

The big wave that rolled across the country somehow threatened — if that's the right word — to miss the state almost completely.

The question is not: What happened here? You've been witness to the craziness as it has unfolded over these many months. And anything that you might have missed, you could see again, and again, in the onslaught of campaign commercials that will now finally — I promise — go away.

The better question — particularly as you look at the sea of red on all those national political maps — is this: What didn't happen here?

Voters across the nation sent a message to Democrats and especially to President Barack Obama. The message may be a little vague. This is the third wave election in the last three elections, after all, and it's fair to ask what the difference is between a wave election and a temper tantrum. But it was a message that said voters didn't want Democrats in charge of everything in Washington any more.

And in Colorado?

Democrat John Hickenlooper wins the governor's office in a walk. Tom Tancredo, of American Constitution Party fame, ends up looking exactly like the talk-radio version of a candidate that everyone should have known him to be.

And Republican Dan Maes? Dan "Serpico" Maes? Dan "Make That Donation in Cash" Maes? Dan "What Do I Do Now" Maes?


As I'm writing this early today, Maes was flirting with the not-so- magical 10 percent number. If Maes didn't get 10 percent of the vote, it would mean the Republican Party would officially become a minor party in Colorado, where, as one TV commentator put it, the rent for Republicans would be too damn high.

What in the name of Dick Wadhams went wrong?

You know what went wrong in the governor's race. It started with Scott McInnis' elk-meat-for-the-poor campaign, moved to his toss-his-friend- under-the-bus campaign and then proceeded directly to Maes' bikes- can-be-U.N.-helicopters-too campaign and, finally, to Tancredo's decision to bully his way into the race.

Across the nation, voters showed their bitterness toward Washington, but Coloradans don't necessarily care for — as Tancredo himself would put it — bitter-white-guy candidates. And so Hickenlooper shows once again that he lives a charmed life. No one deserves to have both Maes and Tancredo to run against in a single campaign.

The governor's race was such a disaster for Republicans that it will take years to spread all the blame. I'm wondering whether it will be Maes or Wadhams who takes the first bus out of town, although, to be fair, we might miss Maes if he decides to go undercover.


If Republicans don't lose the Senate race, it won't be for lack of trying. It's pretty much a given that if Jane Norton had won the primary, she would have easily beaten Michael Bennet, the appointed senator who is, to be kind, a much better senator than he is a candidate.

Still, Bennet was a far better candidate than Ken Buck, who rode through the state, tossing gaffes wherever he went, but usually when a Democratic tracker was there to put them on videotape. The race, with all the money spent, was defined at the start with Bennet's negative ad using Buck's own words to describe a series of wacky Tea Party-style ideas.




But the message of debt and deficit is a difficult message for anyone to overcome in this cycle. It's the message that was giving the Republicans a huge swing in the U.S. House. It's the message that gained seats for Republicans in the state legislature.



