Childhood obesity rate in Colorado worrisome

Colorado Health Foundation report card

Colorado is continually heralded as the fittest state in the country – but behind that ranking stand a host of health measures that paint a different picture, placing the state mid-pack or worse in things such as infant mortality and binge drinking.

And even that No. 1 ranking – best – among the 50 states in the rate of adult obesity may mask serious future troubles: Colorado stands 23rd in childhood obesity and is even farther down the list in other key measures of the overall health of the state’s youngest population.

“If we’re 23rd in kids and No. 1 in adults, how sustainable is that?” asked James Hill, a University of Colorado pediatrics professor who is involved in extensive obesity research. “I think that’s reason to be concerned – I really do.”

Emily King, a research analyst at the Colorado Health Institute who compiled the data, said it is impossible to simply look at the numbers and project the future. But it also may portend a reality very different from that experienced by the state’s adult population today.

“The fact that our childhood obesity rate is much higher than it was in the past suggests that our adult obesity rates will be higher a couple of decades from now because we know that obese children are more likely to grow up to be obese adults,” she said.

Other measures in the health institute’s data also suggested serious challenges for Colorado on issues related to children. For example, the state ranked 31st in late- or non-existent prenatal care, 37th in low birth-weight babies and 42nd in children without insurance, according to an I-News examination of the health institute’s data.

That data underpins the Colorado Health Foundation’s annual Colorado Health Report card. The report card uses the most recently available data to measures the relative health of Coloradans across a variety of areas that look at different stages of life, from pre-natal and newborn care to adolescence, adulthood and the process of aging.

The Colorado Health Foundation used the data this year to ask the question: “What if we were No. 1?”

And while the state currently is first when it comes to adult waistlines – 20.9 percent of the state’s population of 18- to 64-year-olds are obese, the lowest percentage in the nation – it’s a different issue when it comes to children. The most recent data estimated that 14.2 percent of the state’s children were obese. Oregon, by comparison, was No. 1, with 9.6 percent of its children obese.

The Colorado Health Foundation estimated that if Colorado were to climb to No. 1 in childhood obesity, it would have 24,900 fewer kids living at an unhealthy weight.

The foundation estimated other categories where changes in Colorado’s ranking would mean dramatic changes in statistics – and, perhaps, economics.

For example, the foundation estimated that Colorado residents and their employers could save $121 million a year in health care costs if it had the lowest rate of depression among the 50 states. In Colorado, 14.7 percent of the state’s adults reported that they had experienced “poor mental health.” That left Colorado ranked 13th among the states while North Dakota was No. 1, with 11.9 percent of adults reporting mental health problems.

The report card also found that Colorado, if it could move to the top spot among the states, would annually have 2,100 more babies born at a healthy weight, 32,600 fewer high school students who smoke cigarettes, and 376,800 fewer adults who binge drink.

The news wasn’t all bad – Colorado was first in older adults who participate in regular physical activity, fourth in adolescents who participate in regular physical activity and fifth in mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

Still, CU professor Hill said he worries about the future if the state can’t address the growing number of people who are obese.

“Preventing obesity is going to be easier than treating it, so we’ve got to get serious about kids and preventing obesity in the first place,” Hill said.

He said he would push for a simple goal in the beginning – for Colorado to maintain its current obesity rate as an important first step.

“Let’s focus on not gaining weight, rather than losing weight,” Hill said. “In other words, if our obesity rates stayed the same in Colorado, the projected savings over the next seven to 10 years are in billions.”

Category	Top state ranking	Colorado ranking	Bottom state ranking
Percent children uninsured	Vermont – 1.5%	42nd – 8.6%	Nevada – 15.3%
Percent child poverty	North Dakota – 11.5%	19th – 23.1%	Mississippi – 38.4%
Percent teen binge drinking	Utah – 9.1%	30th – 22.3%	Arizona – 26.5%
Percent teen smoking	Utah – 5.9%	20th – 15.7%	Kentucky – 24.1%
High school students exercise 5 times a week	Montana – 54.7%	4th – 53.1%	Louisiana – 37.9%
High school students who eat fruit at least once a week	Idaho – 94%	4th – 91.7%	South Carolina – 77.9%
Child obesity	Oregon – 9.6%	23rd – 14.2%	Mississippi – 21.9%
Low birth weight babies	Alaska – 5.7%	37th – 8.8%	Mississippi – 12.1%
Infant mortality per 1,000 live births	New Hampshire -3.87	23rd – 6.21	Mississippi – 9.95
Immunizations among children 19-35 months	North Dakota – 84.1%	30th – 75.8%	Nevada – 66.7%

–
I-News is the public service journalism arm of Rocky Mountain PBS. Contact I-News or learn more at inewsnetwork.org

Contact Kevin Vaughan at kvaughan@inewsnetwork.org or 303-446-4936. I-News senior reporter Burt Hubbard contributed to this report.

I-News is funded in part by a grant from the Colorado Health Foundation.

Gun deaths: Suicide rate quadruple homicide rate

By Kevin Vaughan and Burt Hubbard | The I-News Network

During the 12-year span between the mass shootings at Columbine and Aurora, Coloradans used guns to kill themselves about four times more frequently than they used them to kill each other, an I-News analysis of death certificates found.

Gun Deaths in Colorado (1999-2012)

The analysis, which covered the years 2000 through 2011, also found that white residents disproportionately committed suicides with guns while minorities were disproportionately victims of homicide shootings.

In the wake of the July 20 attack at the Century Aurora 16, which left 12 people dead and more than 50 injured, state legislators introduced a flurry of measures, including proposals to prohibit the sale of high-capacity magazines, impose universal background checks, and ban people with concealed weapons permits from carrying guns on college campuses. The bills have sparked sometimes-emotional debate and prompted large protests as gun rights activists and supporters of the proposals beseeched lawmakers and Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Earlier this week, a plane circling central Denver towed a banner that read: “Hick: Don’t Take Our Guns.”

But people on both sides of the debate said that the reality of Colorado’s firearms deaths – that more than three-quarters of them are suicides – means that the proposals may do little to put much of a dent in the overall loss of life involving guns.

“I think that really goes much more to the issue of responsible ownership – that if you know you’ve got someone in your home who is struggling with depression, or something like that, you really ought to take active steps to either not have one or make sure if you do it is locked up,” said Tom Mauser, who has worked to pass gun control measures in the nearly 14 years since his son, Daniel, was killed at Columbine High.

“These are not suicide reduction bills, and no responsible person would claim they are,” said David Kopel, a law professor at the University of Denver and research director at the Independence Institute who has testified against some of the gun proposals. “They are, at their best, and their ideals, crime reduction bills.”

I-News analyzed data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on deaths from firearms between 2000 and 2011, the latest year available. The information comes from death certificates. It found:

Suicides accounted for 76 percent of the 6,258 deaths from guns over the 12 years, while homicides comprised 20 percent. The rest were either accidental, legal shootings by law enforcement officers, or unexplained. Nationally, about 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides.
Gun suicides were disproportionately committed by white residents, while homicide victims were predominately minority. White residents, who make up 70 percent of the state’s population, accounted for 88 percent of the gun suicides. On the other hand, 58 percent of homicide victims were minorities, who comprise 30 percent of the state’s residents. Blacks were victims in 21 percent of the homicides, but only make up 4 percent of Colorado’s population. Latinos were victims in 34 percent of homicides, while comprising 21 percent of the state’s population.
Gun death victims were overwhelmingly male. They accounted for 85 percent of all deaths involving guns and 87 percent of suicides using guns.
Those over age 70 had the highest rate of overall deaths from guns, 18 for every 100,000 residents of that age group. They were almost exclusively suicides. The 21-to-30 age group had the highest rate of homicides, about 5 for every 100,000.

I-News also calculated gun death rates by county and found wide geographic disparities.

Based on the number of overall gun deaths during the 12 years, the highest rates were in Montrose, Mesa, Fremont and Pueblo counties among medium- and large-sized counties – those with populations of more than 40,000.

The lowest rates were in Eagle, Douglas, Weld and Boulder counties. Denver and El Paso counties had the highest number of overall deaths involving guns, 831 and 804 respectively, but their rates per 100,000 residents ranked them in the middle among the counties.

Denver did have the highest number of residents killed in homicides, 342 over the 12 years or 5 per every 100,000 people, followed by Pueblo and Adams counties. El Paso County had the highest overall death toll from gun suicides, 596 over the 12 years, but Mesa had the highest rate of residents killing themselves with guns among larger counties, 15.6 per 100,000 residents.

Lanny Berman, a psychologist who is executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, said that the issue of guns and suicide is complex – and confusing. Overall in the United States, the percentage of suicides committed with guns has fallen in recent years even as the overall number of suicides hasn’t changed much.

“I’d like to think that it’s come down because there’s been a lot of public education and work in that area,” Berman said. “That said, hanging deaths have increased, and we can’t figure out how to engage restricted access to ropes and other forms of ligature. I can argue safe storage of a firearm, and convince some people that’s wise, but belts, and guitar straps and anything else one might use to hang themselves with, I have no argument.”

People whose suicide attempts are unsuccessful don’t necessarily go on to kill themselves, Berman said.

Legislators gather at the Old Supreme Court Chambers in the Colorado State Capitol on Feburary 13, 2013 in Denver as they prepare to hear one of a handful of bills on gun regulation.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network | Rocky Mountain PBS)

“The people who have been rescued off the Golden Gate Bridge – a very small portion of them go on to die by suicide,” he said. “If you can intervene – in this case by restricting access – people change their mind, good things happen, they get into treatment, time changes a lot of things. Who knows what, but things happen and people don’t necessarily stay suicidal. That’s just what we know about being suicidal, it waxes and wanes and is highly responsive to the moment. So change the moment and you’re going to save lives.”

Mauser, who said he backed the measures introduced this year because he believed they represented reasonable efforts to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, also lamented the reality that when a gun is involved the odds of surviving a suicide attempt are small.

“You’re more likely to survive some of the other things,” Mauser said. “You’re not going to survive a gunshot to the head.”

Kopel, who said as a “card-carrying Roman Catholic” he was opposed to suicide, also expressed little hope that legislation could do much about the majority of gun deaths.

“The vast majority of gun deaths are suicides, and of those, they are hugely skewed to males and hugely skewed to older populations,” he said. “I think it’s highly unrealistic to think that any form of gun control is going to reduce suicide in this group.”

County-by-county Gun Deaths in Colorado

—

I-News is the public service journalism arm of Rocky Mountain PBS. Contact I-News or learn more at inewsnetwork.org

Contact Kevin Vaughan at kvaughan@inewsnetwork.org or 303-446-4936. Contact Burt Hubbard at bhubbard@inewsnetwork.org or 303-446-4931. Visit this and other stories at www.inewsnetwork.org.

High School Journalism camp a glimpse of the future

Burt Hubbard with high school attendee at the Institute for Investigative Journalism for high school students sponsored by I-News

Want to know the future of journalism? Meet the high school students who attended the I-News 2012 Investigative Journalism Institute.

They ranged in age from 16 to 18. They were of different backgrounds, means and experiences. But they were to the person sharp, thoughtful, and excited about journalism.

We put them to the test at the week-long institute, held on the University of Colorado campus.

2012 Investigative Journalism Institute participants & coaches at CU.

The whole institute was designed as a working newsroom. These young journalists had to think like investigative reporters, figure out how to root out the deeper story, handle touchy situations, find key information and judge its veracity, analyze relevant data, conduct interviews and turn it all into a multimedia story package of hard-hitting writing and compelling video journalism.

And they wanted more: “I don’t want to leave!” one student lamented at the end. Added her dorm-roommate: “Make it longer because it was really fun and I would love to learn more!”

For all those folks out there who worry about the future of journalism, let me just say this: The future of journalism is in good hands.

Five of the participants attended the institute on scholarship from the Brett Family Foundation in Boulder. Foundation president Linda Shoemaker, a former newspaper publisher herself, supports I-News’ mission of helping educate the next generation of investigative journalists.

These young journalists will not disappoint.

Participants of the 2011 Institute.

“It was such a great experience,” one of the students told us at the end of the institute. “I truly feel like I am a much better journalist and I will use everything I have learned.”

We have no doubt he and the other young journalists we met will do just that.

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Colorado legislators consider disparities legislation

Two Colorado lawmakers plan to push for a comprehensive examination of racial and ethnic inequality in the state as a precursor to future legislation aimed at closing some of the gaps that separate Latinos and African Americans from whites.

State Reps. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, and Angela Williams, D-Denver, said they plan to introduce the measure, which would create a commission to take a detailed look at specific areas where racial and ethnic minorities lag in Colorado. Their plan is to examine everything from education funding to job pay and contracting, to major disparities in incarceration rates.

I-News Partners: Click here to download a plain text version of this story and the accompanying photos.

“We hope to heighten the awareness – and that Colorado will stop avoiding this conversation,” Williams said. Inequities can be addressed, she said, “because we’re such a great state.”
The move comes on the heels of “Losing Ground,” an 18-month I-News investigation that found that across a host of measures Latinos and African Americans in Colorado are worse off compared to the state’s white’s residents than they were before sweeping civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Using six decades of census data as well as statistics compiled by the state health department and the state prison system, I-News found that the state’s largest minority groups lag more than ever in areas like family income, home ownership, poverty, and overall health.

Colorado state Rep. Angela Williams, D-Thornton, said at the State Capitol Building in Denver on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013 that she and Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Denver, plan to introduce a measure, which would create a commission to take a detailed look at specific areas where racial and ethnic minorities lag in Colorado.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

Take home ownership. In 1970, almost 60 percent of Latino households were owner-occupied; today, it’s just beneath 50 percent. In measuring family income, I-News found that in 1970 black families earned 73 percent of what white families earned, and Latino families earned 72 percent; by 2010, those numbers had fallen to 60 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

“If you look at this and then you look at Martin Luther King and the 1960s, and see where we are, that is the most difficult part – we’ve moved backward,” Williams said.

Most experts say that rising racial and ethnic inequities do not bode well for a state in which minorities are the fastest growing population.

It is not clear how much support Salazar and Williams can expect for their proposal, which has not yet been drafted.

Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said he could not commit to backing the proposed commission until he sees how it would work. And state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, said that while she wouldn’t necessarily oppose it she also hoped to consider alternatives to examine the problem.

Colorado state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango. (Photo courtesy of the Senate Republican Office)

“I don’t know that I have an objection to what they’re saying, but are resources best used in that way, or should we be looking at work outside the Capitol to sort it out?” Roberts said. “I think we need to have some honest conversation that is devoid of partisan politics.”

Another legislator, Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said racial and economic gaps in Colorado are holding the state back and called for legislation to give families a financial boost and – eventually – a revamping of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, known as TABOR, and the state’s tax system.

“The reality is that when those of us at the bottom of the income level do well, we all do well,” Morse said. “We’ve got a big chunk of folks that are not making ends meet and that has all kinds of negative ramifications whether its crime, drug use – all of those kinds of things when people don’t have hope.”

But not everyone agrees on what changes need to be made. Numerous experts attributed some of the gaps to poverty, and some of the inequality has been attributed to a dramatic rises in the number of births to young, single mothers and the number of households that are headed by a single parent.

Colorado state Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Denver, said at the State Capitol Building in Denver on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013 that he and Rep. Angela Williams, D-Thorton, plan to introduce a measure, which would create a commission to take a detailed look at specific areas where racial and ethnic minorities lag in Colorado.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

This session, Morse said Democratic state lawmakers are backing legislation that would provide a state earned income credit and child credit to struggling, working families of all races.

“It’s not race that determines this, it is income level and single-headed households,” Morse said.

The main culprit for inadequate state funding, Morse said, is TABOR, the measure passed by voters in 1992 that limits revenue and spending.

“TABOR just ensures that we don’t fund much of anything very well at all,” he said. “And that creates and exacerbates this gap.”

Only two other states spent less per student on higher education in 2011. Between 1992 and 2010, Colorado sank from 24th to 40th among the states in overall funding for K-12 education, and is ranked 45th on education spending when compared to per capita income.

In the end, Hickenlooper said, arguing about what part of the disparities are tied to race and what part are tied to poverty – or other factors – misses the point.

“Here, we’ve got some data that shows some kids are starting out at a significant disadvantage with all the other kids, and it’s not the American way, right?” Hickenlooper said.

And Roberts questioned the role of government in solving complex community dynamics decades in the making.

“I don’t know that government’s got a role, really, in restoring the importance of the family structure,” she said. “I think that comes more from somebody’s own closest family and friends, community, faith orientation – that sort of thing, I think, is where we could see some movement away from the single-parent household.”

“Those are not simple answers to provide,” Hickenlooper said. “This is a country that’s based on all the different freedoms – not just freedom of speech, but freedom of mobility, right, freedom of choice in terms of what you eat.

“We’ve been having this debate for 200 years. How does government play a role in helping to find a quality of life for people?”

Contact Kevin Vaughan at kvaughan@inewsnetwork.org or 303-446-4936. Read the Losing Ground series at http://www.inewsnetwork.org/losingground/.

Losing Ground: Socioeconomic gaps widening between Colorado minorities and whites

By some of the most important measures of social progress, black and Latino residents of Colorado have lost ground compared to white residents in the decades since the civil rights movement. Minority gains made during the 1960s and 1970s have eroded with time, an I-News analysis of six decades of demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau found. In other categories, the gaps between whites and minorities have steadily widened since 1960.

The analysis focused on family income, poverty rates, high school and college graduation and home ownership. Health data and justice records examined also revealed stark disparities. Similar racial and ethnic inequities appear nationwide. But one glaring fact about Colorado is that it went from a state that was by most measures more equitable than the national average in the first decades covered by the analysis to one that is less so now. According to most experts, racial and ethnic inequality will pose a significant future handicap for a state in which minorities are the fast growing population.

Read the entire project here: Losing Ground

Colorado’s Medicaid Dental Woes

Kids in Colorado miss nearly 8 million hours of school each year because of toothaches. Children from low-income families are most at risk for tooth decay, the most common childhood disease, with untreated cavities affecting 19 percent of kindergartners in the state’s poorest schools.

Torrie Smith, 3, left, holds an apple at their home in Denver on Friday, Nov. 30, 2012. Torrie's parents talked about their experience getting dental treatment through Medicaid for Torrie after she fell and broke four front teeth. State Medicaid data reported to the federal government show that less than half of the 453,000 Coloradans under age 21 who were eligible for benefits in federal fiscal year 2011 received some kind of dental service.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

State Medicaid data reported to the federal government show that less than half of the 453,000 Coloradans under age 21 who were eligible for benefits in federal fiscal year 2011 received some kind of dental service.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

Many if not most of these children are eligible for Medicaid dental benefits. But most don’t make it to the dentist. Only a quarter of Colorado counties met a 2010 state goal of getting at least 44 percent of Medicaid-eligible residents under age 19 in for dental treatment, according to an I-News analysis of state records.Without that treatment, many kids in pain end up using expensive emergency room services or undergoing multiple dental procedures while under anesthesia.

Read the story by Jeffery A. Roberts here…

Some Health Inequities Defy Explanation

Among the hurdles to attacking disparities in health between ethnic and racial minorities and whites are the confounding reality that some inequities have so far defied explanation and the differing views on what constitutes “fairness.”

That’s the assessment of Dr. Paula Braveman, a national expert who has done extensive work on health issues that is proportionately affect minority and low-income groups.

Speaking in Denver on Thursday, Braveman focused on one reality to make her point: African Americans are at least twice as likely to deliver premature and low birth weight babies as whites, and no one understands why. Expansion of Medicaid beginning in the 1980s dramatically increased pre-natal care for poor, expectant African American women, but there was no corresponding drop in low birth weight and premature babies, Braveman said.
That reality has made it difficult to figure out how to attack the problem – and difficult to muster the kind of public attention that leads to change, she said.

“If you don’t know the cause, how can you say that’s unfair?” Braveman asked.

Braveman, director of the Center for Social Disparities in Health in the School of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, made the remarks in a talk at the Colorado Trust.

Dr. Paula Braverman

Braveman’s remarks came in the wake of “Losing Ground,” an 18-month I-News investigation that examined the social, economic and health standings of Colorado’s white, African American and Latino residents. Using six decades of U.S. Census data as well as criminal justice and health statistics, the I-News series showed that by many measures blacks and Latinos in Colorado are worse off today than they were in the years surrounding the civil rights movement.

On health, I-News found that a black baby born in Colorado is three times as likely as a white baby to die before reaching his or her first birthday. And a Latino baby born in Colorado is 63 percent more likely to die in the first year of life as a white child.

In addition, data compiled by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment showed that African Americans and Latinos are more likely to die from a host of diseases and do not live as long as their white counterparts.

Braveman, in both her prepared remarks and in a question-and-answer session afterward, said that the fact that two groups experience different health outcomes does not alone amount to a health disparity.

“Would anyone here be morally outraged if I told you that skiers have more arm or leg fractures than non-skiers?” she asked. “Would anyone here be morally outraged if I told you women live longer than men?

“The men in the room, right?”

Instead, she argued that public policy and attention should be focused on problems that are avoidable, are unfair, and disproportionately affect groups that are disadvantaged – like people in poverty, or ethnic and racial minorities. And, she argued, efforts must be aimed at problems that are “plausibly avoidable.”

It’s unavoidable, for example, “that younger adults have better health than older adults,” Braveman said.

But untangling those complexities is difficult.

Take the issue of babies who are born prematurely or with low birth weight. Those factors are strong predictors of infant mortality, developmental problems and even chronic illness later in life. Cutting the number of premature and low birth weight babies could make a tremendous difference in overall health in the African American community.

But until research pinpoints the causes, it’s difficult to know what to do to improve the statistics.

And while Braveman argued that improving the education system and investing in things like early childhood programs could have dramatic, positive impacts on health, she noted that what she called the “black-white disparity” in premature and low birth weight babies was greatest among college educated, higher-income women.

Solving the disparities, she said, would likely take decades.

So, Braveman was asked, if the problems are so complex, so tangled and, in some cases, so mystifying, what should be done?

That’s easy, she said: Focus on small steps that can make a difference and recognize that it will take a long time to change realities that have taken generations to develop.

“A short answer is to think about intermediate outcomes,” Braveman said. “Don’t set yourself up for failure.”

Watch Kevin Vaugha, Dr. Braver and The Denver Post’s Michael Booth discuss this topic on Colorado State of Mind on Friday, Feb. 8, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. (Mountain) or anytime online at video.rmpbs.org/program/colorado-state-mind/

“Colorado State of Mind” draws journalists, policy makers and experts from a range of fields and every point of view for a balanced, informative discussion. The program is part of the Rocky Mountain PBS’ Friday night public affairs lineup, which includes “Washington Week, ”The McLaughlin Group,” “BBC Newsnight” and “Need to Know.”

Harold Fields receives MLK Humanitarian Award

Harold Fields, a member of the I-News board of directors, today received a humanitarian award from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission.

Harold Fields

Fields was a systems engineer for IBM who managed the team that built the prototype for spreadsheet technology. He developed the software that drove the first laser video disk, and he managed teams in robotics and artificial intelligence.

He was a project director for Frontier Airlines and United Airlines, where he was a chief designer of the Apollo Reservation System, and the leading hotel and travel agent reservation systems.

Fields was a founder of Multi-Racial Families of Colorado, and he leads a monthly racial dialogue in Denver.

In addition to serving on the I-News board of directors, Fields is a board member for the national Coming to the Table organization that brings together descendants of former slaves and slave owners. He is an active member of The Denver Foundation’s Inclusiveness Project Committee.

At the University of Denver, Fields sings with the Spirituals Project Choir, is music librarian and has been conducting oral histories of people involved in the preservation of African American spirituals for an online curriculum.

Election 2012: Colorado counties presidential, marijuana results

By KEVIN VAUGHAN and BURT HUBBARD
I-News Network

President Barack Obama’s county-by-county victories in Colorado virtually mirrored the vote to legalize marijuana use in the state – in all but eight mostly rural counties, pot passed in places that supported the president’s re-election bid and failed in places that supported Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Click to go to the map and data files download links.

Only one county where the results were different – Weld, where voters backed both Romney and legalizing pot – was along Colorado’s highly populated Front Range. The rest were small, rural counties scattered across the high country, Western Slope and southwestern parts of the state.

Colorado Election Results 2012 - President

Presidential results by Colorado county in 2012.

Colorado Election Results 2012 - Amendment 64

Amendment 64 results by Colorado county in 2012.

And in the view of several political operatives and observers, Obama’s broad support – he won six of seven Denver-Metro counties – may have played a big hand in the passage of Amendment 64, which legalized the possession and use of up to an ounce of marijuana by people 21 and older.

“I don’t think that Obama’s going to be crediting pot for his victory in Colorado,” said pollster Lori Weigel of Public Opinion Strategies. “I think that the pot people ought to be patting the Obama people on the back. The tail didn’t wag the dog.”

The relationship between Obama’s victory and the passage of Amendment 64 was apparent in an I-News examination of preliminary election results, which won’t be official until they are certified:

Obama won all three of the heavily populated swing counties – Arapahoe, Jefferson and Larimer – that have become reliable predictors of the state’s results. Preliminary vote tallies showed that Obama’s biggest margin of victory in those counties was in Arapahoe, once reliably Republican, where he grabbed 53 percent of the vote.
San Miguel and Pitkin counties, home to Colorado luxury resort towns Telluride and Aspen, had the highest percent “yes” vote for the marijuana amendment. In San Miguel, 79.2 percent of voters said “yes” while in Pitkin it was 75.3 percent of voters.
Two Eastern Plains counties had the lowest percentage for marijuana vote – Kiowa, with 32 percent supporting it, and Cheyenne, with 35.7 percent. Not a single one of 16 rural Eastern Plains counties supported Amendment 64.
Obama generally won the vote battle in the major Democratic counties versus Romney’s numbers in major Republican counties. For example, Obama won 73.5 percent of the votes in Denver while Romney won 59.4 percent of the votes in the Republican stronghold of El Paso County. And Obama took 69.6 percent of the Boulder County vote, compared to Romney winning 62.6 percent of the Douglas County vote.
Among the eight counties that did not fit the pattern – pro-Obama, pro-pot; pro-Romney, anti-pot – Romney won seven of them and voters approved Amendment 64, indicating the possible influence of Libertarian voters. Only Conejos County supported Obama and said “no” on 64.

Weigel, who has been involved in polling for candidates and ballot measures in Colorado for more than 15 years, said she believes the link between Obama’s win and the passage of Amendment 64 can be attributed to one thing: Younger voters.

Although demographic data on those who actually voted in Colorado hasn’t yet been compiled, Obama was widely credited with doing much better than Romney among voters in the 18-to-29 age group. And that group was also expected to provide the heaviest support to the marijuana legalization measure.

“That dramatic distinction has held throughout this election cycle that never went away,” Weigel said of the support Obama enjoyed among younger voters. “There was a reason that Obama went to Boulder and practically every college campus in the country. Those are not swing counties – he knew he had to turn out young voters.”

Indeed, Obama made 11 campaign trips to Colorado during 2012 – and during them visited the University of Colorado three times and made stops at Colorado State University, the Air Force Academy, and the three-school Auraria campus in Denver. His final campaign visit to the state, two days before Election Day, featured a rally at Community College of Aurora. He also made an appearance at Grand Junction High School.

Romney, by comparison, made one stop on the Auraria campus and three others to Colorado high schools during 2012.

Longtime Republican strategist Dick Wadhams, who has managed campaigns for numerous GOP candidates and previously headed the state party, said he believes Obama’s victory in Colorado and other swing states had much to do with the way the president’s campaign defined Romney in the summer – and with the failure of the former Massachusetts governor to define himself differently during those crucial months.

But Wadhams also agreed with Weigel’s assessment, saying that he believed Obama won the “young” vote by a margin in the neighborhood of two-to-one and “that in generating a higher vote among young voters, it actually helped the marijuana initiative and not vice-versa.”

“I think that’s exactly right,” Wadhams said.

And Denver political consultant Eric Sondermann said a pattern like that seen in the Obama and Amendment 64 votes “can’t just be random.”

“I’m skeptical that the marijuana initiative pulled a lot of voters out to the polls who otherwise weren’t coming,” he said. “If they weren’t coming to vote for or against Obama, for or against Romney, I really don’t think 64 was a sufficient magnet.

“Was Obama enough of a draw to young voters to perhaps impact it? Yes.”

Seven of the eight counties that did not support both Obama and the marijuana initiative – Archuleta, Conejos, Garfield, Grand, Mineral, Park and Teller – have small enough populations that they could be considered statistical outliers.

Two other factors may also have helped Amendment 64.

“Colorado voters struck me in a more liberal mood – to overuse that ‘L’ word – than in some past years,” Sondermann said. “And it’s not just at the presidential level. If you look at some state legislative results, Democrats were winning seats in swing counties, Jefferson for starters, but not just winning them narrowly, winning them big. Even in conservative Colorado Springs, Democrats won two legislative seats by really substantial margins. School bond issues and mill-levy issues were passing not just in Denver and places where you expected them to pass, but also in small town and rural Colorado.”

And Weigel said that the backers of 64 were “very smart” in drafting the amendment so that it would regulate and tax pot.

“Actually, in many ways, the way it was positioned was constraining, controlling,” she said. “My general sense is that people see it as practically legal now, and why wouldn’t you tax it and regulate it in a practical manner?”

Email Kevin Vaughan at kvaughan@inewsnetwork.org and Burt Hubbard at bhubbard@inewsnetwork.org

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Inside I-News

Here’s a snapshot I took this week of the I-News newsroom.

There’s such a buzz in the newsroom these days. You can see the two newest members of our staff, reporter-extraordinaire Kevin Vaughan in the back and editor-with-the-magic-touch Jim Trotter in the foreground.

The I-News newsroom. Clockwise from top: Kevin Vaughan, Joe Mahoney, Burt Hubbard, Jim Trotter and Ann Carnahan Espinola.

Jim is working with reporter Ann Carnahan Espinola, who has teamed up with Burt Hubbard (you can see him working away on his computer). They’re in the middle of a major project looking at how Colorado compares to the rest of the nation when it comes to matters of race and things like income, education and health – and what that means to the future of the state. Stay tuned for more on this project soon.

In between Burt and Kevin is multimedia director Joe Mahoney. You can’t see his desktop, but it’s full of computer screens, which are full of video clips, photos, and website work. He’s full of talent.

Joe might cringe at my photo-taking skill, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to just capture that moment. After all the lamenting in recent years about the loss of in-depth, public service journalism, it struck me (right before snapping this picture) how vibrantly I-News is helping reverse that trend.

Thank you for your support. And you’re welcome to come visit our newsroom any time!

– Laura Frank