Battle for Colorado not over, campaigns say

With the presidential debates out of the way, and with public-opinion polls showing Sen. Barack Obama pulling ahead in Colorado, it's time to ask: Is there still a presidential race in this state?

Republican and Democratic officials in Colorado say Yogi Berra was right: It ain't over till it's over. Spokesmen for Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, insist that they are not treating the state as a done deal.

"Colorado is a battleground state and has been since Day 1," said Matt Chandler, press secretary for Obama's Colorado campaign. "We're continuing to campaign as hard as we ever have, and will continue to do so from now until the last poll closes on Nov. 4."

"People don't consider this race to be over by any stretch of the imagination," said Tom Kise, McCain's spokesman in Colorado.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the two campaigns will put their time and money where their mouths are and invest heavily in Colorado between now and Election Day.

They have bigger fish to fry, and Colorado may not matter anymore.

Individual states are important because presidential elections aren't decided by the nationwide popular vote; otherwise, Al Gore might be in the White House today. The vote that counts is in the Electoral College, where each state gets a number of electors equal to its representation in Congress. In Colorado and all but two of the other 49 states, winner takes all.

Colorado has long been regarded as a tossup state, and for much of the summer neither candidate was able to muster an advantage that was outside a poll's margin of error.

Moreover, Colorado seemed crucial to both campaigns' hopes of reaching an Electoral College majority, which is 270 votes.

The result: Both campaigns lavished attention on Colorado. It was no accident that the Democratic National Convention was held in Denver, or that one of McCain's first stops in the general election campaign was here in the Springs.

But in recent weeks, the polls have shown Obama building a lead in battleground states that are larger than Colorado, putting 270 votes easily within his reach. If McCain is going to close the gap, he'll have to come from behind in places like Florida, Ohio and Virginia, with a combined 60 electoral votes, before Colorado and its nine votes become an attractive investment of the Arizona senator's time and campaign dollars.

"Colorado was only a battleground state while the race nationally was close," said Floyd Ciruli of Ciruli Associates, the state's leading polling firm. "If it was not clear that either of the candidates could get to 270 with any ease, then Colorado's nine electoral votes were critical."

With some current projections showing Obama winning about 350 electoral votes, Ciruli said, "we then become a small state," a lower priority for the campaigns' time and money. It's the traditional role for Colorado, he noted, except that Colorado has usually been a red state, not a blue one.

As the political equation has shifted, a flurry of visits by the candidates to Colorado has abated, though Kise said Wednesday that McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, will be in Colorado on Monday. Kise also said he expects McCain to be back next week, but said arrangements are still being finalized.

Pat Waak, the state Democratic Party chairwoman, said Tuesday it is her understanding that Obama is planning two more visits to Colorado, though Chandler declined Wednesday to confirm that the Illinois senator or his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, will return. "We're confident we'll see them before Nov. 4," Chandler said, but added that "nothing's on the schedule as of right now."

Ciruli stopped short of calling Colorado a safe state for Obama. "There's this wave out there relating to the economy," he said, "and should that issue slide back a little, or should something break here in terms of some other faux pas on Obama's part or some new issue emerge, then I think this race could get very tight again."

Greg Garcia, chairman of the El Paso County Republicans, recalled that Sen. Wayne Allard and former Gov. Bill Owens, both Republicans, were behind in the waning days of what proved to be successful campaigns.

And Andrew Romanoff, a Democrat and speaker of the state House of Representatives, noted that Bill Clinton in 1992 was the only Democratic presidential candidate to carry Colorado in the last 40 years.

"This will remain a very tight race and a key battleground right up until about 7 p.m. on Nov. 4," Romanoff said. "I know that the Obama campaign is not taking a single vote for granted."

A CNN/Time poll released Wednesday gave Obama a 4 percent lead in Colorado, and a day earlier a Wall Street Journal/Washington Post poll had Obama ahead by 9 percent.

Pollster.com's rolling average "poll of polls" gives Obama a 7-point lead statewide, and Fivethirtyeight.com, another web site where poll numbers get crunched, figures McCain has only a 9 percent chance of carrying Colorado.

Though polls have been wrong before, lopsided results tend to be self-fulfilling because some supporters of the losing side become disheartened and stop donating their time or money, or don't even bother to vote.

"We've got to make sure that the heart stays strong," Garcia said.

McCain may have helped the heart factor in Wednesday's final presidential debate, repeatedly forcing Obama to defend his positions. But the Illinois senator coolly parried most of McCain's thrusts. The Arizona senator needed to sway wavering voters, and a CBS instant poll of undecided voters who watched the final debate scored it a win for Obama.

Nathan Fisk, executive director of the El Paso Republican Party, was hopeful. "Five points is nothing; five points can go away in a day," he said, referring to his calculation of Obama's lead in the state. "A single comment, a single news story can erase a five-point lead."

Fisk dismissed the notion that this year the Colorado Democrats rival the Republicans in energy level and organization, a traditional GOP strength. "The Republican Party is much better organized" than the Democrats, he said. "While I'm sure that the Obama campaign will be very effective and be working very hard, I think that we will outwork them."

Waak conceded nothing to the Republicans, emphasizing that the party had been rebuilding for four years and was throwing all its energy into a get-out-the-vote effort.

"I think we're ready," she said.

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Contact the writer: 476-1654 or dean.toda@gazette.com