A poll released Tuesday shows Joe O’Dea, the Republican candidate challenging Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, has shrunk the gap between himself and his opponent to seven points. Republican leaders have said for months they hope to flip the seat, which Bennet has held since 2009.
O’Dea has pledged he won’t become beholden to the party line. But that kind of rhetoric hasn’t stopped Republicans leaders from putting their support, and dollars, behind O’Dea’s candidacy. Politico reported Oct. 7 that the super PAC backing O’Dea, the American Policy Fund, received $1.25 million from the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
O’Dea styles himself as the perfect fit for a state he says comprises voters who are “fiscally conservative and socially libertarian.”
“That’s really my candidacy,” he said in an interview Wednesday with The Durango Herald’s Editorial Board. “I kind of represent what the middle of Colorado is looking for.”
O’Dea visited Durango, Cortez and Pagosa Springs during the primary campaign season, and plans to visit Southwest Colorado again in coming weeks.
Perhaps nothing has drawn more attention to O’Dea’s political alignment than his stance on abortion. He has caught flak for his early support of Colorado Proposition 15, which would have banned abortions after 22 weeks. However, he says that as candidate, he supports a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion up to 20 weeks or after that only in cases of rape, incest or in a medical emergency.
“I have been very consistent about my position in terms of Roe v. Wade, in terms of women’s rights since I got into this election,” O’Dea said. “I have been pro choice.”
His website prominently displays a letter from anti-abortion Colorado conservative leaders warning that conservatives must rally around O’Dea to prevent Bennet’s reelection, saying such an outcome would be “bad for conservatives and for the anti-abortion cause.”
In accordance with a plurality of Colorado voters, O’Dea says inflation is among the most pressing issues. His approach, he said, begins with energy.
“We’ve got to embrace solar, we’ve got to embrace wind, we’ve got to embrace perhaps nuclear, geothermal, natural gas, oil – all of the above energies,” he said. “We’ve got to raise the platform and we’ve got to start producing again here in Colorado in the United States.”
While he is quick to name green energy as an important field of development, O’Dea urges caution when it comes to transitioning away from oil and gas.
“Shutting one set of fuels off before we’re ready to engage the next generation of energy is really hard on working Americans,” he warned. “So there’s a cost balance in this, we can’t do it all on the backs of working Americans. We need to be incremental, we need to be thoughtful.”
O’Dea derives his support for green energy from his belief that reducing inflation begins with producing more energy domestically of all kinds. With respect to human-caused climate change, O’Dea told Denver7 news station in June, “I think there’s a debate there still to be had.”
While O’Dea isn’t afraid to vocalize support for federal spending in areas he sees as necessary – law enforcement and addiction treatment among them – when asked what positive accomplishments he saw on his opponent’s resume, he listed Bennet’s work on the child tax credit.
However, he was quick to express disappointment about Bennet’s failure to make the credit permanent – a failure for which Bennet has Sen. Joe Manchin to blame.
“I’m furious at Joe Manchin, personally, because he’s the one person that didn’t allow us to make the child tax credit permanent,” Bennet told a crowd of supporters Monday in Durango.
O’Dea has previously pledged to lead in Manchin’s mold, declaring he will be “a Republican Joe Manchin.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this story erred in saying Joe O’Dea hadn’t yet visited La Plata County as part of a campaign stop. He visited Durango in March.
