(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
(D) Jason Crow*
90%
(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
Colorado Republican Party Chair Ryan Call is facing a tough re-election fight against former Adams County GOP Chair (and candidate for governor) Steve House. We've gone through some of the reasons that Call might be ousted despite a fairly successful 2014 election season, with perhaps the main point of contention over Call's annual salary as […]
The campaign by grassroots Republicans to oust Colorado Republican Party chairman Ryan Call continues, with supporters of Call's opponent in the upcoming leadership (s)election Steve House circulating a list of "grievances" against Call that some of our readers will remember fondly: What is the Record of the Chairman in the Last Four Years? – 42% increase in […]
State Republican Chair Ryan Call looks to have serious opposition in his bid for re-election from former Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve House. We told you this fight was coming back in December; despite a pretty successful 2014, Republican Party activists are not sold on Call and are not happy that he continues to take home […]
UPDATE: In a statement earlier today, Democratic CD-5 candidate Irv Halter calls on Rep. Doug Lamborn to condemn Gordon Klingenschmitt's remarks: “Gordon Klingenschmitt offended Coloradans from both parties and all walks of life with his offensive and out of touch comment comparing a U.S. Congressman to ISIS,” said Halter. “His statement shows that he has no […]
As the Durango Herald reported over the weekend, Republicans in Colorado are still looking for that elusive candidate to challenge either Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper or Sen. Mark Udall. We've discussed many times in this space that Colorado Republicans are basically paralyzed under the vice grip of the Tea Party and the far-right; the only […]
Pols Update: According to a report from Lynn Bartels at the Denver newspaper, Watson claims to have paid back a portion of his outstanding taxes and disputes the number and amount of liens levied against him.
That certainly changes the story, but unfortunately for Watson, it won’t change the potency of the attack.
—-
Bad news for Republicans in the race against Democrat Dan Kagan and what many consider their best House pickup opportunity statewide.
From Fox31’s Eli Stokols:
DENVER – The Republican candidate looking to unseat a Democratic state representative, in a race that could determine which party controls the statehouse, owes nearly $280,000 in unpaid property taxes, FOX31 Denver has confirmed.
Brian Watson, a businessman who is running to unseat Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Denver, has Republicans excited about their chances to win a Denver district that was re-drawn in their favor during reapportionment earlier this year; and state GOP chairman Ryan Call considers Watson a possible rising star in the party.
But FOX31 Denver has found that there are nine tax liens pending against Watson for unpaid taxes on various properties that add up to $279,657.
An outside political action committee supporting Kagan, the Colorado Accountable Government Alliance, is now highlighting Watson’s unpaid property taxes in a new mailer.
Kagan himself told FOX31 Denver he has had nothing to do with the mailer and hasn’t been raising the issue when he talks with constituents.
Three of the liens, for a total of $147,506, are on Aspen Moving and Storage, which Watson explains in a 2010 letter to investors, “suffered approximately a 70 percent decline in income between 2008 and 2009.”
The timing of this particular revelation is going to hurt. Ballots go out in a few weeks, and you better believe the “Colorado Accountable Government Alliance” and other independent expenditure groups are going to hit Watson hard on this issue — even if Kagan doesn’t touch it himself.
This is one of those issues that’s precisely as bad as it looks. Watson has been so successful in his bid thus far because he’s been able to frame his campaign around his business record. This tax issue, then, calls his number one qualification into question. On his website, Watson discusses his desire, if elected, to create “predictable and reasonable regulation and fair taxation.” Seems like the Republican isn’t really the best guy to be discussing what’s fair, is he?
Even worse, as Stokols points out in his article, Watson defends the debts as resulting from the economic downturn and “mismanagement” in the company that his firm, Northstar Commercial Investments, acquired. Fair enough. That doesn’t change the fact that Northstar contributed $500 to the Colorado Republican Party. The investment firm, it would seem, has money enough to facilitate Watson’s candidacy but not enough for taxes. Hell, Watson himself wrote a check to a small donor committee “supporting Republican candidates and Republican members of the Colorado House of Representatives for election and reelection.”
If you’re a candidate for public office, and you owe back taxes, it’s probably not a good idea to be writing checks to anyone or anything other than the IRS.
At the top of the ticket, Mitt Romney has already driven the issue of tax responsibilities into the national spotlight. With this development, Watson’s going to have to defend his own background down ballot as well.
Dan Kagan couldn’t have gotten better optics if he had asked for them.
From an absurd fluff piece in the Durango Herald Saturday, we must conclude…not this planet: Social issues won’t be winning elections this year, and Colorado’s Republican Party chairman knows that… The Hispanic vote will play a major role in the election this year, especially in swing states such as Colorado and Nevada where that demographic […]
Jefferson County promises to be a battleground county in a battleground state this election cycle, with the Obama campaign jockeying to perform as well as it did in 2008 — when then-Senator Obama swept the county by nearly 10 percentage points. For its part, the Romney campaign is making every effort to reduce and overcome those numbers in 2012. If Obama loses Jefferson County, after all, there’s a good chance he loses the White House along with it: a loss in Jeffco is attendant of a loss in nearly every competitive district across the country.
Well aware of that fact, then, the Romney campaign selected Jeffco as the home of its first campaign office in Colorado.
From the Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning:
With just over four months to go until the November election, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign finally has an office of its own in Colorado.
“It is an exciting day because today we have the opportunity to kick off the Romney campaign in Colorado officially, with the opening of the statewide headquarters for Romney Victory,” said state Republican Party Chairman Ryan Call, welcoming roughly 200 supporters on Saturday to the campaign’s spacious digs in the Denver West office park in Lakewood.
Surrounded by candidates for offices ranging from county commissioner to Congress, Call said that the office will serve as headquarters for Republican campaigns from president all the way down to the local level.
As Luning points out, the Romney campaign is still playing catch-up to Obama’s team in field efforts: the president’s campaign has already opened 13 offices in Colorado, with more on the way.
Still, that the Romney campaign selected Jefferson County as the location for its first campaign office in Colorado highlights the amount of time and money Romney (and outside groups) will be spending in the region. While that will certainly impact the presidential race at the top of the ballot, it will also bolster Republican candidates down-ticket, especially in some of the area’s most competitive seats.
If Romney takes Jeffco, then, there’s a good chance that Republicans will be welcoming Lang Sias and Ken Summers into the State Senate. But if Obama comes anywhere close to his 2008 numbers, State Senator Evie Hudak will be joined in that chamber by Andy Kerr.
Danny Stroud, former Chairman of the Republican Party of Denver who in 2010 gave State Representative Jeanne Labuda a run for her money, has a little bit of unexpected company in his bid to take on Congresswoman Diana DeGette.
The Colorado Statesman’s Ben Conarck has the story:
Former Denver Republican Party Chairman Danny Stroud is a well-known personality in the 1st Congressional District who is clamoring for a chance to take on incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, but a truck driving political neophyte may deny him the opportunity.
Stroud’s primary opponent, 61 year-old Denver resident Richard Murphy, is virtually unknown in Colorado politics, so much so that Colorado Republican Party Chairman Ryan Call had to call Stroud looking for the trucker’s phone number.
Although Stroud – a Denver businessman who just turned 59 – still won the top line at the CD 1 nominating assembly on April 13 with 81 votes, or 56 percent, Murphy’s candidacy was buoyed by a surprise showing of Ron Paul supporters who secured his place on the ballot with 46 votes, amounting to 44 percent.
It’s as surprising to Stroud as it is to many observers, of course, that there’s a Republican primary in CD-1 at all. Winning the Republican nomination to challenge DeGette essentially wins you the opportunity to become another electoral loser whose name is tossed into the dustbin of history. As Conarck points out, DeGette’s district overwhelmingly favors the incumbent: there are two registered Democrats for every Republican. In fact, the only way a Republican could win the Denver seat is if he or she turned out every Republican voter and won the vote of every single unaffiliated voter.
The inevitability of defeat, then, is what makes Stroud’s take on Murphy’s candidacy so confusing:
Referring to the fact that Murphy is often trucking back and forth across the country, Stroud dismissed the possibility that he could potentially beat DeGette, saying that running for Congress wasn’t a “part time job.”
“Here’s the deal. If somebody’s going to beat DeGette, they have to be motivated to beat DeGette. They can’t just be motivated to beat me,” Stroud said. “The way things are going in politics, it’s conceivable he could win the primary, but he can’t beat DeGette. I’m the only one that can beat DeGette.”
It’s easy to understand why Stroud would object to and question the candidacy of the interloper Murphy. But by framing his primary opponent’s campaign as leading to certain defeat at the hands of DeGette makes Stroud look delusional. Stroud, of course, should never openly admit that he can’t win, but by criticizing Murphy’s poor odds against the incumbent, Stroud turns the camera back on his own chance at winning the seat. He may think that he’s “the only one that can beat DeGette,” but he can’t, and by parroting his electability to win the Republican primary, Stroud makes his eventual loss in the general election that much more excruciating.
FOX 31’s Eli Stokols reports: Colorado GOP Chairman Ryan Call, who is now focused on improving the party’s standing with Latino voters ahead of the November election, told FOX31 Denver Friday that he’s disappointed that House Republicans this week killed a measure that would have made college more affordable for undocumented students who qualify… “I […]
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