A group of Democrats gathered in Denver earlier this year to talk about a possible path forward for the party. They were touting what’s come to be known as the Colorado Way, which Democrats have been using for more than a decade to turn this once reliably Republican Western state blue.
Natalie Fertig, a states reporters at Politico, saw the Denver gathering firsthand and joined The Show to discuss what exactly the Colorado Way is.
Full conversation
NATALIE FERTIG: Yeah. So it's a combination of politics and policy. It's both selling issues from an economic standpoint. So based on how they impact people's pocketbooks rather than something more philosophical like, care for the environment or care for lower income families
And then also marrying that with a political structure in Colorado.
They started at the bottom. They went for state House. You know, just getting one chamber and then two chambers before they started focusing on Senate races and on the presidential race.
And then three, actually, I should add, is also the funding. They had a couple really wealthy donors that committed to putting money into just turning Colorado blue, not focusing on specific Democratic issues, but turning it blue so that then Democrats collectively could put their issues forward.
MARK BRODIE: So was it more about sort of changing the political tone of the state, almost, and less about the individual issues that got the candidates there?
FERTIG: Yeah. So one thing that was really interesting is that candidates focused their issues based on their district. I know this sounds obvious, but I think a lot of times messaging can overtake from a state level or from a national level to where every candidate is saying kind of the same thing.
And in Colorado, they really just let candidates be their district. So that ended up running the gamut within the Democratic Party, there were some things they didn't negotiate on.
You know, they weren't backing Republicans who claimed to be a Democrat, for example. But, you know, if it was a Democrat, as someone described to me, if there was a D by their name, we were backing them.
BRODIE: Well that kind of goes, it seems like one of the problems that Democrats are trying to face right now, which is, you know, there are all these conversations about purity tests or if this person is left enough or too center or maybe even too conservative to really be a Democrat. Sounds like what you're saying is in Colorado, that really didn't matter as long as they identified as a Democrat. It seems like the people behind this effort didn't really care necessarily what they thought about particular issues.
FERTIG: Yeah, I think that that is really, you know, there's maybe a little bit of space in there where there were some issues, like gay marriage, for example, that they probably would not have supported someone who didn't back that idea. But yeah, ultimately, the small incremental differences between people on things like education policy or environmental policy and the way to frame it was left up to the candidates.
I was talking to Sen. John Hickenlooper from Colorado about this, and he said that there were in the West, there were more barn raisings than shootouts and sort of that idea of in the Democratic Party at the time when the state was turning, they really tried to not point the guns on each other, they tried to instead come together to lift the barn of the Democratic Party up.
And then, as another operative told me, you know, once you have power, then you can execute power. But in order to put forth your policies, you have to win first, right?
BRODIE: Well, so in what ways do folks who buy into this Colorado way think that this might be the way forward for Democrats, either in individual states or maybe nationally?
FERTIG: Yeah. So part of I think the big question is going to be how to nationalize this. A lot of this works by starting at the state level and then moving up. Actually, one of the things I found out when reporting this is that former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano actually went to Colorado during this era to try to learn some of what the, the, the folks in Colorado were doing and bring it back to Arizona.
So a lot of the conversation is still, how do we flip states, how do we flip state legislatures and then build that up into flipping? You know, a state for the presidency or for Congress in a way that will actually change the entire national dynamics of Republican versus Democrat.
I think also something, though, that is a big hurdle right now for everyone in the Democratic Party, is they're trying to figure out the path forward is just the lack of a leader. You know, the Republican Party has President [Donald] Trump and the Democratic Party doesn't really have a leader. So you have people, some of whom fit this model, like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, some other governors, like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who are in that sort of more pragmatic “let's find the economic angle to this issue. That is a Democratic issue.”
But then you also have folks on the left. You have Bernie Sanders, you have AOC, who come at the economic conversation from a more populist approach, and you haven't really found one person as a figurehead to lead the full party that way. So right now it's more happening at the state level of, hey, Colorado's doing this. This is the Colorado way. Does Arizona want to do it? Does, you know, New Mexico want to do it? Does Nevada want to do it?
BRODIE: Well, does it seem as though this is transferable from one state to another? I mean, you mentioned Janet Napolitano. She, of course, was very successful here. She won a race as attorney general. She won two terms as Arizona governor. Does it seem as though this technique could be used in a place like Arizona?
FERTIG: I think every state has its own dynamics, so it's not going to be the type of thing where one size fits all. But that was something I was asking a lot of the folks when I was in Denver for this retreat is, how are you nationalizing this?
And I did talk to quite a few people. You know, Will Marshall is the organizer of the event. He had worked in the group that had actually, you know, ended up sort of supporting Bill Clinton in the ‘90s. And the last time the Democratic Party was in a similar place to this. And he told me that, you know, he's from rural Virginia. And he said that he thinks that a lot of the approaches in Colorado will also speak to voters like the people he grew up with in rural Virginia, because there is sort of a, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Let's focus on the economics. Let's tailor a messaging strategy to the district, to the state, rather than doing something that's one size fits all at the national level.
So, you know, it seems from what these organizers have said that they do see a path forward where this can be implemented both on the district level, on the state level, and then also on the national level. But I think you know that the proof will be in the pudding on that.
BRODIE: Yeah. Well, I mean, did you get a sense from some of the Democrats with whom you spoke at this event, how optimistic they are that not only can this Colorado way be exported to other states, but that it can be successful either on the state level, or eventually maybe on the national level?
FERTIG: I mean, they were very optimistic. You know, some of these folks had done this before with Clinton in the 90s. So they sort of have a winning record on their side, so to speak. I also think that they're in the camp of Democrats that wants to be optimistic about the future and wants to see a path forward, which I think is kind of you have to take no offense to them, but you have to take that with a grain of salt, right?
Is that Democrats want to be optimistic right now about their chances. I think, though, that you have to do something. I kept asking them is, you know, libertarianism is a big part of Colorado, the Colorado way, something that everyone was talking about.
Does libertarianism translate to rural Pennsylvania? That's not actually something that I know the answer to honestly. And I think that that is what these strategists are going to have to figure out over the next two years. And then, you know, three and a half, four years.
