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You didn’t need to listen to all the pundits dissect the presidential debate to know that Colorado is still a swing state. Just check traffic reports: Today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will hold a rally at Red Rocks — accompanied by Kid Rock. (This might be the only way Kid Rock could ever get a gig at Red Rocks.) And tomorrow, Barack Obama will be at City Park in Denver.
We’re betting this won’t be the last time the candidates visit this state before November 6, either.
But then, Colorado started out as a state full of swingers. As historian Tom Noel detailed in his recent Denver Post column, Colorado was admitted to the union on August 1, 1876 — just in time to help elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes president by a single electoral vote, even though he’d lost the popular count by 264,000 votes.
Colorado had three electoral votes.
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Democrats tried to overturn both Haye’s election and Colorado’s status as a state.
Wrote one New York newspaper editor, “There is something repulsive in the idea that a few handfuls of miners and reckless bushwhackers should have the same representation in the Senate as Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.”
Of course, this year Ohio is a swing state, too; and Pennsylvania has been wavering.
Hope those Easterners enjoy Kid Rock.
What color Colorado do you live in? Find answers in our post “Blue State v. Red State: Which Colorado do you live in?“
