DENVER, Colorado — Tens of thousands of people are expected to come out to see Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, over the course of two events just added to his campaign schedule on Monday in the all-important battleground state of Colorado.
Compared with Hillary Clinton, his rival and the Democratic nominee for president who has all but abandoned the state as Trump takes the lead in polling, that’s a significant amount. Clinton had trouble filling a small venue the last time she was in Colorado in early August.
“The last time Hillary Clinton was in Colorado was in early August,” Trump’s Colorado state director Patrick Davis told Breitbart News on Sunday night. “She had trouble filling a high school auditorium in Commerce City. We expect thousands of people in Pueblo and tens of thousands in Loveland tomorrow.”
Colorado’s nine electoral votes make it one of the most critical battleground states, and the last time a Republican won the state in the presidential election was George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Barack Obama, the outgoing current Democratic president, won in both 2008 and 2012, defeating John McCain and Mitt Romney in those respective contests.
Trump will appear at 3 p.m. Mountain Time in Pueblo, about two hours south of Denver, and then at 6 p.m. Mountain Time in Loveland, about an hour north of Denver. While most in the legacy establishment media refuse to cover the people who come out to Trump rallies, Breitbart News will be on the ground to provide live coverage with photographs and videos with the crowd.
“If you go to a Trump rally, you see it,” Davis told Breitbart News about the clear enthusiasm gap that exists between Trump’s energetic campaign rallies and Clinton’s boring speech events. “You feel it. It’s more rock concert than it is political rally.”
Trump, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, has taken a slight lead in Colorado over Clinton of a half a percent with momentum at his back. The latest Breitbart News Network/Gravis Marketing survey from Colorado has Trump up four points over Clinton, just outside the survey’s margin of error. Davis said it’s a combination of developments that have led to Clinton’s drop off in support in Colorado, and Trump’s surge: She’s not in the state, her campaign and the Democrats aren’t airing television ads, and staff for Clinton and the Democrats are rushing out of Colorado as fast as they can. Mix that together with Trump’s appeal on economic issues, immigration, the Iran deal, and healthcare policy, and you’ve got a winning campaign in Colorado.
“I think it’s two things: One is the strength of his message about the economy and jobs — Colorado’s economy is actually humming along pretty well,” Davis said:
I think his message to the voters of Colorado is “you like what you got now? Just wait until I become president. It will be rocking.” The other thing that’s helping is he’s been here quite a bit. He’s spending money here. We’re on television here. We have a very good sized field staff and ground game going on here. You go to even a small Trump rally in a local field office, 200 or 300 people will show up — these are people you don’t know. But there’s a lot of energy in Colorado. On the other side of the fence, Hillary’s campaign is all but dead here. She’s not on television. You don’t see phone banks filled. Actually, you see some staff leaving the state on the Democratic side. It does feel like they’ve abandoned Colorado.
When told of how the campaign of GOP senatorial nominee Darryl Glenn informed Breitbart News of the fact that the Iran deal, Obamacare, and immigration are frustrations voters here have with the status quo in Washington, D.C., Davis said: “They’re right on.”
Glenn, a fellow outsider like Trump who’s also seeing a surge in polling in the state as he runs against incumbent Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), told Breitbart News in his own exclusive interview that he thinks this is an outsider’s year.
“The bottom line is whether it’s the establishment or whatever, people are really tired of politicians saying one thing to get elected and then selling out to special interest groups and really not representing people,” Glenn said in the interview, the full version of which is forthcoming.
With regard to Obamacare specifically, Davis said, Coloradans are seeing their premiums go up and their plans go away.
“On Obamacare, the problem in Colorado is that people are seeing their policies go away — be taken away — they’re losing their coverage. And their premiums are skyrocketing in Colorado,” Davis said. “So, people are being forced into Obamacare and they don’t have any choices. So the quality of care, the quality of insurance, is going down.”
Davis added that the Department of Veterans Affairs, “and how we treat our veterans,” is certainly “resonating here.”
“We have a couple big high profile VA clinics here, one being in Aurora in Congressman Coffman’s district that is a complete unmitigated disaster,” Davis said:
The VA has completely screwed that up—it’s way over budget and it’s still not finished. That is the poster child of the dysfunction at the VA, and it’s right here in Colorado. If you’re a veteran in Colorado and looking for healthcare, in some cases you wait for months. We don’t have enough good doctors in the VA system to put our veterans in front of. Mr. Trump was here at the beginning of September and he proposed rolling out a program in Colorado Springs — or in Colorado in general — where we would give veterans a card and say “go find a doctor that will see you and can help you and we will pay for it,” not keeping them tied into the VA system. Mr. Trump said he wanted to roll out that plan here in Colorado first, and that was widely well and positively received.
Trump’s surge in the polls in Colorado is coinciding with some of the most vicious attacks that the Hillary Clinton campaign — and their allies in the legacy and establishment media in Washington, D.C., and in New York City — have levied against the businessman. Given the nature of Colorado voters — free-thinking and independent-minded with a disdain for elitists telling them how to think — that doesn’t surprise Davis one bit.
“The people of Colorado, all across the board — all types of voters, Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, socialists, even Green Party — they are not cheap,” Davis said:
We like to think for ourselves. We have a healthy suspicion of the mainstream media in Colorado and I think that’s why you see people like Donald Trump doing very well here, because he treats individuals — voters of all types — like individuals. He doesn’t treat people like “African Americans” and “Hispanic Americans” — he treats them like Americans. And he wants them to prosper individually and that message comes through loud and clear. I think people are open to listening to what Mr. Trump has to say here, not what is being said in the mainstream media.
Davis also predicted that Trump will intensify his efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters in the coming days.
“We’re going to hear a lot in the next couple of days about Mr. Trump’s appeal to Hispanic Americans, and Hispanics in Colorado,” Davis said:
In my experience, in the past couple of months — particularly after Trump’s speech in Phoenix about immigration — the Hispanics in Colorado were telling me and were telling the campaign that he had given them some hope that the doorway wasn’t closed for them to have a say in the immigration policy in a Trump administration. They took his speech as the beginning of conversation, not the closing of a door, and I think you’re going to hear more of that in the coming days.
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