CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 02, 2008 03:33 PM UTC
69 Comments
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Would be great to see ALL reporters do the very same thing.
Her Boulder liberal bias is making news and ruining her reputation with conservative politicians.
They’ll be more careful than ever when talking to her.
She dropped a colorful comment to edit a politician.
Who is she to edit a source like that.
Even sports reporters these days quote Carmelo’s bad grammar.
It’s a small chink in the Rocky’s Boulder liberal image, but a chink nonetheless.
Will John Temple write a column about this, or will Dave Kopel?
Pretty funny, and sad. Conservatives have another reason to not read the Rocky.
you are starting to sound like part of the tinfoil hat party.
What you wrote doesn’t even make sense.
hehehehe…..
He is trying to use a quote to create a fact. A responsible reporter wouldn’t let him do it. Injecting “Boulder liberal” is done explicitly to get the phrase printed in the story, but it has nothing to do with the story and it isn’t true – he doesn’t live in Boulder.
For the same reason, a reporter should not let someone call Bob Schaffer “Colorado Springs Conservative Bob Schaffer” because he does not live in Colorado Springs.
Isn’t that what Josef Goebbels used to do for the Third Reich?
She’s far from a liberal. She’s from South Dakota, hardly a bastion of wild liberalism. I’d say that, if anything, she leans conservative personally.
She has a nose for hot gossip and likes to play those cards. If Republican’s would stop embarrassing themselves you’d probably see more “balance” in her reporting.
and the reporter added the “(Democratic congressman)” part in order to clarify who Udall is for readers, since it’s the first reference to Udall in the article.
But, then again, it just might have been “Boulder liberal.”
But if the supporters of Boulder Liberal Mark Udall want to think that his claim to fame will disappear by just wishing it away, they can go right ahead.
Call Udall a Boulder liberal all you want. Given the fact that the political pendulum has shifted so far to the left, it’s not a bad thing anymore. Conservatives had their chance and betrayed the people’s trust and ran the ship aground. People care about solutions to their problems now, and how to right the ship, not whether or not anyone is a “Boulder Liberal”.
It’s just plain repetitive and completely stupid, which is the point.
For further reference, see democrat party.
starts proudly using the term “Boulder Liberal.“
due to all Wadham’s stellar work I think everyone got the memo already.
Maybe you guys could dust off the old playbook and start calling us dimmycrats again.
It’s not accurate. Udall has never lived in Boulder. Ever. Not once.
First, Mark Udall does not live in Boulder.
Second, he’s a moderate, not a liberal – at least not the way you are painting it. I’m more liberal than he is.
Did you go to CU? I would submit that even Vietnam is not as far to the left as Boulder is.
and Sweatshop Schaffer vacations in the Mariana Islands.
I think it’s rigged. Boulder Liberal might lose because there are so many lines that say (or imply) Boulder Liberal.
I can’t believe this once-respected site has fallen to such partisan right-wing hackery!
Join the movement for instant runoff ColoradoPols polls.
I’d like to believe she removed Boulder Liberal from his vocabulary but I really think it’s because Udall was not identified on the first reference to the story.
Mark Udall….
“The guy who is going to kick our ass in November” Mark Udall….
“The guy who is going to had me my second straight defeat in a Senate election” Mark Udall….
When was the last time Dick Wadhams lost an election in Colorado?
Anyone?
Of course, it’s been a while since he’s won an election in Colorado, too.
Are you really going to claim his track record outside of Colorado doesn’t count for anything? The man has lost his “charm” and is losing his ability to campaign effectively for anyone (remember he’s not just a campaign manager). He’s older, stubborn, and spreading himself thin.
His track record outside Colorado? Are you talking about the fact that for the first time ever he unseated a senior member of the Democratic party (Tom Daschle) with relative unknown John Thune?
Oh… you mean that he wasn’t able to rescue George Allen from his own words? Big deal. If Schaffer was to make a racial slur Wadhams wouldn’t be able to rescue him from that either. What’s your point? It certainly doesn’t mean he is no longer good at his job.
Not true. Ernest MacFarlane was the Senate Democratic Leader who in 1952 lost his re-election bid in Arizona to Phoenix City Councilman Barry Goldwater. MacFarlane’s loss propelled the Deputy Minority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, into the Majority Leader’s post.
It’s rare, but occasionally even party leaders lose elections.
it seems to me Wadhams did have one loss in Colorado, was it a Republican primary? Offhand, I can’t think of it, can you?
Wadhams has lost only one election – Terry Considine’s race against then-Democrat Ben Nighthorse Campbell in 1992.
I seem to remember Wadhams running Conrad Burns campaign when Burns refered to blacks as “niggers.”
Don’t give me this crap about a failed candidate, while exempting Wadhams from any responsibility. Wadhams is a failed politico. As I said, he’s older, stubborn, and spreading himself thin. He doesn’t understand today’s issues, today’s media, or today’s voters. He’s as out of touch (maybe not as much) as Bob Schaffer.
That’s excellent. On the one hand there was a ton of press about how Wadhams cleverly used bloggers to his advantage in his Thune upset and now he doesn’t understand new media. I think he understands more than you might realize.
Let’s consider this… Udall is raising and spending a lot more money than Schaffer and they are still basically at a heat. So far, so good for my boy Schaffer.
Why don’t you say what the record shows Wadhams actually did, which was “surreptitiously paid bloggers to attack the opposition.” Nothing “clever” about that. One doesn’t have to “understand new media” to recruit wingnut bloggers and pay them under the table to circulate smears.
You’re kidding right? John Thune served for three terms as the at-large (represented the entire state) representative for South Dakota. He ran for US Senate against Senator Tim Johnson and lost by just over 500 votes the cycle before defeating Tom Daschle. That means that he had ran four previous statewide races (three successfully/one unsuccessfully) before challenging Daschle.
You don’t run that many successful statewide races and pass muster as a “relative unknown” with your electorate.
Always nice to have some history with the Kool-aid.
member of the Democratic party
(as sung by Roberta Flack)
That would be true if you left out, oh, Speaker of the House Tom Foley, D-Spokane, who lost his bid for a 16th term in 1994 to George Nethercutt.
Riding the term limit wave, Nethercutt got traction against the powerful Democrat by pointing out at every opportunity that Foley had sued the State of Washington to overturn a 1992 term limit initiative. Nethercutt vowed to serve only three terms but, when the time came, ran for and won fourth and fifth terms before retiring.
I’m going to point out that “his man” has some serious ethical problems that are going to sink him, making anything the Wadhams does pointless.
Colorado voters aren’t as scared of “Boulder Liberal” (anyone) as they used to be. Nor of “San Francisco values” or the other goads the GOP has used for the past 20 years. The Republican brand is mud and their candidates will have to be able to offer something significant.
Kudos to Jason Salzman for following up on the story.
Okay, just so I’m clear, Pols is pleased and even congratulating Bartels for doing some creative editing within the quotation marks of a direct quote?
Forget about what words were cut – I personally think Wadhams’ repetition sounds ridiculous – but really? No one else thinks that’s a pretty bad idea?
If this was done to Congressman Udall, of whom I am a supporter, people on this site would shouting “media censorship” from the rooftops.
I would’ve probably made the same change as Lynn, but I’m not a reporter. Does she have the right to be congratulated for editing Wadham’s comments? She could easily have made him say “I…eat…puppies.”
as censorship or as the media being tired of Wadhams’ “Boulder liberal” tag for Udall.
I think it was the choice of this one particular journalist to identify the subject contained within a quote at the beginning of a story in a clearer fashion. She didn’t change the meaning of Wadhams’ words: the essence of his quote was about raising money, not about whether or not Udall is a “Boulder liberal.”
to allow someone to use a quote to report a false fact. Udall does not live in Boulder. Bob Schaffer does not live in Colorado Springs. If someone tried to say either in a quote, they would be doing it to intentionally state a false fact.
Bad reporters let this go all the time, and they excuse the mistake by saying, “I was just quoting the person.” But when the quote is intentionally false, and the reporter knows that it is intentionally false, they should absolutely refuse to play that game.
Look, I’m as tired as the Boulder Liberal line as the rest of you, but Udall does live in Boulder. Boulder County.
Is that what Dick Wad means when he calls Udall a BL? Of course not. But as long Udall lives in anything called Boulder (city, county…whatever), calling him a BL isn’t really all that “false.”
Just making a point…
He made the whole convoluted ZIP code argument to claim that Mark lived within the city limits of Boulder. He has not conceded that point despite the evidence provided by the assessor, the postmaster, and the fire marshall. Wadhams still claims Mark Udall lives in the city of Boulder and that’s false.
Hence the reason I said “Of course not.”
The question is, is it dishonest or factually inaccurate to call Mark Udall a Boulder Liberal? If it is, then Bartels can omit and change Wadhams statement to her heart’s content.
But regardless of DW’s zip code BS, two questions remain. Does Udall live in Boulder? Yes, Boulder County, though not the city. Is Udall a Liberal? Yes again…at least compared to his opponent.
I dislike the term Boulder Liberal…but there’s nothing factually inaccurate or libelous about it. She should have just quoted DW accurately or not quoted him at all, IMO.
—
By the way, your signature is fantastic. My senior year of high school, we were forced to dedicate the yearbook to a retiring teacher who most of us didn’t like. We included that quote below his picture. Thankfully our faculty advisor didn’t know Latin…
I grew weary of the repeated “Boulder liberal” tag as though it was part of Mark Udall’s name some time ago. Please note that I also find “Big Oil Bob” equally annoying and pointless.
Colorado voters too often choose not to become adequately informed in the political process. But they are not so disinterested that they will not see through such labels.
I find Lynn Bartels’s decision to edit a direct quote from someone both disturbing and unprecedented.
A better strategy would be to simply not to quote Dick Wadhams, or his Democratic counterpart, at all. Voters are more interested in what the two candidates have to say. If Schaffer and/or Udall want media exposure, then let them both talk to the reporters (and voters) themselves. But it should never be a reporter’s, or editor’s, decision to alter direct quotes from anyone. I seriously doubt anyone, who writes here, would want anyone doing that to them.
Who cares what the reporter thinks about the words used by Wadhams? The reporter’s job is to report the facts, including what is said in a direct quotation, accurately and without bias. PERIOD.
A reporter is supposed to relate what is said, right or wrong (right or left) and let the readers make their own decisions as to the relevance of those words.
Example: When asked for comment, president Clinton said “I did [] have sexual relations with that woman.” The reporter perhaps didn’t like the “not” part of the statement, so he left it out. Different context, but same general idea.
The reporter in question should be summarily fired. Their job is to report the news, not tailor it to their own suiting, ala Jayson Blair. But the media is so in the tank for the Dems, that this kind of shoddy journalism is now par for the course, and they wonder why their revenues are plummetting.
Substitute an extreme example and see if you still think your opinion holds up. If Udall’s staff preceded Bob Schaffer’s name with the phrase “convicted rapist” should Bartels repeat it even though it is false?
How about “Martian immigrant rsquare?”
Who cares whether it is an extreme or subtle example in this case? As soon as journalists lose their objectivity, they are no longer journalists, but carriers of water for their party. Slippery slope textbook example.
Yes, I hope they would, as to let the people hear what the staff had to say. The people need to know what is actually said, not just what their intellectual overlords want for them to hear. So if someone wants to damn himself through his own words, I say let him, in the case of politics, the people will sort it out.
She is unaffiliated. I believe she has publicly stated that she was a Republican before she worked at the Rocky where party membership is forbidden as a term of employment.
So how exactly is she carrying water for her party?
The Bartels article has another statement from Wadhams that goes unchallenged.
Not true.
In the 2002 election, according to Open Secrets:
Allard spent $5,334,115
Strickland spent $5,206,080.
Libertarian Rick Stanley spent $14,283
Stunt candidates John Heckman and Douglas “Dayhorse” Campbell didn’t raise or spend enough to file FEC reports.
Even taking into account spending by other Democrats who failed to make the General Election ballot, Wadhams lied.
Mike Miles spent $29,213 and Bruce Poulter spent $3,714.
That’s $5,253,290 spent by all of Allard’s “opponents,” vs. $5,334,115 spent by Allard.
Wadhams knows from outspending an opponent, though. The 2006 campaign he ran for Virginia Sen. George Allen spent $16,914,554, almost exactly twice as much as victorious challenger James Webb, who spent $8,461,970.
Maybe that’s why a 2006 poll of political professionals by The National Journal picked Wadhams’ effort as the “worst campaign in the country
the REAL question is how much money did Wadham’s “earn”, and can you count that money towards the total spent by Allen?
Colorado Republicans have been duped by a guy who will not render the results they expect while taking more money than they would ever pay anyone else. Wake up before the races are lost and the piggy bank is empty.
Many Republican Party regulars thought Wadhams would be the cure-all for what ailes the Colorado Republican Party but there was no way he was going to be able to turn the situation around. The deep splits within the Rpublican Party can’t be cured by hiring a new executive director or signing him on as Schaffer’s campaign manager. It takes more than gimmicks and calling an opposing candidate names to remedy the intra party divisions.
The problem is the fact the Republican Party has evolved into one that fails to address basic issues the electorate wants government to handle like transportation and education. The Republcian Party has two positions – cut taxes regardless of the consequences and public institutions are evil and must be undermined.
By taking on these attitudes, the Party has alienated tens of thousands of Republican voters, especially in suburban Denver and Larimer County, and to an extent even in Weld and El Paso counties in 2006. As a result, those voters, who may still be registered Republicans, have, in their minds and souls, left the Party. Most of them have not re-registered as Democrats but they are willing to look and vote for differnet candidates from the Democratic Party.
By running candidates like Bob Schaffer, Wadhams is feeding the fires of disenchantment with the Republican Party. Schaffer is nothing more than a throw-back to the radical right-wing of the Republican Party. Trying to make him into a moderate, middle-of-the-road candidate won’t work, especially since there is so much evidence of his previous positions and statements that are off-the-wall. One example, I’ve quoted before, will suffice: “Republicans are for a clean environment. Democrats set big forest fires in New Mexico.” Does anybody, regardless of party affiliation or political philosophy, believe the Democrats advocate that the forests in New Mexico should be burned to the ground! Apparently, Mr. Schaffer believes it since this quote came off his 2000 campaign website. Suburban Republicans aren’t going to buy into such nonsense because they know that people who make those kind of statements and think like that don’t have any business in the United States Senate, not when we are dealing with problems like Iraq, Afghanistan and global warming.
All Wadhams has done is see to it that the same kind of candidate and ideas that suburban Republicans rejected in 2004, 2005 and 2006 is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2008. A very bad misjudgment on his part.
The right-wing Republicans (they’re not conservatives) can howl at the moon all night long but the basic fact remains that the two primary groups that have made up the Republican Party no longer have enough common values to hold the party together. They need to split apart and the traditional Republcans (the true conservatives) should join the Democrats to form a new governing coalition in Colorado.
Be sure to post when the new group forms because I know a few people who would gladly join up.
I’ll play into your hands 36:
What are you trully suggesting? Do you really think that the Democratic Party is trully the party of the “new center”? Please share with us your slate of GOP canidates (or future canidates) that can be classified as “traditional Republicans”. I’m curious.
This agression will not stand, Man!-The Dude
Is that the candidate in a can where you guys pop out a clone that just spouts out the right wing talking points?
Your party does have a number of thoughtful open-minded members, including several who are elected. It’s just that you have a lot more who confuse yelling & repitition with thinking.
Norma Anderson
Lola Spradley
Diane Hoppe
Mark Larson
They aren’t candidates (or future candidates) because they have been drummed out of the party’s inner circle by John Birch Society/Family Research Institute extremists.
And these are not pee-ons in the party, either. Norma and Lola were the Senate President and the Speaker of the House, respectively.
if every one of them didn’t endorse Mark Udall. Not because they agree with him on every issue, or even on most issues. But they know that everyone will have a seat at the table with Mark, while Bob would just spend the next six years in DC doing the same thing he spent hi last six years in DC doing–being a frothy-mouthed partisan with no principles and no willingness to work with anyone (on either side of the aisle) to get anything done.
Yes, I believe the Democrats are the new party of the center here in Ccolorado. The Democrats are the only party that will address any of the major issues. The Republicans simply advocate cutting taxes (regardless of the impact on state programs like highways) and, in turn, attempt to undermine government institutions because they don’t believe government has any legitimate functions outside of public safety. Ever since the 2005 campaign on Ref. C when Republican leaders like John Andrews said it simply didn’t matter if we couldn’t maintain our roads or that tuition at our public universities would rise to the level of private ones like Notre Dame or Stanford, through the 2006 gubentorial campaign when Bob Beauprez made the utterly false statement that if we just sweep out the dirt in the corners at the Colorado Department of Transportation we will have all the money we need for highways, to Senator Penry’s proposal this year to rob Peter to pay Paul by suggesting we transfer K-12 funds to the transportation budget, the Republican Party has made it clear it simply does not recognize the legitimacy of any state programs. Cutting taxes and defunding and undermining programs is the Party’s number one policy priorities. The consequences be damned.
One example of the consequences will suffice. By taking the position that it doesn’t matter whether our young people can afford a higher education, the Republican leadership is not only blocking opportunity for our young people but they are most certainly undermining our national security. Ever since the end of the Middle Ages, nations with strong economies were able to fiancne their naitonal security. Once a major power declined economically, it could no longer defend itself or its interests (e.g. Spain). One of the pillars for economic strength is the education of our young people generation after generation. In the United States, the fifty states have an absolutely fundamental role in this through the public education system. The Republican Party’s never ending attacks on the public education system is not only undermining our economy and ability to compete in world markets but also, in the long run, our national security. But blinded by ironclad ideology they continue their attacks. I’m simply not going to vote for this kind of mindless policy.
There are very few traditional Republican candidates on the ballot this year for the simple reason, those kind of people have been run out of the Republican Party. St. Sen. Steve Johnson (R-Ft. Collins) is one but he is leaving the senate for the Larimer County Commission.
When you look back even twenty years ago, the differences between the Republicans then and now are startling. Twenty years ago, St. Sen. Dan Noble (R-Norwood) watched over the transportation budget like a hawk and advocated funding the highway budget. Conservatives like Elwood Gillis (R-Lamar) a member and eventually chairman of the Joint Budget Committee always said he had to make sure “the kiddies have enough money.” In other words, there was an underlying value held by Republicans and Democarts that programs like education and transportation were legitimate government functions that required adequate funding. The two parties argued over how much but the fact the programs should exist was never a question.
Contrast that with Senator Andrtews and Congressman Tancredo who both signed a pledge on the Alliance for Separation of School and State around the turn of the century. By signing that pledge they agreed that ALL public funding for education K through university should be terminated. As I’ve said before that is not policy, it is social and economic insanity and it undermines our national security. These kind of people are the leaders of the Republcan Party at the moment. I’m not voting Republican because of their blind ideological approach to public policy. It is mindless and very bad for the USA.
Picture it, January 2009….After losing the U.S. Senate seat, yet another U.S. House seat (C.D. 4), yet another state Senate seat (Shawn Mitchell’s) and no net change in the state House (H.D. 40 goes back to the GOP, but the Dems pick up H.D. 37), the Colorado GOP is in the market for a new party chair.
Anyone want to speculate on who will likely be asked to pick up the pieces after Dicky steps down?
but he won’t be blamed personally. It’s going to be a big Democratic year. Dick will take credit for keeping the losses lower than they otherwise might have been.
That said, he’ll move on and get hired again.
Does Allard have any staffers who could do the job?
But I must disagree on one point. Iraq and the economy are shaping up to be the biggest issues, I would leave Afghanistan and global warming out of it. You can seek to tie global warming into the economic issues, but there is much more to our current state. And no, plunging our government further into debt with an “economic stimulus” check that will not be spent on consumer goods is not a solution.
Colorado Media Matters runs down the falsehood I pointed out above. It turns out Wadhams has been spewing the same lie unchallenged all over the place.
See, you really can learn something reading Colorado Pols!
Did Bartels’ pulling the old switch-a-roo and changing Dick Wad’s quote make this more of a story then it should have been? Would anyone have cared about DW’s quote today if the reporter hadn’t left out “Boulder Liberal?” I think not…
As a result, we have a thread wherein 19 times the words Boulder Liberal and Mark Udall are tied together. If you’re Dick Wadhams, you’ve gotta be happy about that.
—
I give her credit…”Boulder Liberal” is a tired old piece of political hackery that has no meaningful place in this election’s discourse. But it is what DW said…and if she’s so opposed to it, she could have just not quoted him.
An article (“Ad Campaign Pitch Puzzles El Paso County Republicans”) by Leslie Jorgensen in the May 30 issue of The Colorado Statesman appears to do the same thing.
On page 22 in the 2nd to last paragraph at the bottom of the first column Jorgensen writes,
I can’t imagine Wadhams used “He” to start that sentence when two paragraphs before, Wadhams is quoted as saying,
Wadhams thinks that calling Udall names will win this race. He thinks its 1996 again. The public is paying more attention now than they did then and silly name calling won’t win this year.
One of the important issues which has rarely been discussed during this election cycle is Mark Udall’s support of the deceptively named Employee Free Choice Act. This piece of legislation would enable labor unions to bypass private elections in favor of collecting signatures in order to unionize businesses. This method would increase the use of intimidation and deception by unions and cause many workers to be coerced into signing up for a union, even if their true wishes are otherwise. The support by Udall of this legislation is both un-democratic and hypocritical, in that Udall is trying to be elected through a private ballot. This issue is going to be one of the main topics of this campaign and once the voters know the truth, the only sensible candidate is Rep. Bob Shaffer.
‘Boulder Liberal’ Wadhams is going to admonish you now…
Wow, lots going on here. I agree that there is complete loss of journalistic integrity if the phrase Boulder Liberal Mark Udall was edited. If not, it makes sense to list his title due to the fact he wasn’t mentioned before. True conservatives and Democrats working together? That one I’m a little skeptical about under TABOR which makes it difficult to accomplish much in the way of cutting or raising taxes. And as far as the Employee Free Choice Act goes, Udall voted for it and cosponsored it in the House, and will do the same thing in the Senate. He is a Big Labor Boulder[County] Liberal, already took $75,000 from unions in the first quarter, and has already voted for this measure that eliminates private ballot voting. Not good.
6th sentence in. Bad poster, no GOP payoff for you!