Bloomberg goes 0-2 in Colorado

Most of you probably remember about Colorado’s recall elections a few months back, in which two Democrats got recalled over gun rights. Michael Bloomberg gave $350,000 of his own money to fight the recalls.

Now he’s given $1 million in support of Amendment 66, which would have raised the state income tax in order to spend more money on schools.

With 83% of precincts reporting, Amendment 66 is going down by 66.1-33.8 %. (Interestingly, we approved a tax on recreational marijuana by almost the same margin.)

Maybe this will teach Bloomberg to keep his nasty little paws out of Colorado.

Exactly. Only rich conservatives who’ve never held elective office are allowed to try to influence social policy in other states. Rich moderates who oppose gun control can butt right out!

Oppose?

It can backfire for any party. I grew up in what was NY’s 23rd Congressional district (it’s now the 21st). It’s a rural district and had been solidly Republican forever (the last non-Republican sent to Congress from that district was a Whig). But in 2009 there was a special election and many conservatives made this election a national showcase for “their” candidate. And the result was Bill Owens became the first Democrat ever elected to Congress from there.

The big reason was that the local people didn’t like the sense that outsiders were interfering in their election. They wanted to choose their own representative not be told who they should vote for. And they wanted somebody they felt represented the district not somebody who would represent some national movement.

And I’d speculate the same thing may have happened in Colorado. Coloradans who may have had no particular interest in the issues could have still resented the idea of a NYC billionaire coming in and telling them how they should vote.

There’s also the Virginia governor’s race. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been actively campaigning in the state for the Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli. But it’s the Democrat Terry McAuliffe who’s apparently won the election. Again, the outsider may have ended up hurting his candidate as much as helping him.