(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(D) Julie Gonzales
(R) Janak Joshi
80%
40%
20%
(D) Jena Griswold
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Hetal Doshi
50%
40%↓
30%
(D) Jeff Bridges
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
50%↑
40%↓
30%
(D) Diana DeGette*
(D) Wanda James
(D) Milat Kiros
80%
20%
10%↓
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Alex Kelloff
(R) H. Scheppelman
60%↓
40%↓
30%↑
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) E. Laubacher
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
30%↑
20%
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Jessica Killin
55%↓
45%↑
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Shannon Bird
(D) Manny Rutinel
45%↓
30%
30%
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
An interesting few Tweets this morning from reporter John Schroyer of the Colorado Springs paper–covering a speech made by Colorado House Majority Leader Amy Stephens today at the Colorado Republican Party Central Committee meeting: “A 33rd vote stopped gay marriage,” Rep. Stephens said, mistakenly referring to the civil unions legislation which passed the Colorado Senate […]
Politico’s Juana Summers recaps a tough week on the GOP primary trail: There was no election-ending gaffe or singularly disqualifying remark. But [Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s] second consecutive weak outing set off alarm bells on the right, where too many cringeworthy moments raised questions about Perry’s durability, his seriousness and ability to compete on a […]
FOX 31’s Eli Stokols reports, tough to see a downside: Colorado Republicans will vote Saturday morning on a resolution to move its presidential caucus up to February, just one day after the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. GOP Chairman Ryan Call told FOX31 Denver that no decision has been made yet but that the idea seems to […]
Since 2004, interested parties have relied on Colorado Pols for news and insight on Colorado politics and policy matters. Proposition 103 is an education funding initiative on the statewide ballot this November. If passed, Proposition 103 would restore the income and sales tax rates that were in effect in 1999 in Colorado: increasing from 4.63% […]
We just received an event invitation from Arvada City Council District 2 candidate Cody McNutt. He’s hosting a meet and greet featuring a “special guest speaker” at 6:00 PM on the 27th at the Arvada Library. You should go if you want to meet McNutt, or if you’re a Neil Patrick Harris fan and you’d like to see what Doogie Howser would look like if he was running for city council in Arvada.
You should also go if you want to finger exactly what a campaign
logo shouldn’t look like. Take a gander at this logo. Can you imagine what that would look on a yard sign? Who are we supposed to vote for? Cody M-Nutt? Ody McNutt? McOdy Nutt? What’s going on with that dash in there, anyway?
Oh, now we get it. The C in Cody is the same as the C in McNutt! How clever.
Seriously, folks, we never understand why candidates love to get so creative with their yard signs. All they really need is their first name, their last name, and the office for which they’re running. They don’t need crazy color schemes or creative typography to get voters to remember their name. Nobody’s going to vote for Cody because they saw his yard sign and said “oh yeah, that’s the dude who did that neat trick because his first name starts with C and C is in his last name, too.” McNutt’s already got a weird name. Does he have to showcase it so much?
Candidates, especially running for their first office and especially at the local level, just love to go crazy with these bizarre campaign logos. They almost always do. The thing is, yard signs don’t matter nearly as much as these candidates think they do. But even if people did decide to vote for someone based off of their yard sign, would you really want to put anything more complex than your name on it? Why have a yard sign at all if it doesn’t effectively communicate your name?
If you’re a candidate and you absolutely insist on having some fancy campaign logo, don’t have your teenage nephew who’s kind of good at that photoshop-y thing make it for you. Go out and hire a graphic designer, instead.
The Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic: Citing state election law, Gessler contends that the Denver plan to send mail ballots to all registered voters in the county is illegal because the law forbids sending ballots to “inactive voters” – that is, registered voters who failed to cast ballots in the last election. At a heated press […]
ABC News: Mitt Romney may be a multimillionaire, but on Wednesday he set his net worth aside and declared himself a member of “the great middle class.” “We ought to provide help to the people who have been hurt most by the Obama economy. And that’s the middle class,” Romney said at a town hall […]
Since 2004, interested parties have relied on Colorado Pols for news and insight on Colorado politics and policy matters. Proposition 103 is an education funding initiative on the statewide ballot this November. If passed, Proposition 103 would restore the income and sales tax rates that were in effect in 1999 in Colorado: increasing from 4.63% […]
AP via Washington Post: The former chief of staff to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has taken a job with one of the law firms representing BP in legal proceedings stemming from the massive Gulf oil spill last year. Tom Strickland joined the Interior Department as Salazar’s chief of staff and an assistant secretary in 2009. […]
We’ve previously discussed the fact that the Jefferson County Republican Party has become the driving force behind the campaigns of Jeffco School Board candidates Preston Branaugh and Jim Powers. Indeed, county Republicans have made it no secret that they will do whatever it takes to gain Laura Boggs a majority on the school board.
Case in point, we received a fundraising letter today from county GOP Chair Don “There’s No I in That” Ytterberg in which he tells GOP donors that the party is going to pursue those two school board seats pretty aggressively. You can read the entire letter here, but we’ve excerpted it below.
Enclosed please find a copy of Waiting for Superman, an extraordinary documentary about the state of public education in America. If you are a conservative, I’m sure you will connect with this thought-provoking film because it identifies pressing issues facing Jefferson County’s own public schools that can only be addressed by electing new, committed, professional leadership to the county School Board.
Even if you do not have children in school, I’m sure that you understand that businesses cannot be successful without educated workers. The crisis today is that 60% of Jefferson County tenth graders cannot pass Colorado’s standardized math test.
These results ARE NOT because of insufficient funding! The Jefferson County school budget was over $1.1 billion in 2011. Despite declining enrollment, that’s nearly double the 1990s levels. Where did this money go? Mostly, it went to increased administrative costs. We now have approximately 8,000 administrative employees for our 80,000 students. That’s lower than the student-teacher ratio!
This year, two successful businessmen, Preston Branaugh and Jim Powers, are running for the School Board. With six kids between them, they are committed to turning around our Jeffco schools. You also need to know that the Jefferson County Republican Party is promoting their candidacy.
Although School Board races are called “non-partisan,” Democrats and other liberal organizations select and promote candidates that are sympathetic to the unionized educational establishment. I prefer to call these races “unbranded,” instead of non-partisan, because the only “non-partisan” aspect is that the candidates do not identify their party on the ballot.
Please know that this campaign is not about opposing the many fine teachers in our community; it’s about providing Board Members with professional management skills who can guide the operations of the 35th largest school district in the United States.
We really love that Ytterberg included a copy of Waiting for Superman in this fundraising pitch. We just hope he had to individually purchase copies of it; piracy concerns aside, if Ytterberg bought dozens of DVDs, he indirectly funneled a not insubstantial amount of cash into the pocket of director Davis Guggenheim. Guggenheim, you’ll recall, also directed An Inconvienent Truth and Barack Obama’s biographical film shown during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Sure, Superman explores education issues that are at odds with some education activists and labor unions, but it was still directed by a prominent Democrat. Would it be a stretch to say that Ytterburg’s purchase of Waiting for Superman with party funds indirectly supports Al Gore and An Inconvienent Truth? Probably. It’s still funny no matter how you look at it.
Above that, though, this fundraising letter shows just how far Ytterberg and the county party have thrown the gauntlet in their support of Branuagh and Powers. If there was any doubt before, it’s unmistakable now: these are the Republican candidates for seats on the nonpartisan, er, “unbranded” Jeffco School Board. Ytterberg said it best himself, “You need to know that the Jefferson County Republican Party is promoting their candidacy.”
UPDATE: ABC News reports, this didn’t go the way John Boehner planned at all: In a major setback to House Speaker John Boehner, the House of Representatives voted tonight 195-230 to reject a stop-gap measure to fund the federal government through Nov. 18 over disagreements on the level of disaster relief funding in the bill. […]
As the state’s most popular political blog, Colorado Pols works hard every day to bring you the news and information about Colorado politics you need. Proposition 103 is an education funding initiative on the statewide ballot this November. If passed, Proposition 103 would restore the income and sales tax rates that were in effect in […]
Crossposted from Colorado Pols
The latest move by Colorado’s controversial Secretary of State Scott Gessler, which, make no mistake, will have the effect of reducing the number of votes cast in future elections, is nevertheless a little more complex than meets the eye–KDVR’s Eli Stokols reports:
“The City of Denver has consistently provided all eligible voters with ease of access to the voting franchise and we continue to do so,” [Denver Clerk and Recorder Debra] Johnson said in a statement of her own.
“This is a fundamental issue of fairness and keeping voting accessible to as many eligible voters as possible.”
In Gessler’s view, it’s currently against the law for county clerks to mail ballots to inactive voters; even though Johnson points out Denver has done so in its five previous mail ballot elections.
Gessler cites a state statute that reads: “the designated election official shall mail to each active registered elector.”
In a sign of a possible Denver Post editorial to come, Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard tweeted Monday night: “Sorry, but I don’t see ‘ONLY active voters’ in statute. [Pols emphasis]
Gessler, who was unsuccessful in advancing legislation earlier this year that would have required photo ID to register to vote, drawing strong criticism from progressive groups, said he’s not trying to limit turnout in the state’s most populated and heavily Democratic city…
But of course that’s what the bottom line is–Gessler is demanding that counties who adhere to an inclusive standard of providing ballots to all registered voters, like Denver, instead follow a “lowest common denominator” approach. What Gessler seems to want is adherence to the most restrictive standard possible–mandated denial of mailed ballots to registered voters who may have missed the 2010 elections unless they take affirmative steps to “activate” their registration.
Much like the recent controversy over Gessler’s demands to purge the voters rolls of “suspected” illegal voters, or his rule changes on primary election expenditures that reduce transparency, Gessler is attempting to resolve ambiguity in the law on the side of partisan political goals. Remember, these are not people accused or suspected of any problems with their voter registration–simply listed as “inactive” after having missed one election. With that in mind, Gessler has a major credibility problem trying to force a change this significant: an indelible, wholly self-inflicted partisan reputation that casts everything he does in suspicion–especially actions, like this one, that will result in fewer registered and eligible voters participating.
Lynn Bartels of the Denver paper reported that a law temporarily requiring mail ballots to be sent to all voters was in place for the last election cycle but was not reauthorized. During debate over this law back in 2008, we understand that proponents suggested Colorado’s policy regarding “inactive” voters and mail ballots could violate the federal Voting Rights Act. Politically, if the situation comes to a head we suspect that the voting public will prefer to receive mail ballots automatically–even if they happen to miss one election.
But there’s something bigger needing acknowledgement: it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Secretary of State Gessler simply doesn’t prioritize access to the ballot. Indeed, Gessler has emerged as actively hostile to the goal of facilitating convenient access to the franchise by eligible voters. If that’s not what we want for the next three years, the Colorado legislature must do what it can, as quickly as it can, to close as many loopholes and ambiguities in election law as possible before Gessler finds a way to use them against lawful Colorado voters.
If this state of affairs disgusts you, that’s even more proof: elections matter.
The latest move by Colorado’s controversial Secretary of State Scott Gessler, which, make no mistake, will have the effect of reducing the number of votes cast in future elections, is nevertheless a little more complex than meets the eye–KDVR’s Eli Stokols reports: “The City of Denver has consistently provided all eligible voters with ease of […]
Say what you will about “Conservadem” Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado–as the repeal of the Department of Defense’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against service by gays and lesbians takes effect today, Sen. Udall is justifiably proud of the work he did personally to end it. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, […]
Reports the Colorado Independent’s Sofia Resnick: Influential conservative social policy group Focus on the Family announced Friday it will eliminate about 50 jobs due to a significant drop in donations that has led to a $15 million budget shortfall, as the Denver Post initially reported. The group also experienced a $27 million budget reduction in […]
(Seriously — is Mike Coffman trying to lose his seat? Or is he just hoping to make sure he can never win a statewide race again? – promoted by Colorado Pols) Update: Politico’s David Catanese posts Coffman’s Ponzi-scheme comment and reports: Even as recent as today, Democrats are attempting to link GOP candidates to Perry’s […]
For almost seven years, Colorado Pols has been relied on as a vital source of news and information about Colorado politics and policy matters. Proposition 103 is a state education ballot initiative to be decided this November. If passed, Proposition 103 would restore the income and sales tax rates that were in effect in 1999 […]
Ways to know that everybody got the same briefing Friday afternoon–New York Times: Representative Paul D. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and a leading proponent of cutting spending on benefit programs like Medicare, said the proposal would weigh heavily on a stagnating economy. On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Ryan said it would add […]
We’ve discussed many times in this space the grossly inaccurate job numbers that opponents of Proposition 103 have been throwing out right and left. Opponents of Prop 103 have erroneously (and repeatedly) claimed that the education-funding measure could cost Colorado 119,000 jobs, but as The Colorado Statesman reports, the author of the study cited to […]
Here at Colorado Pols, we always do our best to keep our loyal readers informed about important political and public policy issues. Proposition 103 is an education-funding ballot measure that Colorado voters will decide upon this fall. It would restore the sales and income tax rates that were in effect in 1999 in Colorado, raising […]
As we wrote earlier, we’re getting more than a little tired of hearing the doomsday scenarios about Proposition 103, which would restore the sales and income tax rates that were in effect in 1999: raising income tax rates from 4.63% to 5%, and sales taxes from 2.9% to 3%. Conservative opponents of Prop 103 continue […]
AP updates from Friday: Colorado Republicans say a proposal to raise taxes by $3 billion over five years to help fund the state’s education system will harm an already fragile economy. Former state Rep. Victor Mitchell says the proposal on this November’s ballot would be “a crushing blow” to the Colorado economy if it’s approved. […]
CBS News reports on their new poll released Friday: As concerns about the struggling U.S. economy grow, a new CBS News/New York poll finds that President Obama’s overall approval rating has dropped to 43 percent, the lowest so far of his presidency in CBS News polling. In addition, his disapproval rating has reached an all-time […]
At least that’s what Gallup says today: Texas Gov. and presidential candidate Rick Perry’s comments on Social Security, which include calling it a “Ponzi scheme,” appear to be a non-issue for most Republicans. However, they could cost him support with independents should he ultimately win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. As many Republicans say they […]
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