Colorado Republicans have spent $14 million — double what Democrats laid out — and are still staring at a Democratic supermajority that would render them nearly irrelevant in the state legislature.
The spending gap tells you everything about the Colorado GOP establishment's playbook: throw money at the problem without fixing the product. Republicans have controlled neither chamber since 2019, and the strategy of chasing moderate voters who never show up has left the party one seat away from total powerlessness in both the House and Senate.
According to the Denver Post, party-aligned independent expenditure committees have spent roughly $14 million backing Republicans or attacking Democrats, versus about $7 million on the Democratic side. About $7.7 million of that GOP cash is concentrated in just three Senate races: incumbent John Carson of Highlands Ranch, Dana Charles in Pueblo, and Rob Woodward in Loveland. Charles and Woodward are trying to flip Democratic-held seats.
The stakes are blunt. Democrats currently hold 43 of 65 House seats and 23 of 35 Senate seats. One more flip in each chamber gives them a two-thirds supermajority — the power to override vetoes, change rules, and refer constitutional amendments to voters without a single Republican vote. Committee seats would be stacked even further against the minority. As Carson put it: "If this race goes to the Democrats, you're basically almost looking at a one-party state here."
Democrats have already used their majorities to pass tighter gun regulations, divert tax refund money to low-income families, and enshrine abortion protections — the kind of agenda that costs Republicans their base when the party's elected voices can't even slow it down.
The Denver Post framed the story as an "existential question" for Colorado Republicans. What it barely touches is why the party keeps losing despite outspending the opposition two-to-one. The answer is the same one playing out nationally: establishment consultants keep betting on voters who don't exist.
CNBC, covering the national picture, reports that Wall Street is already pricing in a Democratic wave. Ninety-six percent of investors surveyed by Wolfe Research expect Democrats to take the U.S. House. Piper Sandler analyzed Congressional Budget Office data and projected that Democratic policy proposals "would add $5 trillion to the deficit over the coming decade." But analysts are telling clients not to worry — Trump's veto pen and divided government will create gridlock, and the market "typically enjoys" gridlock.
There's the bipartisan failure in plain sight: the consultant class treats losing as manageable because gridlock protects corporate portfolios. The people who actually live under one-party rule in states like Colorado don't get that luxury.
Colorado Republicans have decried what they call runaway spending, stifling business regulations, and a too-lax attitude toward lawbreakers. They're right on the complaints. But when your entire strategy is to outspend the other side in a handful of districts while offering voters no reason to believe you'll fight for them, $14 million buys you exactly what it bought before — a seat at the kids' table.
The open question: who keeps funding the consultants pushing this losing strategy, and how long before the base stops showing up entirely?
