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Colorado’s Race to the Rhetorical Middle

Colorado’s Race to the Rhetorical Middle

Joe O’Dea

is extreme—“extremely extreme,”

Leslie Herod

insists. Ms. Herod, a Democratic state representative preparing a run for mayor in 2023, is working the crowd at a Latin celebration in Denver, but she leans over to add that Mr. O’Dea “is far right” while his opponent, U.S. Sen.

Michael Bennet,

is “a moderate member of the Democratic Party.” Off to the side at the Servicios de La Raza festival, masked luchadores, Mexican wrestlers, launch themselves off the ropes of the wrestling ring, just missing their opponents. Mr. Bennet joins Gov.

Jared Polis

on stage to wave at the small crowd, deliver anodyne remarks and check off another campaign appearance.

The O’Dea and Bennet campaigns are strangely reflective of each other, like fun-house mirrors. Both are painting their own candidates as moderate and their opponents as extreme. “If he’s a moderate, I’m Mother Teresa,” Mr. O’Dea says of Mr. Bennet in an interview on Sept. 14. Three days later, Mr. Bennet says in an interview that Mr. O’Dea “holds views that are way outside the mainstream of Colorado’s mainstream.” The two are neck and neck in a race to the rhetorical middle.

This election ought to be easy for Mr. Bennet. He’s won two elections since his appointment to the Senate in 2009, and reports this summer showed his campaign with $10 million more than Mr. O’Dea’s. Colorado, once a Republican-leaning purple state, is increasingly blue. Democrats control all statewide offices, and

George W. Bush

was the last Republican presidential nominee to carry the state.

Joe Biden’s

margin of victory was 13.5 points.

But Colorado isn’t out of reach for the GOP. The Democratic voter-registration advantage is only 28% to 25%, with 45% unaffiliated. In 2014, the last midterm election with a Democrat in the White House,

Cory Gardner

beat an incumbent Democratic senator. (Mr. Gardner lost his re-election bid in 2020.)

Unlike Mr. Gardner, Mr. O’Dea, who made his fortune in the construction business, is a first-time candidate. But his campaign “has been brilliant,” says a Democratic political consultant who asks not to be named. The RealClearPolitics average has Mr. Bennet up 8.6 points….

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