The 1958 Election in Colorado

Abstract

T HERE WERE NO CONTESTS for the United States Senate in Colorado in 1958. All state-wide offices were filled (the winners to hold office for four-year terms for the first time in the history of Colorado) and the state's four congressional seats were at stake. Approximately 550,000 votes were cast in the gubernatorial election, a record for an off-year election. In the race for Congress, two incumbent Democrats were easily re-elected. One incumbent Republican was re-elected by a margin of only 543 votes, and a Democratic candidate captured a seat in a traditionally Republican district where the GOP incumbent had retired after eighteen years in office. Only one Republican was elected to a state-wide office. The Democrats took from Republican incumbents the lieutenant governorship, a seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, and two seats on the State Board of Education. On the other hand, no state-wide offices held by Democrats were lost to Republicans. The GOP lost one seat in the state Senate and six seats in the House of Representatives. At the county level, the Democrats won thirty-five offices previously held by the GOP. There were four major issues in the 1958 campaign in Colorado. The most widely discussed question was the so-called right-to-work amendment. As in other states, this issue was highly controversial. At their state convention the Democrats took a strong stand against the amendment. The Republicans, at their convention, took no stand whatsoever on the issue. Subsequently, the Republican organization in Denver County took a formal stand in favor of the measure. Several Republicans seeking state office took a strong stand against right-to-work, among them the GOP candidate for governor and the incumbent candidate for attorney general. The latter was the only Republican to win a state-wide office in the Democratic sweep. The right-to-work amendment was defeated in Colorado by a ratio of approximately three to two. Soon after his election to office in March, 1958, the new state chairman of the Republican party, Richard Shaw, strongly criticized the big labor bosses who he said were dominating, if not running, the Democratic party in Colorado and elsewhere. The press immediately gave headlines to this charge, and the general impression was created that Shaw and the Republican party were opposed to labor unions, and by implication, to the workingman. Shaw made valiant efforts to distinguish between his opposition to big labor bosses and his support of the unions and the workingman, but he discovered that this distinction is hard to maintain in a public debate especially when public opinion is already preconditioned to the notion that