Last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling returning abortion policy to the states has become the Democratic Party’s one-trick pony in this fall’s political campaigns. We’ll know on Nov. 8 if it has the horsepower to turn the tide against Republicans in Colorado.

To do that, it would have to distract enough voters from the one campaign issue Democrats fear most – crime.

A barrage of dark money-funded, multimillion-dollar media campaigns by third-party advocacy groups attacking leading Republican contenders in the state is banking on the Colorado electorate’s long-standing tilt toward abortion rights.

The strategy seems to be to hype last June 24’s landmark Dobbs decision – which lets states curb abortion – and frighten Colorado’s No. 1 voting bloc, unaffiliated voters, away from the mostly pro-Dobbs GOP.

The underlying hope, evidently, is that Dobbs in fact will scare the state’s many centrist voters – so much they’ll overlook the epic crime wave that has slammed our state. Concerns about crime, after all, only can harm Democrats, who are perceived as having ushered it in.

The challenge facing the Democratic strategy is that Dobbs changes nothing in Colorado. Abortion remains legal and widely available here and will stay that way given the state’s political chemistry. Just last spring the Democrat-controlled Legislature even thumbed its nose at the Supreme Court by passing the most permissive abortion law in the nation.

It also doesn’t help the Democrats’ cause that one of the most prominent Republicans on the ballot this fall, U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, is on record opposing the Dobbs decision and supporting abortion rights – notwithstanding attempts by attack ads to distort his views.

While any threat to abortion access in Colorado is only theoretical – crime is very real.

Just about everyone who lives in the state’s metro areas knows someone whose car or truck has been stolen in the past month or two – Colorado is No. 1 in the nation for auto theft – to say nothing of the surge in violent crime and drug overdoses over the past several years. The deadly fentanyl trade has taken on tragic proportions, terrifying parents for their kids.

Republicans have been doing their level best to lay it at the feet of Democrats, who wield the levers of power in the state. And the GOP has made a strong case.

Republicans point out how the crime wave was preceded by a wave of Democratic legislation slashing penalties for a host of offenses – turning loose many more convicted criminals and criminal suspects on our streets than in the past.

The bottom line for Colorado voters is that those who support abortion rights have nothing to fear in Dobbs – but everyone has something to fear from the state’s crippling crime wave.

That has been the point of Colorado’s Republican contender for attorney general, 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner, who is seeking to unseat first-term incumbent Democrat Phil Weiser. Predictably, Kellner is among those targeted by the Democrats’ Dobbs diversion.

As reported Friday by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, the Democratic Attorneys General Association has launched a $2 million ad campaign aimed at Kellner’s support for the Supreme Court decision. The Kellner campaign wasn’t impressed.

As campaign spokeswoman Holly Horn told Colorado Politics, “It’s going to take a lot more than $2 million for voters to forget about the $31 billion cost of crime in Colorado that is costing each Coloradan more than $5,000 per year.”

Denver Gazette Editorial Board