CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — Barbara Hildebrand left the rally for Senate candidate Joe O’Dea and other Republicans here this week in a cloud of frustration.
“I’m really upset about what [O’Dea] said about Trump,” Hildebrand said as she made a beeline for the door. “I’m an ultra-MAGA … Hasn’t he seen the rallies that Trump has? I mean, those are a lot of people. And he’s alienated them.”
With just three weeks before the midterm elections, former president Donald Trump this week inserted himself into the Senate race in this blue-trending mountain state — upsetting the delicate balance between Colorado’s GOP base and its pro-abortion Senate candidate who seems tailor-made to appeal to independents.
The former president slammed O’Dea after the moderate Republican said in a recent CNN interview that he would “actively” campaign against Trump in the 2024 presidential primary, in favor of candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). “MAGA doesn’t vote for stupid people with big mouths,” Trump fired back in a statement.
Colorado’s Republican primary voters bucked the trend seen in other competitive states this cycle and picked a moderate candidate who is not haunted in the general election by past harder-right positions on abortion and other issues. O’Dea, the owner of a Denver-based construction company, also lacks the baggage of some other GOP Senate candidates who are battling allegations spanning paying for an abortion to hawking questionable miracle cures on TV.
But O’Dea’s candidacy is also testing the forbearance of the state’s base voters, who are being asked to support a candidate who is feuding with Trump.
“The idea that you can make up enthusiasm with the unaffiliated by distancing yourself from the base — I’ve never seen it work,” said Randy Corporon, a Republican National Committee member and local conservative talk radio host who said he is worried some Republican voters in the state will leave the Senate race blank on their ballot in protest. A libertarian candidate, who has been endorsed by one of O’Dea’s more conservative primary rivals, also could siphon off some GOP votes.
Republican luminaries who gathered here Tuesday night for the rally had a clear message for the GOP base in a state where a Republican hasn’t won a Senate seat since 2014: suck it up.
“If you’ve got a problem with Joe on anything, put it aside,” conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt urged the crowd.
George Brauchler, a former Republican district attorney, told them they could send their letter about how “unhappy” they are to Sen. Joe O’Dea next year instead of to the incumbent, Democratic Sen. Michael F. Bennet. “That’s how you know you’ve made progress in the state of Colorado,” he said.
It’s a message many pragmatic Republicans are embracing in a state Trump lost in 2020 by more than 13 percentage points. Trump’s brand of politics has been devastating for Republican candidates here, and trying something different makes sense, they say.
“O’Dea’s not a party guy. He doesn’t like Trump,” said Kelsey Alexander, a 67-year-old Republican voter at the event. “That’s okay. We’re not voting for him to like Trump — we’re voting for him to be a U.S. senator.” And even Hildebrand, who was offended by O’Dea’s criticism of Trump, said she will vote for him over Bennet at the end of the day.
O’Dea’s supporters say it’s possible his public fight with Trump could even benefit the candidate, who probably needs to win the state’s large share of unaffiliated voters to defeat Bennet.
“It will prove to these unaffiliateds that O’Dea has a spine,” said state GOP Rep. Colin Larson, who has endorsed O’Dea. “He’s proving that he’s able to stand up to the biggest bully in his party.”
Dick Wadhams, the former chair of the state’s Republican Party, said on a local conservative radio show hosted by Dan Caplis that the dust-up with Trump gave O’Dea a better shot at winning. “If he suddenly decided to embrace Trump right now … he can go on vacation for three weeks because he cannot win if he did that,” he said.
But Caplis is an example of how O’Dea’s candidacy has split some on the right in the state. He’s said his Catholic faith prevents him from supporting O’Dea given his stance on abortion, which O’Dea says should be legal in all cases up to five months’ gestation.
Without naming Caplis, Hewitt appeared to reference his objections at the end of Tuesday’s event, calling it “nonsense” to think Catholicism means a person shouldn’t vote for O’Dea. “It is the Catholic thing to do to get a Republican majority,” Hewitt said. “We have got to keep the bad justices off the Supreme Court.”
In a Marist poll of registered voters taken before Trump’s comments, 90 percent of Republicans said they planned to vote for O’Dea, with 5 percent undecided. Nine percent of Republicans said they had an unfavorable impression of O’Dea compared with 3 percent of Democrats who feel the same about Bennet.
Bennet, who’s running for a third full term in the Senate, led by seven percentage points among voters overall — but by just three percentage points among crucial independent voters. President Biden’s approval rating was 40 percent among voters there, underscoring Bennet’s vulnerability.
Hewitt praised O’Dea as a “great candidate,” and Steven Law of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund PAC has also touted him as one of the best recruits of this cycle. His race has been pegged by some pundits as a potential “sleeper” that could deliver Republicans the Senate majority, mentioned in the same breath as closer-fought battles in Nevada and Georgia. Still, O’Dea has not garnered the same investment from outside Republican groups as other candidates who are competing in states where Biden did not win 2020 by such a wide margin.
“I just think, with all due respect to Steven and Senator McConnell’s efforts and his team, I think a lot of that is just lip service. Otherwise, we’d see a lot more money be put to work,” said David Flaherty, a Republican pollster in Colorado.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has spent $851,000 in ads in the state, more than the $241,000 that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put forward. The Senate Leadership Fund announced this month that it’s contributing $1.25 million to an O’Dea-aligned PAC and says it hasn’t ruled out future spending. But overall, Democratic-aligned groups have spent or reserved about $3 million more in the race, and Bennet has spent more than twice as much as O’Dea, according to an analysis by the AdImpact firm.
The same week he drew Trump’s ire, O’Dea attended a fundraiser hosted by former president George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush in Texas.
“They just said, ‘Keep your head down. Keep grinding,’ ” O’Dea said of the Bushes advice to him.
The candidate has kept a laser focus on inflation, crime and the border, and brushed off concerns that Trump may have driven a wedge between him and conservatives.
“I can’t control the president,” he said. “I’m running my campaign. My campaign wants to close the border, secure the border … those are good conservative things. I’m going to reduce the spending. Those are what conservatives want, and so they’re with me.”