April 22, 2016 12:57 PM UTC

Get More Smarter on Earth Day! (April 22)

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• by: Colorado Pols

As of today, Denver’s light rail system actually goes someplace we do! 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…

► A must-read story from the Denver Post’s Mark Matthews and John Frank today sums up the dismal state of the 2016 GOP U.S. Senate primary, where nothing that should give Republicans any real hope of unseating Sen. Michael Bennet in November is taking place:

“It’s almost anyone’s game,” said Jennifer Duffy, an elections analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report. “The next 60 to 90 days is about who puts together a campaign and starts running a professional organization.”

That the race remains this wide-open has fueled debate in Republican circles about one specific candidate, Jon Keyser, and whether the decorated combat veteran and former state lawmaker is falling short of expectations.

It’s also raised questions about how well the eventual winner will do against Bennet, who has $7.6 million in his campaign warchest. This week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee reserved $28 million in airtime in five battleground states. Colorado was not among them.

► In the GOP presidential race, Colorado GOP chairman Steve House is reportedly demanding police protection at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland as the backlash against Ted Cruz’s backroom sweep of the state’s delegates continues. Meanwhile, an apparent major falsehood from House over the party’s swiftly-deleted “#NeverTrump” Tweet on the day of the convention, first reported on this blog yesterday, has gone viral among Trump supporters nationwide.

Sorry about that.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Sen. Michael Bennet joins most of the Democratic establishment in Colorado in opposition to Amendment 69, the so-called “ColoradoCare” single-payer health care initiative championed by Sen. Irene Aguilar, MD. Colorado Independent:

“Michael does not think that single payer is the right approach to solving our health care problems, and in particular has concerns about putting a complete overhaul of our health care system, including a massive tax increase, into the State Constitution where it can’t be changed,” Bennet’s campaign spokesman Andrew Zucker told The Colorado Independent.

► After a press conference announcing the bipartisan effort yesterday, supporters of legislation restoring the state’s presidential primary election hope to drop a bill in the Colorado General Assembly today. Last minute negotiations with (surprise) Senate Republicans are reportedly holding up the works.

► Red light cameras: everybody hates ’em, but have fun trying to ban them.

► A bill to create something not really honestly called “charter school equity” is making its way though. Opponents say charter school funding is not so simple and local control is better.

► Wouldn’t it be nice if drillers had to be honest with communities about their long-term designs on the minerals under their feet? A bill that Republicans are most likely going to kill in the Senate would make them do it.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► The Grand Junction Sentinel has a story on former Sen. Gail Schwartz, now running against Rep. Scott Tipton in CD-3. Meanwhile the Pueblo Chieftain profiles Alex Bernstein, the Republican challenging Tipton in the primary.

► Koch Brothers-funded astroturf group Americans For Prosperity is keen on Colorado, which it considers within its “persuasion universe.” We already know they’ve “persuaded” the Colorado Senate.

ICYMI

► Gov. John Hickenlooper’s moving tribute to musical legend Prince, who died yesterday, via the Denver Post:

“And people would say, ‘You can’t do this. You can’t change your name. And you can’t have a hit album and then completely change your style of music,’ and he’d say, ‘Great, great,” and he’d go off and do it.

“There are just not that many people in the world who are that talented and so focused on their own drumbeat that they are able to go against the tide of popular opinion and what the media says about them, and he just did it his way.”

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