One way or the other, today will mark the end of a surprisingly close battle in the Colorado Democratic Senate primary. A late-charging challenge from former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff has put Sen. Michael Bennet on the defensive in recent days, and a once-civil campaign has taken a nasty turn.
The race has often been cast as an insider vs. outsider contest — but it’s not always clear which candidate is which. Bennet, the incumbent with the big war chest and President Obama’s endorsement, is actually participating in his first-ever election campaign, having been appointed to both his current seat and his last job as Denver superintendent of schools. Meanwhile, Romanoff, the scrappy upstart, is actually a veteran legislator who won the party’s convention and caucuses in the spring, and who has deep ties to the party establishment, most notably Bill Clinton. Perhaps it would be more accurate to characterize the race as outsider-turned-insider vs. insider-turned-outsider.
The TPM Poll Average for the race shows Bennet leading 44.1%-43.2%. And while a PPP poll taken over the weekend gave Bennet a cushier 49%-43% lead, Romanoff’s late surge has been undeniable.
And it has been apparent that Romanoff senses his momentum, too. While Romanoff has long sought to portray Bennet as too Wall Street-friendly, his pledge to support his opponent should Romanoff lose his bid has been strained by a series of noticeably harsher attacks. A few weeks ago, he went up with a stark ad titled “Greed,” drawing attention to Bennet’s days as a Managing Director at the Anschutz Investment Company. The Bennet campaign called the attack “desperate,” and The Dever Post called it “over the top.” Romanoff then got an assist from The New York Times last week, when the paper put a story on its front page about a sour financing deal Bennet was involved in as Denver schools superintendent.
Not that Bennet has been idle, or Romanoff invulnerable, in the final days. Last week, the Bennet campaign pounced on a comment made by Romanoff’s chief of staff, acknowledging that, should his candidate win the primary, he would take DSCC money — even after Romanoff’s oft-repeated pledge to not take a cent from special interests to fund his campaign. The DSCC accepts money from PACs, and Romanoff was forced to do a tricky dance: yes, he’d accept DSCC money, he concluded, but he would ask the group to withhold the portion raised from PACs.
Really though, the real difference in the race has been money. Bennet has loads of it. He’s raised $7.3 million so far (including from PACs and other groups), and spent $5.9 million, leaving him with $1.8 million on hand as of July 21. Meanwhile, Romanoff has raised only $1.8 million and spent nearly all of it. He had just $166,564 cash on hand as of July 21. Both candidates put around $300,000 of their own money into last-days coffer boosts recently. But while Bennet, the former executive, opened his wallet and loaned his campaign the money, Romanoff went ahead and sold his house.
The polls close tonight at 7 p.m. local time.
