February 02, 2016 11:45 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Groundhog Day (Feb. 2)

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• by: Colorado Pols

See? We told you that you were going to get a snow day. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► The big news is in from Gobbler’s Knob: The Groundhog emerged and did not “see” his shadow, which is supposed to mean that we are headed for an early spring. Punxsutawney Phil did not elaborate on when the snow will stop falling in Colorado.

► If you need to get caught up on everything that happened in Iowa last night, Colorado Pols has you covered. Here’s the recap.

Ted Cruz managed to hold on for a victory in Iowa, with Donald Trump and Marco Rubio rounding out the top three. Combined, Cruz and Trump captured more than 52% of the vote in Iowa; even before the results were announced, the surge of Cruz and Trump had Congressional Republicans freaking the freak out. From The Hill:

The real reason for all the anxiety among Republicans about Trump and Cruz is the fear that either man could drag down the party in Congress.

With Trump or Cruz at the top of the GOP slate in November, the Democrats like their chances of taking back the House and Senate…

…By the GOP convention, the question will not be about endorsements. It will be about how many Congressional Republicans openly reject Trump or Cruz, if either man is the nominee.

The field of candidates did finally start to shrink after last night. Mike Huckabee has left the race on the Republican side, and Democrat Martin O’Malley is also throwing in the towel. Ben Carson is going home to do laundry.

► You may be enjoying your snow day, but the Colorado legislature is still working — they just scheduled a late 10:30 am start this morning.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

► Elsewhere, Jon Keyser made an appearance on Craig Silverman’s radio show over the weekend. Keyser largely just demonstrated his punting skills.

► El Paso County Commissioner Peggy Littleton, who is among the 13 Republicans seeking a U.S. Senate nomination, says that she would like to disband the entire Department of Education because…well, because that’s what GOP Senate candidates in Colorado always say.

► Colorado Senators Michael Bennet (D-Denver) and Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) are in agreement on returning some oil and gas revenues to Colorado. From the Colorado Independent:

An oil shale mining facility near Rifle called Anvil Points was decommissioned in the 1980s and transferred to the Bureau of Land Management in 1997. The law that initiated the transfer, known as the Transfer Act, required that revenues from nearby oil and gas leases be withheld to pay for the site’s eventual cleanup. 

In 2008, the BLM certified that it had more than enough to complete the cleanup — tens of millions of dollars more, in fact — but an oversight in the Transfer Act meant the excess funds could not be returned to Colorado. According to the Mineral Leasing Act, $48.8 million should have been redistributed to affected counties. Instead, it’s been sitting in an unused account in the Department of the Interior since cleanup finished in 2013.

► If you are hoping for big fireworks at Colorado’s March 1 caucuses…you might want to lower your expectations a tad.

► Like it or not, when it comes to fixing Colorado’s transportation problems, the only word that matters is “revenue.”

► Oh, Kevin Priola, this one is going to follow you around for a long time.

► State Sen. Tim Neville wants to get rid of the funding for CDOT’s popular “Bustang” regional transit service. But Neville has a plan for finding the resources elsewhere…nah, just kidding, he doesn’t.