COLORADO
State Profile
The following data and information about this state is taken from the 2006 Almanac of American Politics. The 2006 Almanac can be ordered online, or by phone at 1-800-356-4838.

State At A Glance  •  Key Elected Officials  •  Political History & Analysis

“Colorado has been reshaped, economically and politically, by its successive waves of new residents.”

At A Glance

• Size: 104,094 square miles
• Population in 2000: 4,301,261; 84.5% urban; 15.5% rural
• Population in 1990: 3,294,394
• Population Change: Up 30.6% 1990-2000; Up 14.0% 1980-1990
• Population Rank: 24th of 50; 1.5% of total U.S. population
• Most Populous Cities: Denver (557,478); Colorado Springs (370,448); Aurora (290,418); Lakewood (142,474); Fort Collins (125,740)
• Registered Voters: 942,025 D (30.4%); 1,118,597 R (36.1%); 1,037,239 unaffiliated and minor parties (33.5%)
• State Senate: 18 D 17 R
• State House: 35 D 30 R
• State Legislative Term Limits: Yes

Key Elected Officials

• Gov. Bill Owens (R)
• Sen. Wayne Allard (R)
• Sen. Ken Salazar (D)
• Representatives: (4 R, 3 D):

Diana DeGette   (D-01) Mark Udall   (D-02) John Salazar   (D-03)

Marilyn Musgrave   (R-04) Joel Hefley   (R-05)

Tom Tancredo   (R-06) Bob Beauprez   (R-07)

About Colorado

At the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado is also at the front edge of economic, cultural and political change. Colorado is an island of 4.6 million people surrounded by the sea of the Great Plains and the ramparts of the Rockies. With vistas of vast emptiness, it is mostly an urban state: More than half its people live in metropolitan Denver and four-fifths in the urban strip paralleling the Front Range, where the Rockies rise suddenly from the mile-high plateau. And its very ruggedness is inviting more settlement. While the eastern plains continue to lose population, the valley-crevices between the mountains are being filled with second-home condominiums and ranchettes and the rolling land on three sides of metro Denver is being platted into subdivisions.

Colorado started off with a boom, and its recent history has been punctuated by booms--and then by pauses of moderate growth. The first boom came with the discovery of gold and silver in the Rockies. Evidence of this mining boom still can be seen in the opera houses and storefronts of Cripple Creek and Central City, Aspen and Telluride, built when Denver was just a village on the creek that is the South Platte River. Then Denver grew, as a meatpacking, banking and manufacturing center, and also as the state capital and regional headquarters of the federal government. After that came the boom of the high-energy-price 1970s, when the Denver skyline sprouted new buildings overlooking the Capitol's golden dome and entrepreneurs built ever more ski resorts and year-round mountain condominiums.

Colorado's economy sagged during the low-energy-price 1980s but, based more on telecommunications and high-tech than energy, boomed again in the 1990s. The visible signs of this boom are still all around--in the skyscrapers of downtown Denver, bearing at various times, the names of Qwest and TCI and other telecommunications and high-tech companies; in the retro Coors Field baseball park set amid Denver's LoDo, where warehouses have been renovated into restaurants and clubs; in the startling architecture of the Denver International Airport far out in the plains; in the sprawling Denver Tech Center south of the city; in the fast-growing tracts of subdivisions and office parks in Douglas County south of Denver, the fastest-growing American county from 1990 to 2003. Colorado's economy grew robustly in the 1990s and the state attracted well-educated newcomers from around the country, with many from California; it ranked number one in high-tech workers per capita and third in venture capital financing per capita. In 2001 and 2002 it painfully shed high-tech jobs, but it remains among the top five states in economic development and venture capital, with high salaries and low unemployment. With its relatively young and highly educated population and its stunning environment, Colorado is also the leanest state, with the lowest percentage of obesity, and arguably the healthiest. In the mile high (or more) air, Coloradans like to ride, jog, bike and, of course, ski. There are bike paths not only in Denver but also in the mountains, and Governor Bill Owens started a campaign to urge people to eschew elevators and climb stairs.

Colorado has been reshaped, economically and politically, by its successive waves of new residents. The conservative and boosterish Colorado of the 1960s was transformed by a wave of liberal young migrants in the 1970s who swept the state's politics by calling for environmental protections and slow growth and eventually reached the national stage--slow-growth Governor Dick Lamm, Senator Gary Hart, Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, Congressman Tim Wirth. Democrats held the governorship for 24 years but Republicans held the legislature. Then, in the 1990s, a new wave of migrants--tech-savvy, family-oriented cultural conservatives looking for an environment to prosper--moved Colorado politics to the right. In the 1990s, public school enrollment rose 14%, while private school enrollment was up 33% and the number of home-schooled children tripled. If the spirit of the 1970s newcomers was embodied in Boulder, with its pedestrian mall, outdoor sports shops and vegetarian restaurants, dominated politically by environmentalist liberals, the spirit of the 1990s newcomers was embodied in Colorado Springs, the home of the Air Force Academy, Fort Carson and Focus on the Family, and dominated politically by religious and family-oriented conservatives. Both of these politically very different communities have some reason to believe that they exemplify the state; elections here can be seen as political contests to determine which one does.

In the early 1990s conservatives won two big victories by referendum. In 1990, Colorado became one of the first states to pass term limits; in 1992, it passed a measure requiring a popular vote to raise taxes. Democrats did carry Colorado for Bill Clinton in 1992 (with Ross Perot getting 23% of the vote) and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. But Campbell switched parties in 1995 and in 1996 Colorado was one of three states to switch from Clinton to Bob Dole (the others were Montana and Georgia). In 1998, Bill Owens became the first Republican elected governor since 1970, and Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature. In 2000, Colorado seemed conservative enough that it was not targeted by either presidential campaign; George W. Bush carried the state 51%-42%. In 2002, Republicans put new emphasis on their ground game, registering Republican newcomers and producing a flood of absentee Republican votes. Owens was reelected 63%-34% and Senator Wayne Allard was reelected 51%-46%. Republicans retained the state House, regained a majority in the state Senate and picked up Colorado's new 7th Congressional District, designed to be competitive for both parties, by 121 votes.

In 2004 it was the Democrats' turn again. John Kerry's campaign made Colorado a target state and the Bush campaign. Democrats registered and turned out the anti-Bush vote in Denver, Boulder and the ski resorts--Telluride, Aspen, Vail, Crested Butte, Steamboat Springs, all full of liberal-minded trustfunders--and ran just about even in the close-in Denver suburbs. This was not enough to put Kerry over the top, though: Bush carried the state 52%-47%, almost the same numbers as in the nation as a whole. But Colorado was the only state rated safe Republican in 2000 that ended up on both campaigns' target lists in 2004.

Democrats were even more successful at the state level. Campbell announced he would not seek reelection in March 2004, and Democrats united around moderate Attorney General Ken Salazar while Republicans had a divisive primary between former Congressman Bob Schaffer and beer scion Pete Coors. In November Salazar beat Coors 51%-47%. In addition, Salazar's brother John won the 3d District House seat vacated by Republican Scott McInnis--one of two open Republican seats captured by Democrats in 2004. Meanwhile, Owens and the Republican legislature were unable to attack a budget shortfall caused by two state constitutional amendments, one holding spending down, the other mandating spending for elementary and secondary education. The legislature, with Democrats sitting on the sidelines, was unable to produce the two-thirds needed to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and the state was facing spending cuts. With a campaign financed by heiress Patricia Stryker and three high-tech multimillionaires, Democrats succeeded in winning one-vote majorities in both houses of the legislature. With Owens term-limited and with Democratic legislators holding only the narrowest of majorities, Colorado politics going forward in 2006 and 2008 seems open to a wide range of possibilities.