Eric Sondermann, writing in The Gazette, argues that Colorado’s Democrats deserve plenty of blame for the state’s regulatory sprawl, rising costs, endless TABOR attacks, crime policy experiments, and transit dreams that mostly move consultants from one meeting to another.
But his bigger point is aimed at Republicans: Colorado does not have a healthy opposition party because the Colorado GOP keeps choosing purity tests, infighting, election-denial theater, and unelectable personalities over the boring but necessary work of winning voters.
Sondermann’s column is not a love letter to Democrats. It is a flare shot into the sky for Republicans who still understand math, credibility, and the general concept that politics requires addition.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Sondermann says Colorado Democrats have consolidated power and now govern with very little fear of consequences. That is what happens when one party gets the whole kitchen and the other party is outside arguing over who burned the toast.
- He lays out the conservative complaints clearly: heavier regulation, employers leaving, property taxes climbing, roads needing work, low-demand transit spending, health insurance costs, attacks on TABOR, soft-on-crime policy, and culture-war bills that go too far. In other words, the usual Colorado starter pack for legislative overreach.
- But he also says Republicans share responsibility because they have failed to become a serious, competitive opposition. Democrats may be driving the bus, but the GOP handed them the keys, slashed the tires on its own car, and started a podcast about betrayal.
- Sondermann takes aim at recent GOP leadership, including Dave Williams using the party apparatus to boost hard-right candidates, then losing his own congressional primary to Jeff Crank. He also points to Williams later landing a Trump administration post and asks, fairly, how the swamp draining is going. Bring a mop.
- The column gets especially brutal on the state party’s dysfunction: ballot problems at the assembly, donor flight, litigation against Proposition 108, hostility toward unaffiliated voters, and the possibility of Joe Oltmann becoming party chair. When your comeback plan is to flip off 51 percent of Colorado voters, maybe do not call it strategy. Call it a cry for adult supervision.
My Bottom Line
I find myself agreeing with Sondermann once again, which is becoming an uncomfortable habit, like finding out the smoke alarm was right. Colorado needs a sane, viable opposition party. Not a therapy circle. Not a conspiracy rodeo. Not a chairmanship decided by who can yell “RINO” the loudest while the Democrats quietly pass another bill named after compassion and funded by your wallet.
One-party rule is bad, whether it wears a blue blazer in Denver or a red hat somewhere else. Power without accountability gets arrogant fast. Colorado Democrats have learned they can push farther, spend more, regulate more, and mug TABOR in broad daylight because the opposition keeps showing up to the fight wearing clown shoes and carrying a purity checklist.
Republicans do not have to become Democrats with worse branding. They need to become serious. Defend the Constitution. Protect taxpayers. Back energy. Stand for parents. Fight crime. Respect voters. Build coalitions. Win elections. Revolutionary stuff, apparently.
I do not have much to add to Sondermann’s piece because he mostly emptied the magazine. So I am dropping it here for you to read as well. As always, I welcome your comments below. Just try to keep them somewhere north of “the lizard people stole the primary,” if that is not too much to ask.
Source: The Gazette
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