A STATEWIDE WIN’S A STATEWIDE WIN … State Treasurer Walker Stapleton, a leading Republican candidate for governor, was making the rounds at precinct caucuses Tuesday night at Lakewood High School, pitching his candidacy to Jeffco Republicans, who were convening in scattered classrooms. At one of his first stops, Stapleton delivered a rapid-fire introduction to the contest ahead – spending the bulk of his of time talking about Democrat Jared Polis, a Boulder congressman and leading Democratic candidate for governor.

“I’ve run statewide, I’ve won both times, and I think I can win a third time,” Stapleton said. “There’s a lot of groups that don’t want Jared Polis to win. Jared Polis hasn’t won one statewide election. He might play well in Denver or Boulder, but I don’t think he’s going to play well in Grand Junction and Colorado Springs and more rural areas of our state, which are solidly Republican.”

He went on to sketch a doom-and-gloom portrait of the state under a Polis regime, adding that there are powerful, monied interests who don’t want to see that happen and will spend plenty to prevent it. Then Stapleton urged an unaffiliated voter who had somehow found himself at the caucus to return to the GOP – and was off to the classroom next door to make a similar presentation.

Hold on a second, Trail Mix asked Stapleton as he and his aide hurried down the hallway. Polis has, in fact, won a statewide election, contrary to what the candidate had just told the handful of caucus-goers. Stapleton stopped for a moment, cocked his head and then replied, “Oh yeah, State Board of Education? That’s right.”

Indeed. Back in 2000, Polis won what turned out to be one of the closest statewide races in Colorado history, denying Republican Ben Alexander, a former state senator from Montrose, a second term in the at-large position on the State Board of Education. After a recount, Polis won a term on the board by just 90 votes out of 1.6 million votes cast.

It was Polis’ first run for office, and the way it went down proved prophetic for his political future. After amassing a fortune starting and selling internet companies in the 1990s, Polis – by one recent account, the wealthiest member of Congress, worth an estimated $476 million – hasn’t been shy about spending his money on political causes or his own races. In the 2000 campaign, he outspent Alexander by 100-to-1, pouring roughly $1 million into what had typically been rather sleepy campaigns, compared with the $10,000 his Republican opponent spent. Polis has been elected to Congress five times since the conclusion of his six-year Board of Ed term, when he was the first Democrat chosen by fellow board members to chair the board.

But a win is a win, and Polis has a statewide one under his belt. So does former State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, another leading Democratic candidate for governor – although the reason she just has one is because she lost her 2010 bid for reelection to Stapleton, who went on to win a second term in 2014. None of the other candidates for governor have run statewide before, much less won.

“YOU LIKE ME! YOU REALLY LIKE ME!” … That isn’t exactly what Sally Field said when she won the 1984 Oscar for best actress, but it’s the way people remember it (more on that below) – and it’s central to another Republican gubernatorial candidate’s strategy to win election this year.

Victor Mitchell, an entrepreneur and former state lawmaker from Douglas County, made a curious point when he submitted his nominating petitions to the secretary of state earlier this week: “We wanted to collect the most petitions to show our commitment to winning this campaign, just as we’ve approached our Facebook social media campaign, where we have more friends andfollowers than any other gubernatorial candidate, by a wide margin.”

He’s right on both counts. Mitchell delivered around 26,000 petition signatures, more than the 21,000 turned in last month by Stapleton and the 17,000 turned in a couple days earlier by the other major GOP candidate who is petitioning, former investment banker Doug Robinson, who is also Mitt Romney’s nephew. But what’s that about Facebook friends?

Mitchell has touted his lead in the social media metric before, and he’s still maintaining it, as he says, by a wide margin.

According to Facebook, Mitchell’s campaign page had more than 46,000 “likes” on Sunday morning, more than four times the number of likes collected by his next-closest primary rival, and about half again what the most-liked Democrat has.

Here are the Republican gubernatorial candidates, ranked by the number of Facebook “likes” for their campaign pages:

Victor Mitchell 46,145Walker Stapleton 10,757Doug Robinson 8,295Cynthia Coffman 2,204Steve Barlock 727Greg Lopez 541Lew Gaiter 78

And here’s how the Democrats stack up:

Jared Polis 30,539Mike Johnston 12,490Cary Kennedy 7,889Noel Ginsburg 1,581Donna Lynne 984Erik Underwood 100

As Colorado Politics noted last year, the number of “likes” a politician has could indicate popularity – or it could simply mean the politician has prioritized getting a lot of “likes” and is spending a lot of money on Facebook’s “Like Builder” program.

ABOUT THAT SALLY FIELD QUOTE … “You like me! You really like me!” has turned into a catch-phrase over the years – featured in internet memes and even parodied by Sean Penn when he accepted an award for acting a dozen years later – but it isn’t what Field said at the Academy Awards.

When the former sitcom star won her second Oscar for “Places in the Heart” – her first had been for portraying a union organizer in “Norma Rae” – Field said, “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”