Senator Ken Salazar (CO)

U.S. Senate

Transcription by RegNYC

We encourage you to listen to the clip.

I don't represent George Bush. (laughter) [A reference to the preceding speaker, Congressman Chet Edwards, whose district includes Crawford, Texas.]

Chet's doing a wonderful job and really did show us how you can win in a very red part of the country.

Let me, just at the outset, say that there were many people in Colorado who came to me early on in the 2004 election, long before it was decided who was going to be the candidate, and they said that there was this General who could win the election if he was the Democratic nominee, and they were very strong in supporting Wes Clark, including my good friend Stan Davis in the back. And thank you to all of you for having been part of that movement to draft Wes Clark.

Let me also say that I appreciate, not only his leadership, and his service to the country, but his continuing leadership and his support for me in what was a very tough race in Colorado. I could not have won had it not been for thousands of people around this country who supported my effort. But Wes not only came to Colorado and had a very, very huge $150,000 and even a $300,000 fundraiser for me there, but also, I think, through the e-mail network for WesPAC was able, I think, through the click of a button, raise about $160,000 for a very historic campaign in Colorado.

So, thank you to all of you for being part of that effort, and thank you to General Clark. And what I want to say about General Clark is, you know his days in office, whatever they may be, are not yet over.

(vigorous applause)

And though I have half of my colleagues, I think, in the US Senate who are running for office (laughter), I want to say this to General Clark that he is one of those people that I do believe, I do believe can in fact win against whoever the Republicans might put up in 2008. So,-

(more vigorous applause)

Let me, what I would do is spend ten or fifteen minutes just talking to all of you about the Colorado Miracle. It did happen yes, with you, it happened with a lot of people from all over the country that made it happen. When I became involved in this race for the US Senate, it was in March of 2004. So, there was only about seven months to go before the election, and I was facing very much what was an uphill battle.

I was the only Democrat to have won in the state of Colorado, in a state that had been trending increasingly to the right and red over the last ten years, since 1994. I won in 1998 for the office of Attorney General. I won again in 2002, and then I won this last battle in 2004. And so I think most people in those days would have said that it was almost an impossible climb for someone as a Democrat to win in the state of Colorado.

I think they would have said when you're running against somebody who is a household name, by the name of Pete Coors- whose family has been in Colorado for over a hundred years, who has a stadium or some facility named after them in every single community and town in the state of Colorado- how is it that somebody of your background ultimately even has a chance of winning a race that is going to be so nationalized? How is it that you, who comes from a background of having been a farmer and a rancher in Colorado that doesn't have the kind of name recognition that Pete Coors has, how are you going to be able to win? But at the end of the day, we won, and we were the only United States Senate race in the country that went to a Democrat in a state where George Bush won by a significant margin.

Being my freshman class in the US Senate, I should say this, General Clark, I'm at the very end of the totem pole. I'm number 100. There have only been 1,884 Senators to serve in the United States Senate since the beginning of our country. I am number 1884. (laughter)

There's only one way to go. (more laughter)

So, we'll see, we'll see how far we go up that 1884. But you know, I think that there were just a lot of- there was a great sense that this was a race in Colorado which really could not, could not be won.

There were other races in Florida and other places, that at least initially people thought were much more winnable for a Democrat than our race in Colorado. But we worked at it very, very hard, and at the end of the day, what we ended up doing was creating a miracle in Colorado that needs to be replicated across the country.

When all the votes were counted in November of 2004, not only did I become the first United States Senator who was a Democrat in Colorado, who was elected out of that state for more than a decade, but we can also (inaudible) since the time that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President of the United States, we had taken over the Colorado Senate and had a woman as President of the Colorado Senate, and since John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President, this had never happened before, that we ended up taking over the House of Representatives with a five Democrat seat margin, and we have a Speaker of the House who is a Democrat.

And not only did we finish there with that kind of a victory but we went on out on the beautiful mountains of western part of Colorado in San Luis Valley and Pueblo, there's another member of congress by the name of Salazar, my brother John, who was elected to serve in Congress. So, yes it was a Colorado miracle, and something that we're all very, very, very proud of.

Now the question I often get asked is, 'well, how were you able to do this,' and 'how did you do what escaped us all around, all around the country?'

And let me just say that I think these statistics will tell you something about this message.

One: when you compare what happened between my win by about 5% in Colorado against Pete Coors and John Kerry's loss to George Bush by about 5% in that same state, it boils down I think to these three factors. It had to do with- these are just in terms of voters, okay- the independent voters, women and rural voters. The respect of independent voters I was able to win against my opponent by about a 65 to 35 margin. So, it is obvious that I made huge inroads into that independent voter base in the state, and I had to do that, because my state is still very much a Republican state where Democrats are outnumbered by about a 10 percentage point margin. And so I was able to pick up a huge number of independents who came in and voted fro me.

Secondly: in the rural areas of Colorado, the difference between John Kerry's performance and my performance in the rural parts of the state was 22%. 22%. I won many of the counties out in the rural parts of the state of Colorado, one: because I spent a lot of time there, and two: because I think people knew that I cared a lot about their particular issues. But a huge differential in terms of the performance between myself and Senator Kerry out in the rural parts of the state.

And a third with respect to women, I won by about a 60/40 margin against Pete Coors with women voting for me. And so the question- and it wasn't because I'm more handsome than Pete Coors. (laughter) You know, you see his commercials on television. You have this telegenic guy with mountains behind him. He's, he's quite the good-looking guy. But it had to do with the fact that I think people were connected up with the issues that I was advocating throughout my campaign.

Let me just talk to you about what two of those key issues I think were.

One is security. I think a lot about the 2004 election had to do with what was happening with the war on terror, with what had happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. The big debate really was around that issue, and I think that many people in our country ended up casting their vote for George Bush because of the fact that they were concerned about the security issue. Well, for me in Colorado, I came out of a background of having served with 14,000 police officers, of having been the chairman of the Peace Officers Standards of Training Board, having worked on terrorism task forces and the like. And what I did from the very beginning of my campaign was I surrounded myself with that mantle of security, saying that I would do a better job than George Bush had done to make a stronger homeland for all
of us and that I would be strong on defense. And as I did that, usually there were lots of cops around me, in the multiple commercials that were run during that entire timeframe. So, on a substantive issue, I think security was key to our victory. I think that's why, you know we used to call them the 'soccer moms' back in the 2000 Gore/Bush election. Now I think in 2004 they became the 'security moms,' and I think they had more confidence in my ability to push forward with an agenda of security.

Secondly, rural voters: You know I have been a farmer and a rancher for most of my life. I had worked on issues throughout the state of Colorado, and I very much had a rural agenda. Many of our commercials had us on pictures that represented my growing up on a ranch in southern Colorado, but I also was able to connect up to the localized issues of each of the regions of the state, within each of the (inaudible) I had worked many of those issues for a very long time. So, I think that for those reasons we were able to do much better with rural voters, we were able to do much better with women, and we were able to do much better with independent voters.

Let me conclude by saying a couple things about campaign tactics.

First, I think it is important to aggressively organize and aggressively organize everywhere. I had a very fateful conversation with Tom Daschle probably six, seven months ago here in Washington, DC, and we were talking about what happened in South Dakota and how he had lost that heartbreaking election for many of us who are friends of Tom Daschle. And frankly, it was impossible for Tom Daschle to make up that 22% differential that Bush had against John Kerry in South Dakota. He lost by a very, very slim margin.

It was almost a 50/50 tie in South Dakota. We should not have let- we should not have ceded South Dakota to the Republican Party as a national effort, and for my- if you parallel it to what we did in the state of Colorado- my organizing belief in the three campaigns I've won statewide in the last now seven years, is that every single county and every single community is important.

So, there are three counties in my state have less than 500 people out of the 4.3 million people in Colorado. You know, a lot of my political advisors would say, 'stay where the population is, stay in Denver, stay in Colorado Springs, stay in Boulder, stay in Fort Collins. And I disagree with that, and so what I have done is I have spent a very significant amount of my time in every single county and every single community in Colorado.

I created an organization in every one of those counties. (inaudible) that organization help us out, get out the vote and make sure that we had our yard signs out there. We do everything within the state. So, no matter where you went in the state of Colorado, I had a great significant presence. Now the lesson to me for that on a national level and something that I communicated to upward ranks, to Howard Dean and Harry Reid and others in leadership positions is that we need to do the same thing at the national level, because we as the Democratic Party are going to continue to lose our shirt over time unless we start getting some of the ground back that we have lost.

For me, the miracle of Colorado, in large part, was that we did not lose Colorado to that red part of America where Democrats are becoming endangered. We were about at that point before 2004, but I think the 2004 election pushed us back to the point where we are now in the saddle in the state of Colorado with great hopes for what the opportunities are for the future for Governor, for continued successes in building up a greater Democratic delegation out of Colorado (inaudible).

We need to do the same thing on the national level, and even places like Utah, and Wyoming. All these places are places that we cannot forget and they have to be an essential part of a strategy.

As I told Howard Dean time and time again, it's a 50 state strategy. It is not a 20 state strategy.

(enthusiastic applause)

Another quick point I would make here is that ultimately having the resources to be able to get the message out is incredibly important. You know, I am essentially a $33 million man out of Colorado, because that's how much money came into the campaigns on both sides, both for Pete Coors and for me as well as the independent expenditures.

We, in my campaign, were able to raise $9.2 million in the course of seven months, and that amount of money is twice the amount of money that had ever been raised for any US Senate campaign. Essentially allowed us to do what we had to do on television, on radio and the rest of our organizing efforts. Without money it is impossible to win because you can't get your message out, and you can't defend yourself in a way that Chet was describing.

The third point I would make is essentially kind of like what Chet said is that you have to define yourself, but you also have to make sure that you're defining your opponent, and you have to be ready to jump on your opponent's mistakes. And politics is hardball, and you're going to have your neck stepped on unless you step on their neck.

And when you think about somebody like Karl Rove, you have to know that you're looking at somebody who is evil, who is nefarious, who does everything he can to (inaudible over cheering and applause), and what you have to do is you have to know that you're about running for a greater cause, and you have to be able to take them down before they take you down.

Just give you one quick example of that. One of the great contrasts between Pete Coors and myself in this US Senate race in Colorado was I was a common man, a person 12th generation in New Mexico and Colorado, raised in a place that didn't have electricity or telephone, part of eight children who were first generation college graduates, and the son of the proud soldiers and veterans of World War II. And, that was my image. So, what I tried to do within our frame was to say, 'I was on your side.' I was on the side of the people of the state of Colorado.

Now during one of our debates, Pete Coors was asked a question and he was, he basically, he was asked a question, "How is it-" It was a question directed at both of us in the debate. "How is it that you can best connect up to the common man? How is it that you can best connect up to the common man?" Well, he went first and he said, "Well, uh, I don't know what a common man is." (laughter) And then he went on to explain in a couple of paragraphs what he kind of meant by that. Well, within 24 hours we had this nice commercial up on television. (laughter)

We had him dressed in a tuxedo with a glass of wine, and in his own words Peter Coors was saying, "I don't know what a common man is. (laughter) So, I tell you that story only to really buttress what Chet said that this game is not one that you can wait (inaudible) incorrectly think that.

One of the major mistake that my good friend John Kerry made in his campaign is that he let them define him. He let them go on for weeks on attacks without him defending himself. This is something that requires you to deal in real time and most of the time that means it's really a matter of minutes and never more than a day before you're responding or you're taking opportunities that are presented to you on the campaign trail.

Let me just conclude by saying this to all of you.

We are absolutely, I think, at a place where 2006 and 2008 can be the time where we as Americans start restoring the greatness of this country. And for me the greatness of that country, of this country is the greatness my parents saw- the greatest generation of all-time of World War II- who dreamt yes, that their children could in fact get a college education, who dreamt about the greatness and the strength of this country.

There's a compact, I think, that is there, not written down anywhere, but I think passed along from one generation to the next, and that is that we receive the baton from our parents, and when we take that baton and give it on to our children, we're giving it to them in even better shape than we have received it.

Well, the legacy of five years of the Bush Administration has put us in a position where we will become the first generation of Americans to violate that historic compact that makes America great.

And I for one, as a US Senator from Colorado, am not going to let that happen, and I'm going to be joining with all of you here and with General Wesley Clark, not only in 2006, but also 2008, to make sure that we restore America's promise once again. Thanks a lot.

(applause)