File Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
This column is targeted to one reader: the iconoclast businessman and politico Kent Thiry.
Many believe Colorado’s best days are behind her, and understandably so as Colorado turns into a dictatorial progressive experiment of exponentially escalating regulation, spiraling property taxes and fees, and forced social engineering.
We don’t feel safe on our own city streets. Young people can’t buy their own homes. Affordable and reliable energy is no more. Small businesses are dwindling under the new minimum wages and the epidemic costs of regulatory compliance. Road funding is stolen for unused transit, making our roadways third-world, strangling commutes and commerce. And the woke agenda is codified not only in school curriculum but now with “misgendering” speech control laws.
Our state balances on a knife’s edge, tipping toward economic collapse, a la California, New York and Illinois. No wonder more and more of our productive class is pulling up stakes and moving to Florida or Texas where their talents will be encouraged to thrive.
But I think Colorado can be saved. The first step is changing election law.
You’d think Colorado’s decline is plainly obvious and, therefore, average Coloradans would stop voting for socialist-leaning Democrats and start voting for Republicans. You’d be wrong.
Colorado’s rural districts will remain Republican, as urban districts remain progressive Democrat. The fight for Colorado’s future is, as it always has been, in the swing suburban districts. I’m talking Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, and now Douglas and El Paso counties.
For the next several election cycles, these swing district voters will still largely be repulsed by Republican candidates. Chock-full of single moms, these suburban voters equate “Republican” with “Trump.” And they hate President Donald Trump, sometimes becoming unhinged. Their hatred of his personality turns to hatred of his political party. To them, “Republican” is anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-cannabis and anti-environment. They are pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and, until the blackouts hit, believe climate change is Colorado-, not China-caused.
Next year’s election, President Trump’s midterm, should be a bloodbath for Colorado Republicans. Any candidate running with an “R” behind his name in swing districts might as well have a swastika there instead.
But here’s the interesting part: These swing voters, though pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and pro-environmentalist, are not pro-crime, pro-tax, pro-regulation or pro-woke. They still won’t vote Republican, but they know, and often admit, Colorado’s leftist one-party tyrannical state is going too far.
These swing voters feel uncomfortable with both parties. That’s why now an unheard of 50% of all Colorado registered voters are independent, unaffiliated with any party. It’s why Colorado’s second-largest city has an unaffiliated mayor. They crave something that’s not R or D. Colorado could well become the nation’s first independent or unaffiliated state.
They hate the moralism of the Republicans and the fiscal carelessness and wokeness of the left. I label them as “Freedom Unaffiliateds,” which shortens to “FU.” And these people want to say FU to both parties.
But, unless Thiry changes how primaries are done, these Freedom Unaffiliateds will keep begrudgingly voting socialist Democrat over moralist Republican.
Thiry designed and funded the popular 2016 citizen’s initiative letting unaffiliated voters vote in either Republican or Democratic primaries. But he bit off more than Colorado voters were willing to chew with his initiative last year. It would have created a jungle primary system and then ranked-choice voting for the top four candidates in the general election.
Coloradans are suspicious of ranked-choice voting. But jungle primaries, where candidates from all parties, or no party, battle it out in a primary with the top two advancing to the November ballot is ripe for the whole state. Denver’s mayoral election is done this way.
In progressive urban areas it would likely mean two Democrats would be on the general ballot, one farther left than the other. In rural areas, two Republicans.
But it’s the swing districts where this changes everything. Unaffiliated, fiscally conservative, yet morally centrist candidates could finally make it to the fall ballot. And in a two-way race, they could win.
Sane, anti-crime, pro-business independents could caucus with Republicans to make Colorado viable again, and caucus with Democrats to protect social issues.
These could be (cover your ears, Republicans) the electable candidates who could win in swing districts.
But only if Thiry retools his initiative and opens our primaries.
Kent, Colorado is a state worth saving.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
Kent Thiry and Jon Caldara have both shown a disregard for the First Amendment’s right of Association. And by extension, the rights of these associations (political parties) to select from among their membership, who will represent the party on the State’s general election ballot. Both of these men would be better served if they concentrated their energy on the process whereby the Colorado Republican Party consistently nominated candidates with views that are far outside of the norms of the State’s voters.
Caldara is completely out of his mind if he actually thinks a state-wide jungle primary system won’t simply result in what’s happened in California, a state that he cited as something to avoid emulating. Especially after citing Denver, which hasn’t had a Republican mayor in 60 years and is still controlled by the political infrastructure of the McNichols machine.
As a moderate Independent who leans towards the pragmatic, I 100% agree with Caldera here. Why should my tax dollars fund primaries for only two private organizations? Partisans are free to associate but they are not free to exclude independents while using my tax dollars for their exclusive primaries.
Lets be honest. The GOP and Democrats share and protect an anti-competitive duopoly. The duopoly thrives because it acts a force multiplier for the wealthy oligarchs on both sides– Soros, Clooney, Musk, the Koch Brothers. Buying open primaries would get very expensive. Good!
Locally, the developers and homebuilders leverage the duopoly cheap. New metro districts allowed under the Colorado “Special” Tax District Act are handed out to wealthy developers at the Aurora Municipal Center with fries and a medium drink. Over a thousand new metro districts in Colorado served up as if they were “special” or uniquely needed? We’ve been played for fools.
A candidate’s actual performance doesn’t matter– just demonizing the opponent. Sadly, way too many Americans have fallen for this ruse. And it doesn’t reward compromise or solutions but rather the extreme positions. We now “primary” incumbents if they’re not extreme enough.
Open primaries won’t fix anything but it would certainly devalue the oligarchs contributions and certainly dull the extremists’ knives on both sides. And more pragmatic independents will step up and run.
Finally, Benjamin Franklin believed democracy would be fragile and would be exploited if not protected with innovation. John Adams warned of the corruption inherent in a two-party system. Without a doubt, Franklin and Adams both would vote Yes on Open Primaries.