President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%↑
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd
(D) Adam Frisch
52%↑
48%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
60%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 14, 2009 11:09 PM UTC
25 Comments
Morgan Carroll did not take over the Senate seat vacated by Michael “Chalk My Pool Stick” Garcia. Morgan Carroll ran for the Senate seat vacated by term-limit Bob Hagedorn. (Garcia was the heir apparent to Hagedorn’s seat.)
The rest of your story is otherwise accurate. Karen was appointed to Garcia’s House seat after the Lancer Lounge incident.
Karen was also appointed to her seat on the state Bd. of Ed, although I believe she was subsequented elected to a term in her own right.
Karen Midleton is an extremely bright, talented and capable elected official. She is also extremely ambitious.
But this is blind, bloodthirsty ambition, with no regard to any sense of obligation.
Seriously?
Garcia resigned from his House seat, not from a Senate seat. Middleton was appointed to fill the vacancy created by Garcia’s resignation. With Garcia out of the picture, Carroll ran for the Senate seat Garcia had previously planned to seek.
As a master of convoluted sentences myself, I sympathize, but the way you describe it is wrong. Middleton didn’t replace Carroll, who didn’t replace Garcia.
And in the particulars, if not the substance of your complaint, it’s also incorrect to say Middleton has been in her appointed seat less than a year! Horrors! Except she was appointed Feb. 13, 2008, which would be more than a year ago.
We said that she started looking for something else before she had even been there for a year.
Raw ambition. Naked ambition. Blind ambition. That’s what you’ve got here, no doubt about it.
you said:
(Emphasis added)
to do a good job.
She’s not my rep, though if she was and this was the biggest strike against her, I’d probably knock on doors for her.
Seriously- she can’t make a living as a rep. She has to be thinking ahead and looking for opportunity if she has ambition or desire. And I don’t begrudge her – or any elected official – that.
It would be different if she was running for a new elected office every few months. Or if she made a habit of resigning to do so.
But to seek an improved work situation is not a negative.
As we said – it’s fine to do this occasionally. But not when you just resigned one seat to be appointed to another. If this was about money, she shouldn’t have taken the appointment to the House to begin with.
you’d be an idiot to not answer.
Keep in mind, that what she is seeking is still in the area of public service so she would still be serving her constituents, arguably from a stronger position, were she to get the position.
With term limits it is inevitable that a certain amount of this job shifting is going to happen. I don’t blame her, or anyone else in the legislature, for doing this.
I look askance at such revolving-door legislators!
As it happens, I attended Rep. Middleton’s Town Hall Meeting last night. I went because the topic was health care, and as I have made clear on this site, I’ve been working on HB1273, the Colorado Guaranteed Health Care Act.
Rep. Middleton is one of 6 Democratic no votes that could save HB1273. We have 32 votes for the bill in the House, but we need 33 to get to the Senate. (The other “no” votes are Spkr. Caroll and Representatives Curry, McKinley, Riesberg, and Scanlan.)
My intention at the Town Hall was to just observe, but when Rep. Middleton spoke and, in my view, mispresented HB1273, I stood up and gave a small speech.
I could write a few hundred words about how I feel about Rep. Middleton. Suffice to say that if you plan to primary her, send me email so that I can send you a check. An ideal solution would be that she receive a federal post, and I would be happy to write a letter of recommendation so that a progressive Democrat could represent HD42.
Best regards,
Tom Russell
rabble rabble rabble
Why? HD42 isn’t a progressive district such as you might find in Boulder or central Denver. It is a Democratic district but has a distinctly “blue dog”, moderate feel to it. Its voters are predominantly retired blue-collar and retired military people, with a handful of young professionals in the mix. Opposition to HB1273 would not be inconsistent with where Middleton’s constituents would probably want her to be.
To have a Citizen Legislature in this state. And that implies that the people in the capitol making our laws are not supposed to consider this their full time gig. The fact that we pay them chump change and give them short term limits only reinforces this. So I don’t think we should be upset when they start looking for a real job.
It’s clear that education is a passion of Middleton’s and it’s hard to imagine a better place to have major pull on that issue than within the Department of Education.
She’s ambitious. But if showing ambition was her biggest mistake of the session I’m sure she’d be just fine with that.
Her biggest mistake of the session by the way? Disagreeing with Tom Russell.