March 23, 2016 11:14 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Wednesday (March 23)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Our condolences to those Colorado students who would have had a snow day today…if they weren’t in the middle of Spring Break already. 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 Colorado legislature has called a “snow day” for Wednesday. Arguments — about everything — are expected to resume tomorrow.

► Arizona, Utah, and Idaho (Democrats only) cast votes in the race for President on Tuesday. Chris Cillizza of “The Fix” names his “Winners and Losers” from the evening; prepare for a lot of repetition from here on out.

Donald Trump: Arizona was the big prize of the night, the third biggest winner-take-all state on the map with 58 delegates. There was some chatter in the days leading up to the vote that Ted Cruz might be sneaking up on Trump — the Texas Senator spent time in the state — and could be poised to pull an upset. Nope.  Trump won by 22 points, taking 47 percent of the vote. Would Trump have had a better night if Cruz had come in under 50 percent in Utah? Sure. But only by a little since Trump was never going to take more than a small handful of delegates out of the heavily Mormon State. Nothing that happened on Tuesday night changed the dynamic of the GOP race. Trump, at 739 delegates, is clearly in first place and still the only candidate with a genuine chance of winning the 1,237 delegates to formally claim the party’s nomination. That’s a good night for him.

Hillary Clinton: The only way that Clinton isn’t the Democratic nominee is if she starts losing big states by large margins. That didn’t happen on Tuesday night. Clinton won the big delegate prize of Arizona while losing Idaho and Utah by big numbers to Bernie Sanders. The Sanders folks will focus on his two wins but the truth of Sanders’s delegate deficit is he needs to win states like Arizona with 80 percent of the vote, not states like Utah or Idaho.  There just aren’t enough delegates in those to narrow Clinton’s lead. And, she knows it. Notice that her speeches in the last week or so — since the March 15 votes — have turned their focus to Trump almost entirely. Clinton is in the midst of a general election pivot.  Tuesday night proved, again, why this nomination fight is close to over.

► For those of you who have felt a little panicked because Colorado doesn’t have an official Lieutenant Governor, well, you can finally relax. Bill Vidal Donna Lynne is here! From Joey Bunch of the Denver Post:

Donna Lynne, a Kaiser Permanente executive and a longtime ally of Gov. John Hickenlooper, is the nominee to become Colorado’s next lieutenant governor, an administration official confirmed Wednesday morning… …Lynne, 62, is executive vice president of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, as well as the group president responsible for Kaiser’s Colorado, Pacific Northwest and Hawaii regions. If confirmed, she would replace Joe Garcia, who  announced his resignation in November to become president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a Boulder-based organization that’s to assist colleges and universities in 16 Western states.

Lynne is not expected to run for Governor when Hickenlooper is term-limited in 2018, which was a significant point in her favor. Hickenlooper was careful not to select a Light Gov. who would gain a head start on the Democratic nomination for Governor.   Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Colorado Democrats are pushing to draw new attention to legislative Republican ties to the right-wing organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP). From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Democrats in the Colorado Senate accused Republicans of taking marching orders from big corporations and a conservative nonprofit so far this session, reflected in both the bills the GOP members have introduced and bills that have been killed. “In February we saw the Senate Republicans standing with a Koch brothers-backed group called Americans for Prosperity here in our own capitol,” Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, D-Westminster, said at a new conference Tuesday. “For those of you who don’t know Americans for Prosperity is not Colorado-based … They started handing out these booklets which I dubbed the hand guide for the wealthy and well-connected, and by God they have been using that handbook to advance a very narrow agenda that benefits a few at the expense of the many.”

In recognition of their loyal support to AFP, the Koch Brothers made sure that every Republican lawmaker received an extra bag of coal.
► Hillary Clinton loves her some working microphones…

When her mic came back on, @HillaryClinton was pretty excited about it. pic.twitter.com/ybaw3mwQeY

— Sarah Parnass (@WordsOfSarah) March 23, 2016

► There are about a dozen Republican candidates seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in 2016. Yesterday, 9News announced that only eight of these candidates have “earned” the right to participate in its April 5th televised debate.

 
► Colorado State Employees had their “Lobby Day at the Capitol” this week.  

 
► Sorry, Sheriffs, but they’re still laws even if you don’t like them. As we wrote yesterday:

Apropos news from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, hearing the case of a bunch of elected Colorado sheriffs vs. Gov. John Hickenlooper, seeking to overturn the state’s landmark 2013 gun safety laws–in particular the laws requiring background checks on most private gun transfers, and limiting magazine capacity to 15 rounds…

…The short version is that Independence Institute lawyer Dave Kopel and the county sheriff plaintiffs in this suit already lost their case against the 2013 gun safety laws on the merits in federal district court. Today’s appeals court ruling rejects the standing of the sheriffs and other plaintiffs to bring their suit to begin with, and vacates the sheriffs’ prior loss with an order to dismiss the case entirely.

► Republican State Sen. Laura Waters Woods wants to cut back on the number of people eligible for Medicaid, because, freedom or something. 

► Colorado Republicans didn’t get to choose a favorite Presidential candidate during the GOP caucuses — a “preference poll” was cancelled by the State Party last year — but delegates are about to be deluged with requests for support in advance of the National Republican Convention in Cleveland.

► A Colorado direct mail and printing business is benefitting — big time — from the campaign of Republican Donald Trump. WizBang Solutions has already picked up some $625k from the Trump campaign in 2016 alone. WizBang Solutions has a dubious past in Colorado, to say the least.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► If this guy was able to make it onto Donald Trump’s short list of foreign policy advisors, we can only imagine the applications Trump received that did not make the cut.

► The Supreme Court is hearing yet another challenge of President Obama’s Affordable Care Program. From Politico:

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday considered whether Obamacare’s birth control coverage requirement violated the rights of religious institutions, with Justice Anthony Kennedy — the likely swing vote — voicing concern about how big a loophole the court might create if it rules for the challengers.

He suggested that large institutions like Catholic universities shouldn’t be able to get out of the employee coverage requirement in the same way that other challengers, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor order of Catholic nuns, perhaps should.

ICYMI

► Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is now the “establishment candidate” of the Republican Party. This wouldn’t be quite so weird if not for that fact that most establishment Republicans hate his guts. 
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