2008 Colorado Senate

In January 2007, Wayne Allard became the first senator to announce he would not run for re-election in 2008. The field of candidates to replace him quickly narrowed to Democratic Rep. Mark Udall and former Republican Rep. Bob Schaffer, with both parties able to avoid contested primaries.

Udall and Schaffer almost met in a 2004 Senate race. Udall ran for all of 24 hours, before deferring to Ken Salazar, then the state attorney general. Schaffer lost the GOP primary to Pete Coors, who went on to lose to Salazar in the general election.Their meeting this year comes as Colorado appears to be trending Democratic.

When Bill Ritter won election for governor in 2006, it marked the first time in 40 years that Democrats held the governorship and both legislative chambers. In 2004, John Kerry nearly cut in half President Bush\'s 2000 winning margin in the state, losing by just 5 points. If no open House seats change hands, and Udall wins this race, Democrats would hold the governorship, both Senate seats, and 4 of 7 House seats -- quite a change for a state that has voted Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections (it chose Clinton in 1992).

Schaffer has been involved with Colorado politics for just about all of his adult life. He was first elected to the state Senate at the age of 24. He served in the U.S. House from 1996-2002, leaving office only to keep a campaign pledge to serve just three terms. Udall, who has served in the House since 1998, comes from a political family: his father and uncle were congressmen from Arizona, his cousin is a congressman from New Mexico and currently running for Senate, and his cousin, Gordon Smith, is a Republican senator from Oregon.