The future of both political parties in Colorado depends on independent, unaffiliated voters. As the majority of registered voters in Colorado, their support is essential to winning elections in the state.  In 2018, and at least through 2020, Democrats have a simple and winning message; Vote blue or you are voting for Donald Trump.  This was a message Democrats used very effectively in 2018, when they swept the state.  Even in my race, where I ran as an independent against an incumbent Democrat, they used that message, and polling conducted immediately after the election showed that they carried 65% of the independent vote on election night, while I took the Republican vote.    

Pundits point to numbers like this and say that independents are really Republicans or Democrats who have chosen not to join a party but can be relied on each election cycle to back their particular party, I disagree.  This premise ignores that we have a duopoly that has divided the political landscape up into ideological fortresses, from which each party compares themselves to the opposing side.  While each side can rely on their partisan base for unwavering support, they only have to convince half of the remaining 40% of the electorate that they are the lesser of two evils.  I would point to the rejection of Proposition CC as a case in point.  If Democrats truly have a mandate in Colorado, this should have passed easily, yet 54% of Coloradans who voted in 2019 rejected it, while taxing sports betting to fund the statewide water plan passed with just over 50% of the vote.  

Democrats know that their hold on independents in Colorado is tenuous at best, but rather than try to understand what independent’s want, they simply used their majority to change the rules to hold onto power through 2020.  To inhibit any independent challenge in 2020, they proposed and passed HB19-1278 on a party-line vote.  This act changed the “UNIFORM ELECTION CODE OF 1992, and significantly increases the number of signatures required for an independent candidate to get on the ballot to levels that independents are unlikely to obtain (an increase of 150% for the state House, and up to 960% for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and U.S. Senate).  

While this act effectively removes independent candidates from competing against the anti-Trump messaging that Democrats rely on, it does open the door for Republicans to rebuild their party in Colorado by recruiting independent voters into their ranks.  However, to do that will require a fundamental change in their party platform. While they can still run on fiscal responsibility and being pro-small business, in districts dominated by independents, candidates will need to reject the current leader of their national party; they will also need to be pro-environment, and socially moderate.  Essentially, they will need to return to their centrist past.  Perhaps a return to the values of the party of Eisenhower.  

Remember, the Republican Party faithful will vote for anyone who isn’t a Democrat, but as independents we are begging for the best candidate, not the lesser of two evils. 

Paul Jones, a retired game warden and wildlife biologist in Gunnison, ran as an unaffiliated candidate in 2018 for House District 59 in the legislature.