It should perhaps come as no surprise that Rep. Debbie Staffordannounced yesterday that she was switching parties from Republican to Democrat if you consider the move in a recent historical context.
As Stafford said in her remarks yesterday, the Republican Party does not well tolerate moderates:
I considered my options. Ideally, I find myself a moderate and would be best suited for a third party. However, the reality that our political system is not designed for a third party voice to be strong, my answer was to join a party that better reflects my values and respects my contribution.
Like many others in Colorado who want to balance the role of government, who want to protect business yet show compassion for those less fortunate, who want to stand up for citizens who have been lost in bureaucracy, I find that I am in the middle of the political spectrum.
I will spend my last year as an elected official serving the constituents that elected me to public office. My ability to affect change for my constituents and the state of Colorado has been impacted by the fact that I am a moderate.
Like many others in Colorado, I feel this way:
I am not leaving the Republican Party as much as the Republican Party left me.
No one pushed me or pulled me: I decided it was time to place myself, and my self-respect, with the Democratic Party.
Former moderate Republican Mark Larson was the first to publicly highlight the Republicans' intolerance of moderate voices when he abruptly walked away from a state Senate race that he almost certainly would have won. As it was reported in early 2006:
Recent sniping between state and local Republican power brokers is exposing a bitter rift in the party, as GOP officials struggle to replace state Rep. Mark Larson in the 6th District state Senate race...
On Monday, conservatives, rankled by the maverick lawmaker's history of bucking the party line, responded with guarded glee. But disenchanted moderates lashed out at local party brass and close-knit GOP leaders, who Larson said are cloistered in the right-wing power center of Colorado Springs.
Larson may have been the most vocal, but he was not the first Republican to be cannibalized by their own party. Ramey Johnson lost her general election race in 2004 when a group led by Bob Schaffer and Alex Cranberg attacked her because she wasn't strong enough on school vouchers. Months later, the ultra-conservative Republican Study Committee of Colorado promoted itself as a group dedicated to purging the GOP Statehouse of those who aren't true to the party's "core values."
The Denver Post outlined this rift in greater detail in January 2006, but apparently another bad defeat at the polls last November hasn't swayed Republicans from the idea that there is only one "true" Republican. Unfortunately for the GOP, "true" Republicans aren't winning a lot of races these days.
When fundraising numbers for Colorado's U.S. Senate candidates were all announced earlier this week, it continued a rabid conversation about what individual reporting numbers mean for each campaign. Less discussed, but no less important, is whether or not each campaign is raising enough money just to keep the lights on.
As we've said before, fundraising reports are normally a reliable indicator of potential electoral success, because most large donors (people that give at least $500 to a candidate) write checks to the candidate that they believe is most likely to win.
But the other reason that fundraising is so important is for very fundamental purposes: You need a lot of money to both support a statewide campaign and to get your mug on television. It's no secret that the candidate who does best on TV is often the candidate who ends up winning the election, so an effective campaign has to be able to pay for its day-to-day operations while also saving as much as possible (70-80% is a general rule of thumb) for television.
Obviously, a U.S. Senate race is a costly affair. In 2008, Democrat Mark Udall outspent Republican Bob Schaffer $11.7 million to $7.4 million. Now that the fundraising reports for the 2010 batch of Senate candidates are available, we thought it would make sense to look at just how much money they are going to need just to fund their campaign. The answers tell us a lot about which candidates are in a position to win, and which are just treading water right now.
Now that 2010 is here (and most of you are back to work after the holidays), it's time to take our look back on the decade that was.
We asked your opinions on what the Oughts Brought, and now it's time to start revealing the winners. We'll be here with this all week, folks, so check back for more categories every day.
Best/Worst Politician and Best/Worst Campaign awards after the jump.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will cease television advertising in Colorado by Tuesday, according to state Democratic sources, a signal that the national candidate committee believes U.S. Rep. Mark Udall is comfortably ahead of former congressman Bob Schaffer in the race for Colorado's open U.S. Senate seat.
The DSCC instead will put its resources into competitive races elsewhere as the party tries to secure a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority.
In polls released last week, Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, had opened up double-digit leads over Schaffer, apparently helped along by the recent financial meltdown.
Hey, maybe the NRCC is pulling out of CD-4 because it thinks Marilyn Musgrave is a lock, too. Just not the same kind of lock.
--Cross post from Progress Now Action, from the New Environment Colorado reports
Coloradans deserve clean water. But Reps. Marilyn Musgrave and Bob Schaffer have consistently taken the side of polluters in opposing stronger protections for our waterways.
Republican sources in Colorado and Washington say that the National Republican Senatorial Committee plans to pull out of the state by next week, an acknowledgment that its independent expenditure resources would be better spent on defense elsewhere.
Earlier this week, the NRSC withdrew its advertising from the Louisiana Senate race.
The NRSC is still helping Roger Wicker in Mississippi and incumbents Norm Coleman in Minnesota, John Sununu in New Hampshire.
AN NRSC spokesperson said that advertising decisions are made on a week-to-week basis and declined to comment further.
A spokesperson for the state party said that the ads were running in the state on Friday.
Human life needs to be protected at every stage, beginning at the single-cell stage.
Colorado's Personhood Amendment (Amendment 48), which defines life as beginning at fertilization, goes to voters in November.
"A founding principle of Focus on the Family - and a driving belief of Dr. Dobson's - is that all human life is sacred and that life begins at the single-cell stage of human development," said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action. "Amendment 48 articulates this belief and challenges us to declare the inestimable worth of all members of the human family.
It's been a challenging (non) campaign for old Bob Schaffer, what with looming indictments, forced abortions, Jack, and Mt. Macaca.
But even a candidate without any (stated) position, who once helped someone else do something about earmarks (maybe) and piss-poor geography skills, still needs a campaign slogan.
For those unable to attend the Republican convention (or those in attendance who want to relive it), here's Bob Schaffer's acceptance speech. Posted on Slapstick Politics
This is the first half. Part 2 is after the jump.
UPDATED TO ADD: Mark Udall released a new 30-second TV spot about "a better way to protect America," which began airing today. It's also after the jump.
Bob Schaffer's ties to Bill Orr, convicted yesterday in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud the federal government, spent the night as the lead stories on Talking Points Memo and its sister site, TPM Muckraker. But at home in Colorado, news outlets paint a different picture, perhaps a result of what Colorado Pols reported last week:
... Dick Wadhams has gone even further than usual in trying to persuade news outlets to ignore the story, going over the heads of reporters directly to managing editors in a preemptive attempt to keep it from exploding into yet another damaging scandal.
Denver Post business columnist Al Lewis lumps Schaffer with Orr's other victims, in an attempt to wring sympathy for the former congressman, who trusted friends and political associates a little too much.
Any penny-ante huckster can con a few suckers with a fuel-additive scam.
William Orr conned Congress.
He also shafted Bob Schaffer, GOP candidate for Colorado's open U.S. Senate seat.
Lewis goes on to recount details from Orr's trial, including the defense theory that the Feds were out to get him because he dared sue the EPA over other, unrelated fuel testing requirements. Returning to Schaffer, Lewis lays blame squarely at the foot of Schaffer's trusting nature:
Schaffer, who served on the board of Orr's congressionally funded National Alternative Fuels Foundation, is not saying a peep.
His spokesman, Dick Wadhams, said Schaffer was not paid for his nearly six months of service beginning in October 1994.
"As soon as he was alerted to the problems, he resigned from the board," Wadhams said.
Schaffer joined the board at the behest of his longtime political associate Scott Shires, a notable GOP operative.
Shires pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the case. His sentencing is slated for June 23. He faces up to a year in prison and a $25,000 fine.
If Schaffer and the members of Congress who put up the $3.6 million earmark are indeed Orr's victims, it's hard to imagine how they could be such easy marks.
Lewis continues, other reporters weigh in (or not), and there's a poll after the jump.
