Before the election, Colorado Republicans controlled the state Senate, occupied three of the state’s five statewide offices and held five of the state’s nine seats in Congress.

Then nearly 900,000 unaffiliated voters cast their ballots and handed decisive victories to Democrats.

“The barn has been completely cleaned out,” said David Flaherty, a Colorado Republican pollster. “We’re trying to learn what motivated them. But you’re kidding yourself if you say President Trump didn’t have something to do with it.”

Long before the results from the 2018 election were known, Republicans — especially those running for statewide office — faced daunting electoral challenges. Colorado is getting younger; the party has registered fewer than 50,000 new voters since 2014; and the national mood favored Democrats.

Now, according to Flaherty and other political insiders interviewed by The Denver Post this week, the situation is more dire for Colorado’s GOP. Of most immediate concern: U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s re-election prospects are grim unless the party can develop a new message that appeals to both the Trump loyalists and the independent voters who dislike the president.

The first step, state party chairman Jeff Hays said, is to listen to voters, party leaders and candidates.

“To the best of our ability,” he said after the election, “we’ll try to figure out what happened.”

A party divided — and underwhelmed

Unlike in more conservative states, Colorado’s Republican Party is split over Trump. The base, especially in more rural parts of Colorado, adores him. And while more of the party’s leaders have come to embrace the president’s brashness, power brokers who orbit the party are still repulsed by Trump’s worst tendencies.

Front Range Republican strategists know Colorado’s swing voters are more receptive to Republican messages about the economy and judges than Trump tweets about a caravan of immigrants hundreds of miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Not so much on the more conservative Western Slope and Eastern Plains.

“There was definitely a lot of people who wanted to see President Trump in Mesa County stumping,” said Rose Pugliese, a Republican Mesa County commissioner. “It didn’t happen. Would it have helped turnout? Maybe … but we clearly saw the urban areas take over in this election.”

For several days leading up to the election, GOP voters trailed their last midterm election turnout numbers — at one point by 50,000 ballots. And while more Republicans ultimately voted in 2018 than in 2014, they didn’t increase their numbers by nearly as much as Democrats and unaffiliated voters did. And they lost ground in critical swing counties.

For Republicans to claw back any power, they need to be turning out more voters in swing counties such as Jefferson and Arapahoe, the latter of which makes up the majority of the competitive 6th Congressional District that Republican Rep. Mike Coffman just lost. Jefferson County, meanwhile, is home to three typically competitive state Senate races that Democrats just swept.

Whether Trump could have helped turn out more Republican voters is an open question.

Trump certainly believes he could have. In a post-election news conference, he called out Coffman as well as other congressional Republicans who distanced themselves from the president and lost their elections.

Whether Republican candidates should have asked Trump for help “is a discussion worth having,” said Justin Prendergast, a Republican strategist. “However, I think not having Trump here gives us a clear analysis on where the base is.”

Redefining the message — and the messenger

As results came in Tuesday night and it became clear that Republicans were losing massive ground across the state, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck said it was time for the party to rethink its goals and message.

“Republicans have lost our brand,” Buck said. For example, the party claims to be fiscally conservative, but it has racked up a trillion-dollar deficit, he said.

“The Republican brand in Colorado is hurting right now,” he said. “We need to sit down and have a serious conversation about who should lead.”

Jeff Hunt, president of the Centennial Institute, a conservative think tank at Colorado Christian University, said conservatives need to do a better job of translating Trump to the state’s unaffiliated electorate.

“The state is very (different) from the coalition that got Trump elected,” he said. The question is, “How do Republicans make Trump policies relevant to voters?”

The state GOP would be wise to pick four issues and develop conservative solutions to pitch to voters, said Flaherty, the pollster.

“We didn’t have any messages this cycle,” he said.

Michael Fields, executive director of Colorado Rising Action, a conservative political group that helped defeat a proposed tax increase for schools this fall, said that message needs to be positive.

“We have to talk about what we are for more than what we are against,” he said. “Conservatism can win in Colorado, but we need an inspirational message focused on how Colorado can be even better 20 years from now.”

The message shouldn’t be the only thing that changes, said Pugliese, the Mesa County Republican. So should the messenger.

“I really, truly, think you’re going to see in 2020 and 2022 a larger amount of women candidates running for higher office,” she said. “It’s coming. It’s coming.”

Democratic victories in Colorado and across the nation were fueled in large part by a historic number of female, black and Latino candidates. Pugliese and others took notice.

“The women I’m interacting with across the state have all talked about how we need to message our party, how we need to be more inclusive, to show people that we are truly inclusive and more diverse,” she said. “I think the only way to really do that is to prove it. And I know there are definitely people ready.”

Waiting for overreach

Not all is lost, Republicans say. Party insiders are taking comfort in the fact that Colorado voters decisively rejected two big tax increases on the ballot.

“These elections haven’t been a repudiation of fundamental conservative policy positions,” Fields said. “When the Democrats overreach, which they inevitably will, Republicans have to be ready to communicate a vision for the state that appeals to unaffiliated voters.”

As Republican state lawmakers met to select their new leaders at the legislature, they pledged to be a check on the Democrats.

“Our role will be to continue to bring great ideas,” said state Rep. Paul Lundeen, who just won a seat in the Senate to represent Monument. “The second role is to tap the brakes, to ring the alarm bell so that the voters of Colorado know if the majority party — now that they have the trifecta — is getting out of control.”

The question of overreach has been fresh on many political observers’ minds. The last time Democrats held both chambers — in 2013 — it ended in two state senators being recalled. And it didn’t take long for Republicans to reminisce about that moment.

“If the pendulum swings too far to the left, the people of Colorado will react,” Buck said on election night. “You will see recall elections again.”

Gardner’s re-election fight

Democrats have not been shy about their next target: U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner. The Yuma Republican now will be one of only two statewide GOP officeholders, and his political fate is tied to how he and Republicans answer these existential questions.

Kelly Maher, executive director of the conservative group Compass Colorado, said there’s no better person to lead the party through the next two years.

“All eyes are now on Cory Gardner, who is going to set the vision and tone for the next election,” she said. “He’s an A-plus expert at selling Republican ideals in a really positive way. He’s the guy that’s going to set the tone.”

In an interview with The Denver Post on Thursday, Gardner didn’t shy away from Trump — in fact, he invited Trump and the entire Colorado congressional delegation to Colorado for a statewide tour.

“I’d be honored to have the president come to Colorado with the bipartisan delegation and show him the good work that we do in this state,” he said. “… I feel confident the people of Colorado are going to continue to want balance; they are going to want bipartisanship.”

While Gardner is championing bipartisanship now, his re-election bid could be the most expensive — and ugliest — race in the country. He can count on strong financial support from the GOP after spending the last year as chairman of the Senate National Republican Senatorial Committee, helping Republicans keep and expand their narrow margin in the Senate.

But money can’t solve everything. Gardner is going to be tied to Trump at every turn, especially with both of them on the 2020 ballot.

“The unaffiliated voters are going to make the decision of where this ends up,” said Flaherty, the pollster. “Clearly there is a lot of work to do as Cory begins campaigning and starts the conversation with Coloradans.”

— Staff writer Anna Staver contributed to this report.

Update: This article has been updated to clarify the number of seats Colorado Republicans held in both the U.S. House of Representives and Senate.