I was hoping the Rocky Mountain News/News 4 POS poll, the one that showed Bush ahead of Kerry in Colorado by only one point, would also poll the Senate race. They did, and the results . . . wow:
Salazar 53%
Coors 42%
Undecided 4%
Salazar's expanding lead is due to his popularity with independents, Latinos, and rural voters (three groups where there is a lot of overlap). Did you know Pete Coors supported Referendum A, which rural Coloradans overwhelmingly opposed as a Front Range water grab? Ken Salazar knows. Never underestimate the power of water politics in the West -- and don't underestimate how huge a miscalculation Referendum A was for the Colorado Republican Party.
The real bad news for Coors is in the details. His negatives are double those of Salazar, showing he has inherited the legacy of bitterness against the Coors family due to decades of bad employment policy and right wing politics -- regardless of the attempt in recent years to reposition the company as pro-gay, pro-Latino and pro-union. Coors and Salazar both have high name recognition, but one third of the voters identify him only as a beer company guy, while Salazar is well known as the Attorney General.
Also, the attempts of the "Americans for Job Security" 527 (apparently funded by Big Pharma) to portray Salazar as weak on the environment has been apparently too implausible for Colorado voters to swallow -- Salazar gets much higher marks on the environment than does Coors. I believe injecting the environment into the political debate in Colorado generally helps Democrats, the exception that proves the rule being Wayne Allard's 2002 campaign where he successfully portrayed himself as a stout defender of Colorado wilderness by pumping that as his main issue from the get-go.
Coors' main issue has been tax cuts, which are traditionally popular here but which seem strangely anachronistic in light of the mammoth tax cuts for people like Coors that have already been enacted. Also, Salazar's deficit hawk position contrasts well with Coors in a state where Ross Perot had a lot of appeal to Democrats, Republicans and independents.
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