They’re practical men from a politically moderate district. But the Senate seat they’re battling for is a top partisan prize.

Larry Crowder and James Casias are locked in a tight contest for a Senate district seat that may determine the balance of power at the state Capitol. It’s a race charged with ideological power, even though Crowder and Casias line up very closely on the political spectrum.

Crowder is an older man with deep roots in southeast Colorado and dedicated to serving the public interest. Same with Casias. The men use interchangeable phrases when taking about the challenges today’s information and service economy poses to the residents of the hard-pressed western prairieland that makes up the district, where farming, mining and drilling have shaped life for generations.

“I tell voters they can count on me to be a strong voice for southern Colorado,” said Casias, who is serving his fourth-term as sheriff of Las Animas County and is president of the County Sheriffs of Colorado. He’s running to unseat Crowder, who’s defending his seat in hopes of serving a second term in the Senate.

“My campaign is not so much about the political parties,” Casias said. “It’s more about the politics of Denver. I say to the voters that I’ll battle the interests up there and I’ll be an advocate for the people down here.”

“In my district, you don’t really ask if someone is a Republican or Democrat,” Crowder said the day before, gesturing to a map of the district on the wall of his office. “You just say, ‘What’s your issue, how can I help you out?’ You got to realize that 15 of the 16 counties in the district are below the poverty level. We need broadband. We need to keep our hospitals open. We have to be creative about seeing opportunities to bring in revenue.”

Casias is the Democrat in the race. Crowder is the Republican. Casias has more liberal social views. Crowder famously voted in 2015 against a successful state-supported teen contraceptive program. But both officials cut across the grain.

Broadband and hospital beds

Casias perhaps is best known for opposing gun control laws passed by Democrats in 2013, which included joining an unsuccessful lawsuit against Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Crowder perhaps is best known for recently breaking from his caucus at the Capitol to support expanded Medicaid coverage and to endorse a failed effort to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee, a move that would have shored up tax funding for rural hospitals.

In interviews, it’s difficult to prod either candidate to talk about partisan politics, even as – or maybe precisely because – Election Day fast approaches and the digital universe buzzes with the latest absurd news of the presidential contest.

“I couldn’t ever do caucus leadership, you know, pushing the party ideas,” Crowder said. “I would just see that as taking away time from doing my job. I don’t need to make a name for myself at the Capitol. I already have one with my constituents.”

Crowder is as ready to talk at length and in detail about a potential coal-car parking business or a growing wind farm or a local flood control project as he is reluctant to speak about ideology. He never uses the words “conservative” or “liberal” or “free-market” or “big government.” Crowder feels compelled on behalf of his district to press his colleagues to accept their obligation to the future of the state, he says. And he adds that’s tied directly to recognizing the particular history of the state.

“We’re all one, you see,” he said. He was talking about Colorado, about hipster metro residents, ski-bums, sheep farmers and out of work coal miners. “Our young people are leaving the district and it’s sad, because they can’t stay, because they’re looking for opportunities. But we’re fundamental to the state. You got to understand, I’m fifth-generation down there. We represent Colorado values. That’s something that’s, well – I’ll just say that we don’t have the numbers, but we deserve as much a say and investment as any other part of the state.”

Casias said district voters he has spoken to understand that the Senate race really matters on a sort of administrative level. They know that if he wins and the Democrats in January take control the Senate and they continue to control the House, which is very likely, then District 35, represented by a Democrat, would have more purchase power at the Capitol than it would being represented by a member of the minority party. Casias said that’s what the district needs.

“How do you get the state to expand broadband to rural Colorado? Crowder and his party opposed it. We need rural economic development. So we have to show up there in the Senate and stand up for the young people. They go to McDonald’s now to get Wi-Fi. Coal mines are closing. Water’s drying up. Gas fields are gone. Retirees are having to move to Pueblo, far from their homes and towns for health care.

“I’m not a partisan,” he said. “People down here know that. But we can’t privatize everything. We could piggyback our broadband on the utility power lines. I’ll tell you, I have deputies covering 5,000 square miles in the district. I know how important it is to be able to communicate across those miles. In Denver, they take our tax dollars, but what do we get? We’re being forgotten because we are a small population.”

Not so much door knocking

District 35 candidates don’t do the intense door-to-door campaigning you see in other districts because the population is so spread out. Instead, they attend town events, dinners, candidate forums, parades.

Casias said he spends three hours a night calling voters.

Crowder said, “you go around and you talk to whoever you meet.” He also told a joke about canvassing in the district. “I went to a town the other day and I got 50 percent voter contact. I talked to one guy and the other guy wasn’t home.”

Senate District 35 is the largest Senate district in the state as well as the least populated.

A little less than 36 percent of the district population is Latino, which is about 15 percent greater than the statewide Latino population.

Casias, whose family has deep roots in the region, has Mexican and Apache ancestors. It’s possible he will have an advantage with the key Latino voter bloc, especially in the year of the Trump candidacy.

Crowder said the political tensions between Latino and white Americans that have marked national politics aren’t part of the district’s history. He said revved-up immigration politics and the tensions brought by videotaped police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement have bled into the district – but only temporarily.

“Our economy here was built on illegal immigration,” he said. “I’m talking about before mechanization, for hundreds of years, so it’s just part of the culture. We were all raised together and so we know each other. When I was young in the ’60s and before that, immigrant workers just filled the streets and the stores in the towns, people coming and going. They were just part of it. That’s what you understood.”

Crowder is one of the rare Republicans now who supports an extended path to citizenship that would begin with green cards and vetting over 10 years and perhaps would include some form of assimilation requirements.

Unaffiliated voters and a libertarian wild card

The number of active major party affiliated voters in District 35 is nearly equal. In September, the state reported 27,483 registered Democrats and 27,588 registered Republicans. That leaves the district’s 19,273 registered unaffiliated voters to decide the election, same as in so many crucial elections in Colorado.

In Obama re-election year 2012, Crowder defeated Democrat Crestina Martinez by 1,500 votes or a little more than 2 percentage points. Libertarian candidate William Bartley drew 2,461 votes that election. Altogether, the candidates spent $232,164.

Bartley is also running this year and may prove more of a spoiler in a year where the major party presidential candidates are historically unpopular, even though Bartley is not running much of a campaign.

His website was paid for and put together by the state’s Libertarian Party. It lists the general platform of the party and the party’s contact information, but it includes no biographical information, quotes, or policy positions taken by Bartley.

In papers filed with the secretary of state, Bartley reports taking in no donations and spending no money on his Senate bid.

Crowder so far has raised nearly $102,000 and has spent $70,000. He has pulled in mostly small contributions. In August, the largest amount Crowder received was a $3,000 contribution from a homebuilder group. At the end of September, a dental group gave him $4,000. He has seen fairly regular donations come in from health-industry groups.

Crowder has spent his campaign cash mostly on advertising, roughly $9,000 in September. He’s maintained a presence on the internet for months, popping up in the Facebook and Twitter feeds of Colorado politics readers.

Casias so far has raised nearly $50,000 and spent $30,000. His largest contributions in September came from an electrical workers union local chapter, which gave him $4,000, and gay-rights group One Colorado, which gave him $400. This month, Casias has spent about $2,600 on yard and road signs and sparingly on travel in the district. He also spent $15 on a robocall campaign.

The candidates said they haven’t yet seen any sign of outside political groups advertising or canvassing in the district.

“I’m approaching the election like I’m the underdog. It’s not fair to my constituents if I go in lackluster,” said Crowder.

“People know I’m good for my word and that I have been working hard to win their trust for years,” said Casias. “It’s time for change. We have to change. We can’t leave anybody behind.”