Centennial State News

Colorado has gone from a Republican majority to Democratic over the last 16 years after four left-leaning Colorado multimillionaires started working toward a blue government in the summer of 2004, a think tank report says.

Think tank Capital Research Center (CRC) says multimillionaires Tim Gill, Pat Stryker, Ruth Bridges and Jared Polis (whom it has deemed "The Gang of Four"), and their "Roundtable" allies brought about the flip in Colorado. 

In 2004, Colorado was a reliably Republican state, CRC says. It had a Republican governor and held majorities in both chambers of the state's legislature. They had held a monopoly for four of the last six years at that point.

During that election, a slim Democratic majority emerged, with a 33-32 lead in the House. For the last 16 years, that has continued for all but two years.

In the state Senate, Republicans held 18-17 majority until that flipped during that election to an 18-17 Democratic majority, CRC reported.

With the new Democratic governor in 2006, the House and Senate became firmly Democratic, with a 39-26 lead in the House and a 20-15  lead in the Senate.

Republican Gov. Bill Owens did not run for re-election in 2006 because of term limits. When he was re-elected in 2002, he had 63 percent of the vote.

However, there was a total reversal when Democrat Bill Ritter took over. Ritter won with 57 percent of the vote in 2006.

CRC reported that when Democrats took over in January 2007, they held a monopoly that they had not held since 1962, which was a total reversal of just four years earlier when Republicans held control.

CRC says the left-leaning Colorado multimillionaires are who put the plan into action — not the politicians themselves.

Politicians themselves have ceased to matter, the agency says. It’s the Gang of Four that has built the current political machine, according to CRC.