April 21, 2016 10:46 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Thursday (April 21)

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• by: Colorado Pols

We really can’t recommend eating something off the ground in the best of situations, but you should be particularly careful the day after 4/20. 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…

► Republican Senate candidate Jack Graham is officially on the June 28th Primary ballot, joining GOP State Convention winner Darryl Glenn. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office announced Wednesday that Graham had enough valid petition signatures to make the ballot, but if the other petitioning candidates (Robert Blaha, Jon Keyser, and Ryan Frazier) don’t have a better “validity rate” than Graham’s campaign, we could be looking at a pretty thin group of Senate candidates after all. The Denver Post ponders the same question we brought up a few weeks ago.

► Would Democrat Hillary Clinton consider a woman as a running mate in a General Election? The popular parlor game, “Who Gets to be Vice-President” is picking up steam. As the Boston Globe reports:

Hillary Clinton’s short list of vice presidential options will include a woman, a top campaign official said in an interview — creating the possibility of an all-female ticket emerging from the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Clinton wants “the best person to make the case to the American people,” her campaign chairman, John Podesta, told the Globe. “We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list,” he said, adding that staffers are still focused on clinching the primary.

The development immediately injects liberal darling Senator Elizabeth Warren’s name into the growing speculation about who Clinton will choose as her running mate now that she is almost certainly on track to become the nominee.

While it may be fun to speculate on a potential Clinton ticket with Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her running mate, our friends at “The Fix” think it would be a long shot.

► House Speaker Paul Ryan says he doesn’t have the votes to pass a budget. Great work, Congressional Republicans. Really, really, great work.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Mandatory Transvaginal Ultrasounds. Weird phrase, worse legislation. NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado is holding a rally to bring attention to HB-1218 at 1:00 today.

► The re-election campaign of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver) is on the air with a new TV ad touting the importance of college affordability.

► Predatory lenders want the Colorado legislature to allow them to charge higher interest rates…even though the industry admits that it has enjoyed 30% growth in Colorado over the past four years. What’s the word for this? Oh, right…GREED.

► Former Secretary of State Scott Gessler is working for a group trying to derail efforts to raise the minimum wage in Colorado by more than 10 cents.

► Holy Shit! The U.S. Senate passed a bill! The U.S. Senate passed a bill! From the Durango Herald:

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed its first significant energy bill since 2007 in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion.

Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and Cory Gardner, a Republican, praised the Energy Policy Modernization Act, which passed 85-12.

“This bill takes important steps toward the 21st century energy policy that our country so badly needs,” Bennet said in a statement.

Gardner, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the final bill – which includes provisions that he and Bennet backed – would positively impact Colorado and other Western states.

“This legislation will increase energy efficiency, modernize our electrical grid and create more jobs in the energy sector,” Gardner said.

Seriously — look at that! The U.S. Senate passed a bill!

► There is a big Kumbaya press conference scheduled for this afternoon to introduce legislation intended to move Colorado back to a Presidential Primary voting state and do away with the arcane and impossible-to-understand caucus process. From Joey Bunch of the Denver Post:

Republicans and Democrats on Thursday will announce a plan for a Colorado presidential primary that would allow the state’s unaffiliated voters to participate.

More than one-third of Colorado voters — the largest bloc — are not affiliated with a party. The legislative proposal would allow them to choose which party’s primary they would wish to participate in.

Thirty days after the state primary, the registration would expire, said Rep. Dominick Moreno, a Democrat from Commerce City and one of the authors of the bill.

The measure would apply only to the presidential race. All other party caucus operations, including selecting delegates in the nomination process, would remain the same, he said.

► State lawmakers are considering a bill intended to assist pregnant women in the workplace.

► Legislation intended to study the costs of healthcare in Colorado is on its way to the Governor’s desk.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► If you are one of those hearty souls who still get the print edition of the Denver Post, you might want to check the fine print on your subscription.

► Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman is a Tea Party Republican who likes to rant about government overspending…when he isn’t using his campaign cash to take family vacations.

ICYMI

► There’s a Colorado Pols meetup scheduled for Saturday, April 23rd in Denver. You should go.

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