September 17, 2004
GuestBlog: By Bill Kraus
A Tale of Two Districts
Mary Panzer's response to the primary challenge mounted by Glenn Grothman, reputedly suborned by the right-to-life faction, was to try to prove that she was more of a conservative than he was.
A perfectly respectable moderate with a long history of not succumbing to extremists' pressure did not believe that the support of those voters could overcome the zealous anti-choicers and taxophobics to whom the Grothman campaign was pitched. She tried, instead, to out-Grothman Grothman.
Mary lost.
Several miles northwest of Mary's district, a half-term freshman named Louis Molepske faced a primary challenge as well. Louis is a Democrat. He is pro-choice, anti-TABOR, and anti-gun. His challenger was also a Democrat, but took the pro-life, pro-gun, pro-TABOR Grothman route to what he hoped would be victory.
Louis stuck with the positions and the people who had got him to the Legislature in the first place.
Louis won.
Nothing is as simple as this, and the size of Glenn Grothman's victory (79 percent to 21 percent) indicates something else was going on in that district, but there does seem to be a message here about being who you are and playing your own game.
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