Ranting On...Crisanta Duran

State House Speaker Crisanta Duran (D-CO)

Once or twice every election cycle, you come across a "huh" sort of decision by a politician that you don't really understand.  Frequently they make campaign moves that you wouldn't have guessed, or make a really idiotic unforced error, or will stand by someone who is expending more political currency than they're worth.  And then there are the electoral decisions, the ones that make zilch sense where a candidate either skips ahead in the natural progression of their career, or run for an office that seemingly is a step down from their current one (or the one they were eyeing).  Keith Ellison becoming AG in 2018 rather than stay in DC or Denise Majette's quixotic run for the Senate in 2004.  This year, Crisanta Duran joins that list, going from what was once a position of extreme promise to a precarious electoral future, for reasons that are at a loss to me, and I suspect to most political insiders.  Let's talk it out, shall we?

For those who are saying "who?" when you refer to Crisanta Duran, let me share a bit.  Duran has been a rising star for a few years in Colorado, and was seen by many as the future of the state's party.  At the age of only 36, she became the Colorado House Speaker, and served in that position for two years.  Now 38, many expected her to run for the US Senate seat of Cory Gardner in 2020.  After all, 2016 and 2018 were extremely kind to the Democrats in the Centennial State.  The Democrats won back the State Senate, picked up the 6th district, and won every statewide office save Gardner's in that time.  One could argue that, aside from Doug Jones, there's no incumbent senator more vulnerable to reelection in 2020 than Gardner.

And Duran arguably would have been the frontrunner for the nomination.  Democrats failed to get John Hickenlooper, the former governor, to run because he seems to think he can win the Democratic Primary (he can't, not with his environmental record-he'd struggle in the Senate primary with his fracking stances around his neck).  Mark Udall doesn't seem interested in a rematch, and while Ed Perlmutter could still get in, a relatively unknown congressman who famously dropped out of the 2018 governor's race to make way for Jared Polis is hardly unbeatable.  The candidates that look like serious contenders and are running are Mike Johnston (who has stumbled out of the gate) and Andrew Romanoff (a once rising star who now has two failed runs for Congress under his belt).  Either might beat Gardner because of the letter behind his name, but Duran, as an up-and-coming, inspiring woman of color in a state that is becoming increasingly diverse (particularly in the Democratic primaries), would destroy them both.  And being a 40-year-old woman in the Senate in a swiftly-shifting-blue state would be a very good way to start building a platform if she ever has ambitions beyond a Senate seat.

So what the hell is she thinking turning down such a plum opportunity to make a run for the US House to run against incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in a primary?  DeGette has held the 1st district since Pat Schroeder retired in 1996, and is seen as relatively popular.  She easily dispatched a primary challenge from her left in 2018, and it's hard to find a way that Duran will be able to run to her left on any substantive issues.  Duran herself commended DeGette when she announced, stating simply that in the era of Trump, "we need a change in leadership."  Trying to parcel out why Duran would make a play for a lower office she's less likely to win is bizarre to me, and so I'm going to speculate a couple of reasons as to why.

It's worth noting that Duran has to have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in mind when she did this, because you don't run against an entrenched incumbent for such a seat when you don't think there's a possibility to win.  Indeed, I suspect we'll see a lot more ink spilled in the wake of AOC's surprise win in 2018 over Joe Crowley, and the subsequent victory of Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts.  Ocasio-Cortez has received an enormous amount of press, enough to rival any US Senator, since arrived in DC thanks to her age and the unlikely perch she took to get her current job, and I'd imagine any young, up-and-coming liberal who is represented by a longtime congressman is looking at that press and saying "that could be me," but Duran is making a miscalculation if she thinks this is the best way to get press.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

For starters, NY-24 and MA-7 are not CO-1, not be a longshot.  Colorado's 1st district is a safely blue one, but it's not particularly racially diverse, at least not compared to the seats won by Pressley & Ocasio-Cortez.  Both the New York and Massachusetts seats are minority-majority districts that were represented by longtime white politicians, where Latino and African-American populations made up the bulk of the constituents but didn't hold the seat thanks to the power of incumbency.  This is not the case for Colorado's 1st, which is nearly 60% white and only 28% Latino.  Admittedly, those numbers probably get closer together as you look at just Democratic Primary voters, but it's still a harder sell for Duran, and running race-based primaries is hard to do, even when you use coded language like "new leadership" which can read as trying to call out the race or age of the incumbent.  Steve Cohen, for example, has managed to dispatch similar sorts of challenges for years by being very well-liked with his constituents, despite being white in a district that is only 26% white.

Duran's supporters, of course, would scoff at the notion that she will only appeal to voters of color, and she'd be right to, but it's also impossible to deny that there was an element of that in the arguments Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley made to their constituents.  It also has to be noted that Duran is not Ocasio-Cortez, where she can come out of nowhere-DeGette, a high-ranking member of one of the most powerful House Committees in DC, will be able to hoard campaign donations, whereas Duran will struggle in coming up with the same sort of money campaigning in a presidential year, where small-dollar donations will be harder to come by if you aren't a presidential candidate.  Plus, unlike Crowley, DeGette will take the challenge from DeGette seriously, so not only will she raise more money, she'll spend it too.

Without a money advantage or an obvious angle in the race she can throw against DeGette, what is there?  Running simply that "you're good, but you're too old" almost never works, even when there's major policy differences like the Feinstein-de Leon race of 2018.  Without a clear angle to hold against DeGette, Duran doesn't have a clear foothold into this race, and seems to be wasting a shot at the Senate.  Because even if she somehow pulls this off, the AOC angle isn't just going to be easily replayed in 2020.  There won't be the same surprise with Duran in 2020, and the press will want to move onto a different angle, particularly if she's in the same party as the president; part of AOC's celebrity comes from the fact that she is the antithesis of Trump.  In a world where Trump is a former president (and as hard as it is to believe, no longer dominating the news), it's impossible to see someone like Duran duplicating this same level to gain such fame.

This wouldn't be the case if Duran became a senator.  A senator, with almost no exceptions, gets more press, power, and stature than a congressman, even from the minority (and considering the map in 2020, she could well be in the majority).  Duran would get way more name recognition as the "AOC of the Senate" than she would "the fourth or fifth AOC of the House."  The only reason that I can think of for Duran to go after DeGette is try to duplicate the success of AOC (or she just really hates DeGette for some reason), but even if she somehow pulls off the miracle, she won't be able to be the AOC-people don't care as much about second place.  As a US Senator, she'd be able to carve out a much more prominent place for herself, and perhaps even become a presidential aspirant someday.

What her decision does do is open up the opportunity for another ambitious Colorado pol.  Someone like, say, former State Treasurer Cary Kennedy could have the best chance of her political life to elevate herself in a field full of men in 2020 without Duran.  Kennedy would have been DOA if Duran was in the Senate race, as she would have sucked up all of the oxygen (and money from Emily's List), but without Duran in the race, Kennedy could replicate what dozens of women did in 2018 and win as the most serious female candidate in the race, becoming a senator (and at the age of only 50, also gain a national profile in the process if she has ambitions beyond Congress).  Duran's foolishness this year may soon rival Denise Majette's in 2004.  Majette took what was a shock House win in 2002 against Cynthia McKinney and then threw away a safe House seat to lose a Senate race by 20 points.  Majette at least got to be the first black woman nominated for the US Senate from the South-it's hard to see what Duran is getting out of this race other than becoming a political cautionary tale.