Pols

To best understand the relationship between the outcome of the Iowa caucuses yesterday and Colorado politics, we’ll refer back to the Denver Post’s John Frank, and his story late last month on the state of the Republican U.S. Senate primary:

The presidential contest is defining the early outlook on Colorado’s race, creating an opening for a political outsider, putting the focus on national security and foreshadowing a messy campaign in the months ahead.

“You are going to end up seeing some similar factionalism and similar rhetoric coming out of the Senate candidates,” said Ryan Call, the former state GOP chairman. “And it will be difficult to reconcile those ideological factions and get them to pull together in support of the nominee for president or U.S. Senate.”

Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory in the Iowa caucuses yesterday once again demonstrated the strength of the insurgent conservative grassroots in a “post-Tea Party” Republican Party–a result that needs to be repeated in the next few primaries in order overcome the stigma of Iowa picking social conservatives, but proving Cruz to be the likely recipient of Donald Trump voters should they begin to peel off en masse after his disappointing second place finish.

In Frank’s informal matchup of Colorado U.S. Senate candidates, state Sen. Tim Neville and Cruz were the logical ideological pairing. The momentum Cruz has after winning Iowa straightforwardly validates and emboldens Neville’s position in the U.S. Senate race. We’ll have to see how the potentially disruptive entry of former CSU athletic director Jack Graham into the race rebalances the enormous field of candidates. What we can say is that the Colorado Republican Party is in no position to stop Neville in favor of a Washington-favored candidate, and the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners-backed “Neville political machine” has demonstrated its power in intraparty battles from Laura Woods to Tim Leonard.

There’s a prevalent suspicion among journalists covering the U.S. Senate primary that Democrats want to run against Neville in the general election, and are building him up by focusing on him as the principal threat. But this ignores the more important reality, which is Neville has already demonstrated he is capable of winning the primary. Just as important, his ability to win is not a plug that can be pulled by the party brass.

If the history of the Iowa caucuses tells us anything, it’s not to draw any hard conclusions from their outcome. The relationships between presidential and Colorado politics aptly characterized by John Frank are all subject to change with events. They key point for today is that there is a common theme of an “unruly” conservative grassroots, which we assume they would take as a compliment, in both Ted Cruz’s victory and the Republican primary politics in Colorado.

And it is not to be underestimated by anyone.