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%↓
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State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 06, 2015 03:37 PM UTC
16 Comments
Buck, like every Weld County resident, owes the immigrants who process his meat, clean his hotel rooms, pay payroll taxes and sales taxes in Weld County. They are driving in the next lane, they cook and serve him food. They are human beings. His statement is shortsighted and against the interests of his constituents.
In an interview with the Elbert Times, Buck softpedaled his immigration position during his 2014 campaign for CD4, as he tried to pacify every interest group in his constituency:
But now that the campaign is over, the real ugliness in Ken Buck's soul is on full view again, as he advocates for a "piecemeal" solution to immigration – give employers immunity from prosecution, give employers a cheap labor force without benefits or accountability, i.e. a "guest worker" program, give defense contractors even more money for overkill at the border, but no health care, no legal protections, no hope for citizenship for the actual person who works for pennies and lives in fear.
Time for me to become a pain-in-the-ass constituent in Greeley.
More dribble from the 'I've got mine, screw you' crowd. Like Majority McConnell who can't stop yacking about the virtues of coal, yet his home state coal counties are amongst the most economically-challenged in the US. Congressman Buck's vision for CD-4 and Murika is apparently the Weld County model. I'm not talking about their bootstraps-style way of doing business, I'm talking about Greeley, which has the highest poverty rate in the state at 21.7%; I'm talking about the 36% of Greeley children under 18 who live in poverty.
It's going to be a long, painful two years.
MJ, So all immigrants are illegal?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
AC, I knew that criticizing your boy Buck would bring you out of retirement with a new "straw man" to tilt at.
I didn't say that all immigrants were illegal. Try again.
I'm enjoying my 'Thingy1' version of Jeopardy (guessing what it said). Think about these folks the next time you're sippin' your wine, munching on your carrots, enjoying your Caprese salad and enjoying your sparkling-clean hotel room….
Buck said he didn't owe people who are here illegally. You wrote that he owes immigrants, conflating those here legally and those who broke the law. Your argument is pathetic.
Crawl back under your rock, you disgusting piece of slime. You are a disgrace to humanity.
Aren't you so lucky to have been born as a higher form of life than "those people"? After all, they don't have feelings…they don't feel loneliness..or pain..or sorrow. Their children aren't as important as yours…they don't deserve compassion or understanding. Because they were not born here, they have no right to live in your country, do they? They have no human rights because they aren't quite human..right?
and I'll bet you call yourself a Christian, don't you?
Make sure you respond to this, asshole. Give me a reason to insult you again.
First of all, Buck is flat-out wrong about the legal and constitutional rights which illegal immigrants have. This is frightening in an elected Federal official. The Supreme Court has decided in numerous cases that noncitizens are still entitled to protections under the 14th, 5th, and 1st amendments of the Bill of Rights. (due process and equal protection under the law).
So, yes, as an attorney and an elected official, Buck does owe undocumented people those Constitutional protections.
Second, Buck can't tell illegal from. legal immigrants, no more than you or I can without a warrant.
Not that that has stopped him in the past. Hell, he can't even tell brown people apart – they all look alike, and are equally distasteful, to him.
S. Buck has demonstrated many times in the past his ill will towards immigrants, whether they are a battered woman in need of a U Visa to escape their abuser, or Spanish speaking clients of a tax preparer. Ken Buck's raid on Amalia's tax service was shown to be unconstitutional.
Buck and Scott Gessler must have gotten the same memo – make wildly inflated accusations about numbers of suspected illegal wrongdoers, charge in at full power, then suppress the results when your supposed thousands of evil aliens are shown to be no more than a half a dozen, after spending thousands of taxpayer dollars for your grandstanding efforts.
His attitude that he is not going to go out of his way, or that he "owes nothing" to help illegal immigrants has made the community of Greeley less safe, as it discouraged undocumented people from reporting crimes.
Buck introduced the program, touted it, then implemented it half-heartedly, resulting in no decrease in crime reporting by immigrants. They know when they are disliked and held in contempt by authority, and Ken Buck is not shy about expressing his dislike and contempt.
In fact, I can't think of anyone, with the possible exception of Tom Tancredo, whom I would trust less to craft a working compromise on immigration than Ken Buck. He's just not trustworthy.
Correction: thiis should be "No increase" in crime reporting by immigrants in Weld County. In practice, Buck's policy has been to grant fewer U Visas to immigrants needed as witnesses to crimes, thus disincentivizing them from coming forward. Since the ICE raids 7 years ago, undocumented people live in fear and have no reason to come out of the shadows.
MSNBC published an in-depth article exploring how both Gardner and Buck have tried to please everyone on immigration reform – their conservative anti-immigrant base, Latino voters, and moderates, by double-talking and advocating for "reform", while still promoting anti-immigrant policies and spouting factually and morally wrong anti-immigrant rhetoric, as Buck just did with his "I don't owe people who are here illegally anything" statement.
People evaluate their leaders by their actions, more than their words. Buck's actions and words both show that he has strong anti-immigrant, and anti-Latino, biases.
Saving yours for a "special" day???
. . . or a "special" someone??
So Buck continues to his tea party xenophobic bigotry while his predecessor did the opposite to run statewide. Thomas Edsall at N.Y. Times has a column today entitled, "Loosing the Tea Party Baggage" which explains the metamorphosis of Cory Gardner…….
I got tagged in a Facebook comment on Buck's page yesterday where he posted a picture of he and his family at the swearing in ceremonies. The comments are worth a read – the Baggers aren't happy about his support for Boehner as Speaker, already accusing him of 'taking less than a day to be part of the problem'…
Renfroe ’16
'Renfroe' is specifically mentioned in a number of the comments…
continues TO CLING to his tea party……