Every two years Americans get to flex their democratic enzymes and vote. It’s a brief exercise in which one is afforded the burst of satisfaction that accompanies the tactile expression of either exuberant support for a candidate, visceral detestation of one, or – if indifferent to the personalities – a personal judgment on how things are generally going. Every 10 years some Americans get the added joy of doing so in a brand-spanking-new Congressional district.

Voters north of Denver in the new 8th Congressional District lucked out and find themselves in a new electoral battlefield, one on which much attention – both statewide and national – is being devoted. The race is between Republican Barbara Kirkmeyer and Democrat Yadira Careveo. They each leapt into the fray from the trenches of the Colorado legislature, meaning both have voting records which serve as helpful tools in judging relative fitness for the office.

“Bipartisanship” is one of those political buzzwords that can mean as much or as little as the person using it wishes, but it is useful to remember two things. First: that a great deal of what goes on in the world of lawmaking is not of the hyper-contentious, headline-generating variety and, therefore, actually requires a degree of professional collaboration. Second: that the state’s congressional districts were drawn by an independent commission with as little regard to partisan advantage as possible, resulting in the 8th Congressional District being considered one of the most competitive in the country; i.e., giving each candidate as close to an even shot as is possible in a pluralistic society. It also means that the eventual victor will be representing a pretty good chunk of people who disagree with her.

Accordingly, candidates tend to promote their “bipartisan” bonafides quite regularly. Indeed, and on cue, Caraveo recently released an ad which touts how much she works across party lines to get things done.

Well, that may be something of a stretch. A Colorado Politics article from this past May, titled “2022 SESSION: The most and least successful Colorado lawmakers” ranked the members on such datum as numbers of bills passed, and how many had bipartisan sponsorship. Turns out Caraveo holds the honor of being the least bipartisan member of the legislature this past year, with none of her six bills having a Republican sponsor. That puts her, incidentally, in the same company as Republican firebrand Ron Hanks, who lost a Senatorial primary bid to the more measured Joe O’Dea. Both also share spots in the list of legislators who passed the fewest bills.

So Kirkmeyer wins out on bipartisanship, but she has taken her lumps too. Most recently her opponent took issue with some statements Kirkmeyer made several years ago opposing gay marriage. Well, it’s useful to recall that not all that many years ago most people expressed opposition to gay marriage – including President Barack Obama, who famously stated during his 2008 presidential campaign that marriage was between a man and a woman, a position he still held publicly as late as 2010. His views, like Kirkmeyer’s, transmogrified through the years, mirroring the rapid shift in public opinion on the topic. One could argue, as David Axelrod did, that Obama merely voiced that position as a matter of political expediency; but even if that were the case, it meant simply that he took the position because a plurality of the public did so at the time. That hardly qualifies as being out of the mainstream, and Kirkmeyer certainly deserves the same latitude to evolve on a particular issue as granted to Barack Obama.

It would, of course, be a shame on several levels if that is the sort of issue on which a congressional election pivots. The pertinent issues, those which impact the life of the nation and for which governments are elected to do something about, are the ones for which Kirkmeyer has the better solutions – inflation and cost of living, energy security, crime, disorder at the border and (in case anyone forgets) national security are the things which ought to ignite the voters’ passion. Here is where those voting records I mentioned come in. On economic issues, Caraveo voted for every inflationary spending program to come before her, Kirmeyer voted for restraint; on energy, Kirkmeyer has long staunchly supported domestic energy production, Caraveo sponsored legislation to curtail it; Careveo voted to essentially decriminalize fentanyl; Kirkmeyer helped lead the fight in the Senate to get it off the streets. The list continues.

Careveo clings to a doctrinaire partisanship that aligns her with the ascendant left-wing of today’s Democratic Party and the economic and social wreckage it has created – a wing which claims allegiance to ideological fanaticism for its own sake. Kirkmeyer is fond of saying in her stump speech, “I want to go to Congress to make a difference. I don’t want to go just to make a point.” There is precious little of that in any corner of American politics these days, and on that basis alone she deserves victory.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.