COLORADO SPRINGS—In the November 2022 election, Colorado Democrats gained a historic majority in the state House, a supermajority in the Senate, and retained the governorship—neither a red wave nor a red trickle was felt.
Still, the margins were razor-thin in several elections. For example, in the Congressional House race for Colorado’s newly-formed 8th district, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican, lost to Rep. Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat, by 1,632 votes. Richard Ward, the Libertarian candidate, received 9,280 votes.
“There were about a handful of elections that I can think of in 2022 that were decided by the slimmest of margins, and they included a Libertarian candidate, or at least some other third-party candidate on there, and swung it for the Democrats,” former state representative and current Colorado GOP State Party Chairman Dave Williams, told The Epoch Times. The GOP elected Williams in March.
“I want to stress that I don’t think the spoiler effect is always the cause of why these close races go for Democrats, but there’s clear evidence that had we only had a Republican versus a Democrat, the Republican would have won these races.”
To add more wins and give liberty-minded candidates a better chance in the November 2024 election, the Colorado GOP and the Libertarian Party of Colorado struck what they call an “unprecedented deal.”
“The general agreement is that if the Republican Party can put forth a good, liberty-leaning candidate, then we will not run a competing candidate against the GOP,” Eliseo Gonzalez, the vice chair of the Libertarian Party of Colorado, told The Epoch Times.
“What liberty-leaning means it’s something that we’re working out in conjunction with the Republican Party. But we’re doing this in the hopes of inspiring the Republican Party to find more candidates that are more like the Ron Paul’s, the Rand Paul’s, the Thomas Massie’s, which are very strong liberty-leaning candidates, and promote the ideas of liberty, even within the GOP.”
Fighting for Colorado
Hannah Goodman, the chairwoman for the Libertarian Party of Colorado, said party affiliations can help voters understand the “branding and ideology” behind a candidate. However, there can be liberty-minded candidates in any party. That understanding spurred the agreement with the GOP.
By Katie Spence
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