For more than half a year, former state Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff’s campaign has said that the race in Colorado’s dead-heat evenly divided 6th Congressional District against Republican incumbent Mike Coffman will be decided by the get-out-the-vote ground game. That’s part of the reason the campaign says talk this week about the $1 million pulled from the race by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a sign of party surrender is overblown.
A quote sent out by spokesperson Denise Baron seeking to redirect the narrative that developed in the wake of the DCCC announcement focused on the campaign’s door-knockers.
“[T]he grassroots enthusiasm of nearly 1,000 volunteers have enabled us to pull even with the congressman. The voters of this district are hungry for change, and on Nov. 4, that’s exactly what they’ll produce.”
The Romanoff campaign also released an internal poll backing up its contention that the momentum in the race has not shifted. The survey done by Colorado pollster Chris Keating presents a statistical tie and some good news for Romanoff. Coffman leads Romanoff according to the poll by 1 point, 44 percent to 43 percent. But Keating projects Republican voters, as happens in midterm elections, will turn out in 5 percent greater numbers than Democrats, and so the sample reflects that advantage. But Keating also found that among the 31 percent registered independent voters in the district, Romanoff enjoys an 11 point advantage.
The Coffman campaign, riding high on the DCCC “surrender” narrative, has yet to release any poll numbers.
Romanoff has been a prodigious fundraiser. And, as other outlets have pointed out, he isn’t likely depending on any outside group to spend a million dollars for television ads touting his candidacy in an historically saturated TV market the week that ballots have already been mailed to voters.
