An unaffiliated future: The case for opening Colorado’s primaries
By Jon Caldara
This column is targeted to one reader: the iconoclast businessman and politico Kent Thiry.
Many believe Colorado’s best days are behind her, and understandably so as Colorado turns into a dictatorial progressive experiment of exponentially escalating regulation, spiraling property taxes and fees, and forced social engineering.
We don’t feel safe on our own city streets. Young people can’t buy their own homes. Affordable and reliable energy is no more. Small businesses are dwindling under the new minimum wages and the epidemic costs of regulatory compliance. Road funding is stolen for unused transit, making our roadways third-world, strangling commutes and commerce. And the woke agenda is codified not only in school curriculum but now with “misgendering” speech control laws.
Our state balances on a knife’s edge, tipping toward economic collapse, a la California, New York and Illinois. No wonder more and more of our productive class is pulling up stakes and moving to Florida or Texas where their talents will be encouraged to thrive.
But I think Colorado can be saved. The first step is changing election law.
The case for open primaries
You’d think Colorado’s decline is plainly obvious and, therefore, average Coloradans would stop voting for socialist-leaning Democrats and start voting for Republicans. You’d be wrong.
Colorado’s rural districts will remain Republican, as urban districts remain progressive Democrat. The fight for Colorado’s future is, as it always has been, in the swing suburban districts. I’m talking Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson, and now Douglas and El Paso counties.
For the next several election cycles, these swing district voters will still largely be repulsed by Republican candidates. Chock-full of single moms, these suburban voters equate “Republican” with “Trump.” And they hate President Donald Trump, sometimes becoming unhinged. Their hatred of his personality turns to hatred of his political party. To them, “Republican” is anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-cannabis and anti-environment. They are pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and, until the blackouts hit, believe climate change is Colorado-, not China-caused.
Next year’s election, President Trump’s midterm, should be a bloodbath for Colorado Republicans. Any candidate running with an “R” behind his name in swing districts might as well have a swastika there instead.
But here’s the interesting part: These swing voters, though pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-weed and pro-environmentalist, are not pro-crime, pro-tax, pro-regulation or pro-woke. They still won’t vote Republican, but they know, and often admit, Colorado’s leftist one-party tyrannical state is going too far.
These swing voters feel uncomfortable with both parties. That’s why now an unheard of 50% of all Colorado registered voters are independent, unaffiliated with any party. It’s why Colorado’s second-largest city has an unaffiliated mayor. They crave something that’s not R or D. Colorado could well become the nation’s first independent or unaffiliated state.
Rise of the ‘Freedom Unaffiliateds’
They hate the moralism of the Republicans and the fiscal carelessness and wokeness of the left. I label them as “Freedom Unaffiliateds,” which shortens to “FU.” And these people want to say FU to both parties.
But, unless Thiry changes how primaries are done, these Freedom Unaffiliateds will keep begrudgingly voting socialist Democrat over moralist Republican.
Thiry designed and funded the popular 2016 citizen’s initiative letting unaffiliated voters vote in either Republican or Democratic primaries. But he bit off more than Colorado voters were willing to chew with his initiative last year. It would have created a jungle primary system and then ranked-choice voting for the top four candidates in the general election.
Coloradans are suspicious of ranked-choice voting. But jungle primaries, where candidates from all parties, or no party, battle it out in a primary with the top two advancing to the November ballot is ripe for the whole state. Denver’s mayoral election is done this way.
In progressive urban areas it would likely mean two Democrats would be on the general ballot, one farther left than the other. In rural areas, two Republicans.
But it’s the swing districts where this changes everything. Unaffiliated, fiscally conservative, yet morally centrist candidates could finally make it to the fall ballot. And in a two-way race, they could win.
Sane, anti-crime, pro-business independents could caucus with Republicans to make Colorado viable again, and caucus with Democrats to protect social issues.
These could be (cover your ears, Republicans) the electable candidates who could win in swing districts.
But only if Thiry retools his initiative and opens our primaries.
Kent, Colorado is a state worth saving.
