“With the click of a mouse, Tim Gill can activate dozens of donors around the country to target competitive state and local races,” she said, believing he coordinated contributions to seven legislative races that led to the flipping of the state Assembly’s majority. “When he sends that e-mail, a flood of $250 checks and $500 checks start coming in.”

• Witwer, Rob and Schrager, Adam. The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care) (p. 174). Fulcrum Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Money is to politics – and particularly campaigns – what blood is to living organisms. One literally cannot live without the other.

In Colorado, all candidates and politically related committees are required by law to register with the Secretary of State (“SOS”) and report all money received, all money paid out, and in-kind donations and expenditures. The SOS maintains a website called TRACER where all this data resides. To show what an overwhelming advantage Democrats had over Republicans in the 2018 election, this graphic from the TRACER website tells the story:

This screenshot was done in September 2018. At that time, Democratic candidates had outraised Republican candidates by a huge 5:1 margin. By the time Election Day rolled around in November, it was even worse.

Using publicly available data on TRACER, I created a database for contributions received by all of the candidates for the Colorado General Assembly who were on the ballot in the 2018 election.

To recap what a disastrous election that election was for the Republican party and freedom in the State of Colorado, Republicans lost four seats in the House, giving the Democrats a near supermajority of 41 of 65 seats and, even worse, Democrats flipped the state senate, picking up two seats to gain a 19-16 majority. Sweeping other statewide offices and with continued control of the governor’s office, Democrats created an unassailable one-party tyranny in the once red state of Colorado.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the overwhelming money advantage that the Democrats enjoyed in the 2018 election. We’ll take a look at the amounts raised by candidates of the various parties and how much of that money came from out of state.

Then we’ll do a deeper dive into the campaign finances of candidates for five selected Senate seats including the two that flipped and look more deeply into the donations for the winner of SD 24 who raised a full 26% of her campaign donations from out of state donors. Then we’ll look at the four House districts that flipped.

When we’re done, we’ll see that unless conservative/libertarians can re-direct or increase their political donation dollars to candidates for elected office in Colorado, when combined with the other aspects of The Progressive Advantage, Colorado will remain a progressive blue state, and will indeed get deeper blue with every passing year.

An Overwhelming Advantage

Candidates for the General Assembly (House and Senate) raised a little over $11.9 million to run for office in 2018, an average of $119,000 per seat. (Note: all tables are derived from TRACER data. See Methodology below)

As the above table shows, Democrats out-raised Republicans (in General Assembly races) by almost a 3:1 margin. That means more mailers, more advertising, more social media, more paid staff, more canvassers, more everything. It means victory.

Of this money, Democratic candidates raised, on average, 13% of their campaign contributions from out of state donors, while Republicans raised only 9%. In dollar terms, Democrats raised over three times as much money from out of state donors. Three times. They also reported a handful of campaign contributions from non-US addresses, which may be in violation of the law.

The Colorado Senate

The real battleground in the 2018 election was the Colorado State Senate, where the Republicans held a razor-thin one seat majority. The Democrats made no secret that their number one priority was to “flip the senate”, and “flip the senate” they did.

First the Democrats created a sexual harassment scandal and threw one of their own (Rep. Steve Lebsock) under the bus, which served two purposes: it enabled them to claim the moral high ground in the “MeToo” movement which bubbled up in late 2017, and it allowed them to attack two male Republican senators. It also served to raise the awareness around one of their candidates, Representative Faith Winter, ahead of the election.

The so-called “Fab Five” – dubbed as such by the leader of a national organization called “Flippable” which is devoted to turning Republican seats into Democratic seats – are Kerry Donovan (SD 5), Tammy Story (SD 16), Jessie Danielson (SD 20), Brittany Pettersen (SD 22), and Faith Winter (SD 24). Donovan and Danielson were incumbents running for re-election, Pettersen and Winter were sitting representatives running for the senate, and Story was running for the first time.

The “Fab Five” ran high-profile campaigns, aided and abetted by The Progressive Infrastructure and pliant Colorado media outlets, to claim victory in five senate districts, flipping two of them and allowing the Democrats to gain a 19-16 majority in the Senate, cementing one party rule and ushering in the worst legislative session in recent memory.

The amount of money raised by the “Fab Five” candidates is truly staggering: over $2 million compared to the $674,152 raised by their Republican opponents, a decisive 3:1 margin and 22% of all funds raised. That’s an amazing number. The amount of money raised from out of state donors was a whopping $351,125, almost 9 times the $40,876 raised by the Republican candidates.

It’s impossible to understate the advantage that these five Democratic candidates had. Individually, they raised an average of $402,010 each, compared to an average of $134,830 for the Republicans, giving them an insurmountable advantage in the election, which is reflected in their 46,890 vote, 15% margin of victory over the Republicans.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at the two districts that flipped, Senate District 16 where newcomer Tammy Story was matched up against incumbent Tim Neville and Senate District 24 where sitting Representative Faith Winter ran to unseat incumbent Senator Beth Martinez-Humenik.

Ms. Story raised an impressive $537,067 in her campaign for SD 16, with a full 25% of that amount coming from out of state donors. Incumbent Tim Neville, on the other hand, was only able to raise $237,342, with only 6% of his money coming from out of state. Below is a look at the top 20 amounts raised from out of state by the two candidates.

Progressive donors across the country including California, Washington, DC and New York donated tens of thousands of dollars to get an obscure candidate elected in a suburban Denver district. Why? Because they could, thanks to the Progressive Infrastructure.

The tale of Senate District 24 in the northern suburbs is even more interesting. There, in a Democratic leaning district, Republican incumbent Beth Martinez-Humenik had been serving with honor. Not the highest-rated Liberty rockstar, she nonetheless represented her constituents well, listening to them and reaching across the aisle to co-sponsor several bills with Democrats including her eventual nemesis, House District 35 Representative Faith Winter.

Representative Winter, a leading progressive activist legislator, had been frustrated for years in getting some of her pet bills including Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) and others passed. Since taking office in 2015 she had sponsored several bills that ended up getting killed in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs (SVMA) Committee. Even though she had two terms left in the House, she decided to roll the dice and run for the Senate instead, where she would have a better chance of getting her extreme agenda enacted.

Ms. Winter raised about $77,000 less than her friend Tammy Story, but still managed to rake in a respectable $460,238, with a full 26% coming in from out of state donors. In fact, Winter (D) raised more from out of state donors than Martinez-Humenik (R) raised in total.

Again, we see that progressive donors across the country including California, Washington, DC, New York and other states donated tens of thousands of dollars to get this progressive activist elected. Why? Because flipping the Colorado Senate gave the progressive Left the one-party tyranny they have been lusting after since they lost it in 2014. And, as we’ve known since 2013, national progressive groups are working to implement their agenda in a Western state far from the coasts, and Colorado with its diverse population is a natural target for this agenda.

Donations from the usual suspects including Pat Stryker, Tom Steyer and Jared Polis show up as donors to the Fab Five. This table shows some of the top donors to the five winning candidates. Look at the extreme agenda pursued by Colorado Democrats this past session, and ask yourself, who are these people representing?

One final point: Faith Winter raised just 7% of her campaign contributions from donors in the Zip Codes that reside in Senate District 24. Who, exactly, is she representing in the Colorado Senate?

The Colorado House

Now, let’s take a look at the four House districts that flipped. They are: House District 25, where Tim Leonard (R) was replaced by Lisa Cutter (D); House District 34, where “Skinny” Winkler (who replaced Steve Lebsock (D)) was replaced by Kyle Mullica (D); and House District 37, where Tom Sullivan (D) replaced Cole Wist (R). Finally, Republicans lost House District 27 when incumbent Lang Sias ran for Lt. Governor. That seat was picked up by the first openly transgender person, Democrat Brianna Titone, who defeated a woman named Vicki Pyne (R).

For these four districts, Democrat candidates outraised Republican candidates by a 3:1 margin. In dollar terms, they had more than twice as much money coming in from out of state donors. They had a combined vote total of 88,650 votes over 76,801, a margin of victory of 11,849 or 7%. In dollar terms, none of these four races was competitive.

Here’s a look at the campaign finances for the two candidates in House District 25 who were on the ballot.

As this shows, winning candidate Lisa Cutter out-raised her opponent by a margin of almost 3 to 1. And while both candidates raised about the same amount of money from outside Colorado, on a percentage basis the Republican raised more from out of state.

Cutter (D) won by 6 percentage points in a district that had more registered Republicans than Democrats, showing the advantage that money brought to her campaign.

In House District 34, which elected Democrat Steve Lebsock in 2016, incumbent Alexander “Skinny” Winkler raised a paltry $8,162 compared to the $128,361 raised by his opponent, Democrat Kyle Mullica, who also raised a whopping $10,814 from out of state donors, representing 8% of his total haul. In this heavily Democratic district, this result is no surprise.

House District 37 in Centennial saw incumbent Cole Wist (R) matched against Tom Sullivan (D) in his second bid for public office. Despite being a highly respected legislator and Assistant Minority Leader, Wist was out-raised by almost 2 to 1. In the end, Sullivan won by an 8% margin in a district with more registered Republicans than Democrats. One wonders what impact Wist’s support of last year’s “red flag” bill had on his re-election. Of particular note is how Rocky Mountain Gun Owners campaigned against Wist over the summer of 2018. One hopes that they are happy that they helped elect Tom Sullivan (D), co-sponsor of HB 19-1177 (the so-called “Red Flag Bill”) which was just signed into law by Governor Polis a few days ago.

The most interesting race to me is House District 27 in Jefferson County, a district with more Republicans registered to vote than Democrats, a seat held by Republicans for several cycles. In that race, incumbent Lang Sias (R) became the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, so a woman named Vicky Pyne became the Republican candidate. Ms. Pyne raised $30,843 (with $2,055 or 7% of her total from out of state), which was not nearly enough to compete with the $83,992 ($12,419 or 15% from out of state) raised by Democrat Brianna Titone, the first openly transgender person elected to the Colorado House.  Representative Titone won by only 439 votes, so I expect that race to be very competitive in the next election.

From these numbers, and others that I’ve looked at in preparing this blog post, it’s clear to me that turning Colorado a deeper blue was a top priority for national progressive groups and our in-state progressive cabal: the Gang of Four and their allies, confederates and subordinates. The entire universe of Leftist activism worked hard and raised staggering amounts of money to implement their aggressively radical agenda in Colorado through the 2019-2020 legislative sessions.

I’ve always thought that due to the cyclical nature of politics that Colorado would naturally swing back to red in a future election. But now, with the overwhelming advantages progressives enjoy, I don’t see that happening all by itself.

To illustrate the point that Colorado may not be entirely “blue” yet, the map below depicts the counties that have indicated they will not support HB 19-1177 the “Extreme Risk Protection Order” bill just signed into law by Governor Polis over the significant objections of citizens and law enforcement across the state.

I know there’s a lot of red on this map, but if we conservative/libertarians don’t step up with our time, treasure and activism, it won’t matter.

By Richard D. Turnquist

April 20, 2019

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Methodology:

1. I went to TRACER and downloaded the files for total contributions in 2017 and 2018. I combined the two files into one.
2. I went to TRACER and ran a report of candidates in the 2018 election. I exported it to a .csv file, which I then converted into an Excel workbook.
3. Using the Committee Name as the primary key, I used the Excel VLOOKUP function to add “Office” and “Party”.
4. I then filtered on the House and Senate districts and copied the filtered data to a new workbook – the “Final Candidate Dataset”
5. To identify “Colorado” vs. “Non-Colorado” donors, I used a simple “IF” statement to look at the state field in the database and return either “CO” or “Non-CO”.
6. I created various pivot tables to create the tables shown in this blog post.
7. I checked totals against the totals raised shown on the TRACER political race search. In most cases they tied to the penny, in a few they were off by immaterial amounts. I chose to use the data I downloaded without trying to “plug” any differences.
8. The data table is linked below. Users may feel free to download and use the data, but I take no responsibility for what happens with the data after it is downloaded by others.
9. I got vote totals from the SOS website. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/91808/Web02-state.222648/#/