Summary: Today, WAYLA focuses on picking and choosing followers on Twitter, stemming from Colorado Republicans "scrubbing" their liberal followers - what it means for each party, for future campaigns, and what they're missing.
On Monday, ColoradoPols.com - a Democratic-leaning political blog in Colorado - reported that Republicans on Twitter began purging liberals from their list of followers over the weekend.
From the post:
Apparently the word went out over the weekend that "liberals" are attempting to "follow" Republicans on Twitter. This is being interpreted as a bad, nefarious thing, needing to be stopped, although "following" on Twitter is in most other circles considered desirable. In fact we're not certain under what circumstances attracting Twitter followers is undesirable, but then again we've been following Republican “tweets” ourselves. We understand why some of them would prefer to not have just anybody seeing this stuff.
We're told that the advice to begin 'purging' liberals from high-profile conservative Twitter accounts was supposed to have gone out quietly, with the goal being an under-the-radar purge.
Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis (R-09) didn’t do it very quietly, however, tweeting “Important! Many libs and progressives attempting 2 Follow conservatives. Scrub your "followers" I blocked three more today. #tcot #redco”
This development is interesting for two reasons.
The first is how the GOP is using Twitter. They want to be able to rally supporters without the other side getting word of the language or tactics they’re using.
Unfortunately for them - as they should know - anything done or said in the political realm in this day and age can be leaked faster than water in a sieve. Just take President Obama’s comments about Kanye West the other day, or many of the embarrassing tweets Republicans have made that we have relayed here on WAYLA.
As we said in a post about new media last month:
"The point is that politicians wouldn’t (in most cases) say those sorts of things to rally supporters in a speech - because that too would be picked up by the mainstream media - so they shouldn’t try to engage supporters with such rhetoric in the social networking realm either."
It seems that Colorado Republicans don’t read this blog.
The second reason it’s interesting is how liberals are acting in terms of new media - or rather, political people in general.
The simple psychology of it is that it is alright to follow the opposition on Twitter - it doesn’t compromise your own ideological principles. Similarly, many smart campaign workers will sign up for the email lists of their competition.
[In fact, there are occasionally email wars between liberal groups (like, say, MoveOn.org) and conservative groups (like, say, FreedomWorks). In these wars, one group will email its supporters saying something somewhat confrontational in order to drive support (typically in money or online petition signatures) and someone from another group will receive the email too. Then they’ll use it to send out their own email, blasting the original, and driving their own support (in money or e-petitions). Sometimes it can go back and forth for a while.]
Contrast that sneaky way of watching the competition with another new media tool - Facebook. On Facebook, in order to keep track of an opposing politician or ideological group automatically, one needs to become a supporter. A follower is one thing, but identifying yourself as a supporter is too much too handle!
Nonetheless, the media follows - and “supports” - everyone in order to keep tabs on their campaign activities. That’s how we get word when somebody like Sarah Palin coins a phrase like “death panels” with a status update.
Colorado Republicans have hardly anything to fear in liberal followers on Twitter - it’s the press that they should look out for.
Today WAYLA reports on local politics from Colorado.
Back in May, we found that Colorado Democrats - who control both houses in the State Legislature - were undergoing a bit of a rough patch in public opinion. Not much has changed in that time (in fact, it’s only gotten worse for many Democratic leaders there) so we decided to take a look at what exactly it could mean for Colorado’s government after 2010.
Rather than look at statewide offices, we started with the upper house in the Colorado General Assembly, where Democrats control 21 of the 35 seats. In order to take back the State Senate, the GOP would only need to grab 4 districts.
Can they do it?
Seventeen seats in the State Senate will be contested in 2010 - eight of them currently held by Democrats. Of those eight, five will be vacated due to term limits. Obviously, open seats have the most competitive races - so let’s start there.
Of the open seats, three of them (Districts 3, 32, and 34) are pretty safe for Democrats to hang on to. Districts 32 and 34 are both in solid-blue areas of Denver, and District 3 encompasses the town of Pueblo, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two-to-one.
The other two open seats, however, will be competitive.
In District 6 (Durango, Montrose) term-limited incumbent Jim Isgar (D-Durango) recently announced resignation upon an appointment to the Obama Administration. Isgar’s seat will be filled by a Democrat until the 2010 election. While Isgar had managed some impressive victories in 2002 and 2006, John McCain won the district with about 51% of the vote last year, and Republicans outnumber Democrats about 40% - 26%. Local Democrats hope that Isgar’s replacement will have enough time to build a name for himself before Election time.
In District 20 (Wheat Ridge, Golden) Democrats and Republicans are about even in registration numbers, and State Sen. Maryanne Moe Keller (D-Wheat Ridge) won this suburban-Denver district by less than half of a percent in 2002. While she did better in 2006 (with about 57%) it’s important to remember she was assisted by the incumbency effect and the fact that 2006 was just a good year for Democrats.
But that’s only 2 seats for the GOP - half of what they need to regain control. They will need to look at knocking-off some incumbents as well.
One place to start is with State Sen. John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) in District 11. It’s a relatively competitive seat, and the disapproval of state Democratic leaders could trickle down into this race.
The other vulnerable seat is the large 5th District, where incumbent State Sen. Gail Schwartz won with just under 51% in 2006 - less than a thousand votes. But Republican and Democratic numbers there are fairly even and President Obama won the district with 53.6% of the vote. This is likely to be a very competitive re-election campaign - especially with the poor ratings Coloradans have been giving Democrats lately.
The only other imaginable target would be State Sen. Lois Trochtop (D-Thornton) in the northern Denver suburbs - but after she earned 60% of the vote in 2006, it would be quite the Cinderella story.
Most other seats - including virtually all GOP-controlled districts - are fairly safe for 2010. The State Senate races to watch will be the five races listed above. Republicans - who also aren’t very popular in Colorado these days - will have to really perform well this election cycle in order to win 4 out of those 5 competitive races (one of which is hardly competitive at all).
While it’s too close to call at the moment, it certainly would not be impossible for the GOP to retake the Colorado State Senate - but it will still be difficult.
For more information on Democratic and Republican performance in Colorado, see www.COMaps.org/cosenate.html and http://www.elections.colorado.gov/WWW/default/2008_Abstract.pdf
Today WAYLA reports on local politics from Colorado.
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In 2008, Colorado proved to be a good state for Democrats. President Obama won the state with a 54% - 45% margin, while Senator Mark Udall won his first state-wide election by a 53% - 43% margin.
Additionally, both houses of the State Legislature as well as the Governor’s office are controlled by Democrats.
But all that appears to be changing. In recent months, Democrats have lost considerable support from residents of the Centennial State. A Public Policy Polling survey from last month finds President Obama with a 49% approval rating - far below the national average - with 45% disapproval in the state of Colorado.
Udall, meanwhile, suffers 41% approval and 46% disapproval ratings.
And this means trouble for the 2010 elections. According to another April poll, Democratic Governor Bill Ritter’s approval rating is 41% while his disapproval rating is 49%. Furthermore, a plurality of respondents said they would back Republican Scott McInnis over Ritter. Other state-wide offices appear to be slipping away as well.
The one saving grace for Democrats is that virtually no one in Colorado knows much about Democratic Senator Michael Bennet - so few that a quarter of voters say they know too little to have an opinion about him. Bennet was selected by Ritter to replace Ken Salazar, who was appointed by Obama to head the Interior Department.
Bennet’s race looks particularly interesting. He’s an east-coaster who moved to Colorado twelve years ago, eventually became Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, and was never really involved in politics. But he’s somehow raised $1.4 million already for his 2010 campaign, and his top Republican opponent is a District Attorney that has cost his constituency $100,000 in court fees for raiding a tax service company without properly following the Fourth Amendment. Nonetheless, Bennet has a greater disapproval rating than his approval rating and he is slightly behind one of his speculated GOP opponents.
As one Denver Post columnist put it recently, “what a bummer it can be to be a Democrat in Colorado.”
Why are the Democrats slipping?
There are only a few ways to try to explain this trend.
First, Democrats have been fortunate in Colorado recently with the help of Hispanic voters. Census Bureau estimates for 2008 say that 20% of the population in Colorado is Latino. Yet only 14% of respondents to the Obama/Udall poll identified as Hispanic.
Since the recession began, Colorado has been the state with the largest decline in immigrant employment, thus many are leaving. Of course, non-citizens cannot vote, but it is possible that Hispanic citizens are leaving the state as well. A recent study found that the “immigrant unemployment rate is now 5.6 percentage points higher than in the third quarter of 2007, before the recession began. Native unemployment has increased 3.8 percentage points over the same period.”
If immigrant unemployment is rising faster than native unemployment, it suggests that employers are waning from hiring immigrants at the moment - either because of a sense of nationalism sparked by the recession, or because of a crackdown on employment of illegal immigrants - and by extension waning from hiring Hispanics in general.
It’s a pretty loose theory.
Second, particular Democrats are lagging, not necessarily the entire party. For example, liberal blog ColoradoPols.com currently has Sen. Bennet listed as “down” because he’s “not a natural campaigner by any means [and] has been sloppy.”
But Bennet is not that far behind other Democrats in his approval rating. In fact, none of his GOP opponents - whether or not they have announced - is viewed more favorably than unfavorably by the voters. So this explanation does not work too well.
Third, all politics is local, and state-level Democrats have been making the party unpopular. This is probably the best theory.
From a conservative columnist’s recent Op-Ed in the Denver Post:
“We're now slogging through a recession that Ritter recklessly failed to prepare for, his legislative allies are split and ineffectual…Democrats this session failed on a number of cherished goals, including a tuition break for illegal immigrants, easing sentences and ending the death penalty, quitting the Electoral College, and nanny-state rules for cellphones and seatbelts.”
These have been some big issues in Colorado’s State House. Thanks to TABOR, Colorado has difficulty producing surpluses in good economic times and the budget gets punished for it during bad economic times. It’s similar to the fiscal mess in California that has persisted since the passage of Proposition 13. Since a Democrat is in the Governor’s office, he is going to get the blame.
Other issues mentioned above are going to be equally unpopular. The Electoral College issue, for example, is one that probably doesn’t sit well with voters. The state Senate approved a bill to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which a state’s electoral votes would go to the overall national winner of a presidential race. Once enough states join the compact to reach 270 votes, the compact would go into effect. Because Colorado is a smaller state, they would effectively get less say in a presidential contest. Besides, a good communications director can easily argue that the bill is taking the vote away from Coloradans, and make a GOP political gain.
Voters do not necessarily separate the actions of national party leaders from the state party leaders. Hence, these local issues may very well be influencing Obama’s approval rating in Colorado.
Of course, even that theory is not concrete. As more stories and research on this issue develop, we will keep you informed as to why Democrats are letting Colorado slip away from them.
UPDATE: One explanation that hadn't been discussed is the possibility that Coloradans simply have an unusually low opinion of politicians in general (at least at the present time). For one thing it almost seems unreal that support for the Democrats would diminish so quickly in just six or seven months. Additionally, the favorability ratings of Republican challengers aren't too high either - which we mentioned before.
If this is the case the Democrats would not have to worry too much. As Kelly Fero told us in January, "In the end, every election is about accomplishing two goals: taking away the voters' permission to vote for your opponent and granting them permission to vote for you as an acceptable alternative." If all it takes is demonstrating oneself as the lesser of two evils, the Democrats will still have an even playing field come 2010.
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