The New Face in the Race

By this point in the summer, Betsy Markey has visited her fair share of county festivals.

On a road trip with her sister, a schoolteacher who had the summer off, Markey marched in the parade in Logan County, went to the Brush Rodeo and spent time at the Yuma County Fair.

At one point in her journey through the 4th Congressional District, it was time for Markey to meet with the 80-year-old reporter for the newspaper in Cheyenne Wells, a tiny town along U.S. 40 near the Colorado-Kansas border.

Markey described how the woman placed her hand over Markey’s and gently asked a question.

“She said, ‘If you get elected, will you bring our troops home from Iraq, please?’” Markey recalled.

Markey said American troops can’t just up and leave, but if elected to Congress, she would do what she could to form an exit strategy.

That’s a goal many Americans support, and it highlights one of the key reasons Markey is in the race: She, and many other Democrats, believe she has the best chance to defeat incumbent U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, and to go to Congress to implement those plans.

Markey, a former Larimer County Democratic Party chairwoman and aide to U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, jumped into the race in June, when former state Rep. Angie Paccione was the only one officially running. At the time, Longmont state Sen. Brandon Shaffer was thinking about it, and 2006 Reform candidate Eric Eidsness had just become a Democrat.

Markey had waited until her three kids were grown before running for office, and she thought this election cycle was a ripe opportunity.

“2008 is shaping up to be a good year for the right Democrat,” she said.

Markey has been traveling the district all summer, and plans to ramp up her fundraising efforts and public appearances this fall.

On Wednesday, she had a coming-out party of sorts when her former boss, Salazar, made a rare move by formally endorsing her in an appearance at the state Capitol.

“I believe that she is the one candidate who can win this race and go to Washington as a champion for the independent values that are the hallmarks of the West. She will make the citizens of the Fourth Congressional District proud, and I am honored to endorse her candidacy,” Salazar said.

The endorsement was surprising if only for its rarity—sitting members of the Senate don’t often get involved in congressional primaries. Salazar isn’t picking sides in the 2nd District, for instance, where Colorado Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, entrepreneur Jared Polis and conservationist Will Shafroth are in another three-way primary.

But Markey worked for Salazar for two and a half years, so the two have a close relationship. When she joined the race, he said she understood the 4th better than anybody.

Markey’s former boss is hardly the only boldface-name Democrat to back her candidacy, however.

Right out of the gate, some of the region’s most influential Democrats, including state Sen. Bob Bacon and state Rep. John Kefalas, both Fort Collins Democrats, threw their support behind Markey, as did former 4th District challenger/ex-Senate President Stan Matsunaka.

Supporters said when Markey joined the race in June that she would be the Democrats’ best chance for change in the 4th, in part because she could attract Republican votes as well as Democratic ones.

That 80-year-old woman was among several Republicans who told Markey this summer that they’d consider voting for her next year, she said.

“I was surprised at the number of Republicans I ran into when I was traveling with my sister who are upset with the administration and Marilyn Musgrave,” Markey said.

Some of them just want someone else; they might not even care whom. Markey met a man at one of the events who said he was a life-long Republican, but was weighing his options.

“He said, ‘You seem like an awfully nice person, maybe I’ll vote for you,’” she recalled, with a laugh.

In some ways, Markey is at an advantage with traditionally conservative voters on the eastern plains. She’s been working with them for more than two years, while she was representing Salazar’s interests. Her job was to cut federal red tape, foster relationships with people of all political persuasions and make sure things got done. Now, she has chips she can call in.

Markey said people in the district respect her because “I’m a person who builds bridges.”

It’s a familiar role for someone who has three decades of experience working in federal government, running a small business and being a parent.

With her husband, Markey co-founded Syscom Services, a software and web development firm. During the mid 1990s, she owned Huckleberry’s, a coffee and ice cream shop in Old Town Square. And before that, she was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. State Department during the Reagan Administration, where she managed classified computer security programs. She also worked as committee staff for the U.S. House of Representatives and as a policy analyst in the Treasury Department.

“If you take a look at my experience—in Washington, in this district, as a parent, as a small-business person—I think the choice becomes pretty easy,” Markey said.

Having such a choice to make is a new phenomenon for Northern Colorado Democrats.

Adam Bowen, chairman of the Larimer County Democratic Party, said the more, the merrier.

Bowen came to Larimer County in 1998, and watched the 2000 election happen with no Democrat challenging U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer, who retired from Congress after that election.

“I thought that was crazy,” Bowen said.

Apparently after a seven-year drought, when it rains, it pours.

Bowen said he thinks the influx of new candidates shows the county is changing politically.

“People have seen what the Republicans have done,” he said, adding that the country’s debt has ballooned and people grew tired of conservatives trying to legislate moral issues.

Larimer County’s registration numbers, at least, show that he might have a point. While Republicans still far outnumber Democrats, the GOP saw its ranks decline in the last election, while those of unaffiliated voters and Democrats swelled, according to statistics online at the Larimer County Clerk and Recorder’s Web site.

In July 2005, the county had 62,134 registered Republicans, 40,717 Democrats and 50,052 unaffiliated voters.

By November 2006, during the election, the GOP numbers had dropped to 61,756, while Democrats added more than 1,200 voters and more than 1,700 people declared no party affiliation.

In July of this year, there were 53,083 Republicans, 37,753 Democrats and 41,764 unaffiliated, according to the Web site. The declines are partially due to voter registration purges that happen if someone becomes “inactive” because he or she didn’t vote in the last election.

After the apparent shift last fall, there are three Democrats vying for the 4th District seat, a far cry from the big fat zero the party put forth in 2000.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is a good problem to have,” Bowen said.

Markey, like Paccione and Eidsness, also welcomed the competition. She added that she’s not worried about the primary getting nasty. All three candidates say they like one another, and just want voters to decide.

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether that will be the case six months from now.

While a three-way primary will be expensive and potentially bruising, one thing seems assured: No coin toss will be used to circumvent it.

In 2002, Paccione and Fort Collins businessman Larry Chisesi were both seeking election to Colorado’s House District 53, an area that covers Colorado State University and neighborhoods nearby.

The two candidates agreed to a coin toss to avoid a primary, with the winner accepting the nomination. Paccione lost the toss, but ran anyway, and won the primary with 56 percent of the vote.

She said she has no regrets about the decision—which she said was made after members of her family and the public encouraged her not to give up— although it created some tension in the party.

“I defied them, because I thought it was really the people’s right to vote on their candidate,” she said.

She added that many of the same Democrats who supported Chisesi are opposing her now, but she was glad to have stood up to the party.

“I don’t kiss the ring very well,” she said.

Bowen said he wouldn’t resort to those tactics, calling a coin toss “ludicrous.”

“The idea of a coin toss to replace democracy—it’s ridiculous,” he said. “The voters need to decide.”

Markey is hoping her base of support will make that decision easier.

She’s ramping up fundraising efforts this fall, including 30 house parties in 30 days, the details for which are still being hammered out.

Salazar is headlining a private fundraiser for her on Monday in Fort Collins, and Markey expects her third-quarter fundraising to raise some eyebrows—and not in the way her underwhelming numbers did last quarter.

Paccione outraised Markey in the 2nd quarter, but not by a lot — bringing in about $91,000 in total contributions in the fundraising quarter from April through June. Markey, by contrast, raised $35,320 and gave herself a $25,000 loan, according to the Federal Election Commission. Paccione had $106,525 on hand at the end of the quarter and Markey had $53,979.

Markey dismissed her lower numbers because of the dates involved: She had only been in the race a couple weeks when the fundraising period ended.

“I feel very good about my numbers,” she said. “This will be the first full quarter that I’m in the race.”

She’s also planning to keep traveling the district, asking people what they want from Congress. The summer road trip is over, but Markey plans to be a familiar sight in all 18 counties.

“That’s the most fun—that’s the best part of this, is traveling around and getting to meet people,” she said.