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TIME Politics 2014 Election The Surprising Struggles of Mark Udall to Win Colorado Women U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) speaks to supporters as he kicks off his 'Mark Your Ballot' bus tour on Oct. 15, 2014 in Denver. Doug PensingerGetty Images He is not the only Democrat in trouble with the one demographic Democrats bet would save them the midterms

If you live in Colorado, you might be forgiven for thinking the 2014 midterm elections are about one thing: abortion. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Monday released a new television ad hitting GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, who is challenging Sen. Mark Udall for his Colorado seat, for not being honest with women.

Cory Gardner is trying to hide that he is sponsoring a new law to make all abortions illegal, even for victims of rape or incest, says the DSCC release. The ad features OB-GYN Dr. Eliza Buyers, who slams Gardner: Cory Gardner is wrong to make abortion illegal and just as wrong not to tell the truth about it.

Udall himself has two other ads up targeting female voters. In one, another Colorado OB-GYN talks about Gardners long record of fighting to roll back womens access to health care. And a second ad calls out Gardner for personhood lies. About half the ads he has run again Gardner have highlighted what Democrats call Gardners extreme stances on womens reproductive rights.

The problem is Gardner refuses to play along. In June, he retracted his support for so-called personhood, or the belief that life begins at the moment of conception, and has since backed making contraceptionthough not all forms of itavailable over the counter.

Now, with a week to go before the election, Udall is down 2.8 percentage points in polls, according to an average of Colorado polls by Real Clear Politics. More troublingly hes down amongst female voters in at least two polls. If Udall loses women, hes lost his seat.

Udalls narrow focus helped cost him the support of the Denver Post, the states largest paper. Rather than run on his record, Udalls campaign has devoted a shocking amount of energy and money trying to convince voters that Gardner seeks to outlaw birth control despite the congressmans call for over-the-counter sales of contraceptives, the Post said in its endorsement of Gardner. Udall is trying to frighten voters rather than inspire them with a hopeful vision. His obnoxious one-issue campaign is an insult to those he seeks to convince.

And Udall isnt the only Democrat struggling to turn the focus on women into a winning strategy. In Kentucky, Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes is even with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell with women, as is Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat fending off a strong GOP challenge from Rep. Tom Cotton in Arkansas. Like Udall, both Grimes and Pryor have invested heavily in turning out the womens vote.

The War on Women is a playbook Democrats ran successfully in 2012, with significant assists from GOP senatorial candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock whose inopportune remarks on women and rape helped paint the party as out-of-touch on female issues. Unfortunately for Democrats, there have been no Akin and Murdoch repeats and candidates like Gardner have been much savvier in their messaging on womens issues.

A myopic focus on reproductive freedom and the War on the Women does not seem to be an effective way to mobilize and motivate women in a year when the economy and jobs are at the forefront of voters minds, and GOP candidates have not made the same kinds of mistakes that Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock did in 2012, says Jennifer Lawless, director of American Universitys Women & Politics Institute. In other words, courting the womens vote is a smart move; the way several Democrats have gone about doing it has been not so smart.

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The Surprising Struggles of Mark Udall to Win Colorado Women