(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%
Women's Lobby of Colorado Legislative Scorecard. See how your legislators are rated. It's a ten page document, and posting pdfs is a pain, so you can look it up yourself. But you may find some surprises. My SD3 candidate, and current HD46 rep, Leroy Garcia, has 100%. My Senator, George Rivera, has 64%, which was […]
We frequently discuss fundraising results here on Colorado Pols, because in politics, fundraising matters more than well…anything, really. You can have all the grassroots and volunteer support in the world, but as many a candidate has found, none of that really matters unless you have enough money to both run a campaign and reach out […]
(Promoted by Colorado Pols) Colorado's Republican party has put up some rather entertaining candidates for the state legislature this year, and I just had to post some updates on them. Nate Marshall posted an official withdrawal from the HD23 race on April 9, after being exposed as an active white supremacist. However, his campaign committee […]
(Promoted by Colorado Pols) Republican and Democratic politicians alike were denounced by the 50 activists rallying at Bessemer Park in Pueblo on April 5, 2014, as part of a national Day of Action on Immigration. Barack Obama has deported more immigrants than any other President; Cory Gardner, Scott Tipton, and Mike Coffman have all voted […]
A name that keeps popping up in coverage of debate over a local elections bill in the Colorado legislature is former Aspen mayoral candidate Marilyn Marks, who increasingly seems to be a central player in GOP efforts to "crack down" on supposed "vote fraud." As the Colorado Springs Gazette's Megan Schrader reported Monday evening: One […]
(Can't hide it under a bush, oh no! – Promoted by Colorado Pols) Fresh from his top-GOP-Senate-candidate showing in the latest Public Policy Polling survey, Ken Buck took to the talk-radio airwaves in recent days, bragging that he's ahead of his primary opponents by "25 points or more" and that he "had a lot Tea […]
That is, the Contracts that Were "Unilaterally Ignored by Government" in 2010? Vince Carroll, Let's See the Denver Post Editorial Board Act on Principle, Write a Column Defending Existing Public Pension Contracts. On March 18, 2009, in the thick of U.S. market turmoil, while the public was calling for the heads of the Wall Street […]
Mostly lost in the media coverage of the immigration-reform bill is what life would look like for undocumented immigrants if America doesn’t offer them a path to citizenship. Republicans like Rep. Cory Gardner of Ft. Collins, who oppose give undocumented immigrants tangible hope of becoming U.S. citizens, should be asked to explain how their version […]
Republican Cynthia Coffman has formally entered the race for Attorney General, joining Democrat Don Quick as only the second official candidate for 2014. From The Denver Post: In her announcement, Coffman said she would campaign on protecting water rights; fighting the “federal government oversteps” on states rights protected by the 10th Amendment; and maintainin “the […]
We wrote yesterday about the debate over House Bill 1136, which extends the same protections against discrimination to employees of small businesses as presently exists for all other businesses with 15 or more employees under federal civil rights law. The Job Protection and Civil Rights Enforcement Act has drawn fierce opposition from Republicans, who have denounced […]
Scott Gessler likes to soften his dissonant accusations of voter fraud by saying his job, as Secretary of State, is to make it "easy to vote but tough to cheat." As Gessler told the Conservative Political Action Committee in October: And I think most people would agree that when it comes to elections, it should […]
The Denver Post's Daily Dose and Colorado Public Radio's "Check and Balance" blogs reported Friday that no one testified against Colorado's proposed expansion of Medicaid, a key step in the implementation of Obamacare that would provide 100,000 to 150,000 uninsured people in Colorado with health insurance.
Colorado just had a record breaking year for oil production. According to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director, the state has “been adding at least 2,000 new wells per year for the past nine years.” Oil production in the U.S. is at the highest levels in 20 years. New Department of Interior data […]
Responding to underreported but fierce criticism over Gov. John Hickenlooper's comments before a United States Senate committee last week about his experience with drinking "fracking fluid," he and his various proxies have tried to claim that his remarks have been "misinterpreted"–by legitimate media outlets, and the armies of right-wing bloggers, "news" aggregators, and pro-energy industry commentators who have gleefully […]
Conservative talk radio is reverberating with misrepresentation, confusion, and falsehoods about the gun safety legislation moving through the State Legislature. Now would be a good time for fact-based listeners to call into these fear-based shows to straighten out the hype-based hosts and their back-scratching guests. For example, Sen. Kevin Lundberg said the following on KFKA's […]
(Hanging their heads, no doubt – promoted by Colorado Pols) As civil-unions legislation hits the home stretch at the State Capitol, along with a bill granting in-state tuition to undocumented college students, let’s take a moment to encourage reporters to recall a jump-up-and-down-arms-waving op-ed that appeared in The Denver Post, just days after the election: […]
Reporters should be on the lookout for Republicans who try to make themselves sound like they support reducing college tuition rates for undocumented college students, but when it comes to specifics, they actually say nothing but gobbledygook.
Here’s an example of what not to do, from Rocky Mountain Community Radio reporter Bente Birkeland’s Dec. 31 interview with Colorado Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman about the upcoming legislative session:
Birkeland: One of the contentious bills that will be coming back is a bill that offers this lower tuition rate to students who graduate from Colorado high schools. In the past, the GOP in both chambers has not supported that measure. Do you see any movement on the issue?
Cadman: Sure. I think what we’re looking for is tuition equity [editor’s note: gobbledygook]. We’re looking for a solid formula that allows people affordable access to quality higher ed [editor’s note: gobbledygook]. What we need to do systemically is put something forward that shows an equitable access for everybody, not based on some specific criteria [editor’s note: gobbledygook].
Three things could be going on here, in light of the presence of the gobbledygook.
One, Cadman and fellow Republicans have opposed reduced tuition rates for so long that they can’t bring themselves to say they’ll support lowering the rates this year. They can’t get the words out of their mouths. (See Rep. Libby Szabo, “I don’t comment on anything I have not seen,” and CU Prez Bruce Benson, “I’m not going to tell you exactly how I feel.”)
Or more likely, Cadman still opposes helping undocumented students, but he doesn’t want to say it as directly as he used to (See below.), for fear of driving even more Hispanics away from the GOP, as seen in the last election. And he doesn’t think his indecision will further poison the Republican brand among Hispanics-because he doesn’t think reporters will call him out on it.
Or Cadman doesn’t know what to say.
Or maybe a combination?
In any case, Birkeland should have asked him, specifically, if he’d vote for the reduced-tuition bill, if it came up in exactly the same form as last year.
Would he even consider voting “yes” this time, when he opposed the measure just nine months ago, telling the Colorado Statesman’s Peter Marcus in April:
Cadman: “You’re providing a benefit to someone who doesn’t legally deserve it.” (All Republican state Senators voted against the bill last year. Also, no public funds would be provided.)
As it was, Birkeland let Cadman sound like he stands behind not only undocumented students but every single college student in the state of Colorado. That’s great, but what is he prepared to do about it? And, again, what about those pesky undocumented high-school graduates who grew up with our own kids? Should colleges have the option of offering them in-state tuition rates?
Former Congressman Tom Tancredo told me this week that his idea to sue Metro State University for offering a reduced tuition rate to the children of illegal immigrants is “probably going nowhere.”
Tancredo said back in October that he was having trouble locating a student plaintiff, and he said he still can’t find an out-of-state student who’s willing to endure the “perceived retribution” that Tancredo says would result from filing the lawsuit, which would seek damages based on the notion that the illegal immigrant should not receive a lower tuition rate than that of an out-of-state student.
Asked what kind of retribution might be expected, Tancredo said that no one would get thrown out of school, but there could be “problems with professors and grades.”
Tancredo said he’s unlikely to pursue a legal strategy without a student plaintiff.
“It’s risky, at best,” he said. “I’m not in it for the grins of it. I want to succeed. Without a student, we just don’t have a good strategy to employ.”
Tancredo said the recent Republican election loss, resulting in part from the GOP’s unpopularity among Hispanics, was not a factor in his thinking about the Metro lawsuit.
“Believe me,” he said, “I would pursue this regardless of what happened in the election,” adding that Hispanics vote for Democrats because they like big government, not because vocal segments of the GOP, led by Tancredo, have called for a crackdown on illegal immigration.
Hispanics vote for Democrats for the same reason that other people vote for Democrats,” he said.
So is Tancredo pursuing another anti-immigration project?
He said he’d like to push a Colorado law like the one in Arizona targeting illegal immigrants, but he’s got “nothing on the front burner.”
And he’s not worried his high-profile activities alienate Hispanics from the Republican Party.
“My hope is that we can begin to make inroads with Hispanics who realize the problems that plague the countries they fled are the problems being created by Democrats in this country,” he said. “Unless they’re trying to replicate the economic basket cases that they came from, they should try to create different political allegiances.”
You may recall one of the most effective organizations supporting the re-election of George W. Bush was Billionaires for Bush!
The billionaires trailed Bush and Cheney around the country, with signs like “It’s a Class War and We’re Winning” and “Widen the Income Gap.” The billionaires liked to say they paid for eight years of Bush, and so throwing him out after four years was a rip-off.
I was thinking about Billionaires for Bush when I saw a roundup of news coverage from around the country of protests Saturday against extending tax cuts for the top two percent.
They weren’t giant demonstrations, but you had 25, 50, 100 people in dozens of venues. In Colorado, there were about 25 folks in Grand Junction and about 50 people in front of Fava’s restaurant in Aurora.
The headline on an Associated Press story last week, juxtaposed to the GOP comments in the article, tell you all you need to know about how it’s one thing for Republicans to promise to be nicer to Hispanics, as Josh Penry and Rob Witwer did recently, and another thing for them to stop pushing policies that do nothing but alienate Hispanics from the GOP.
First, the headline of the AP story, written by Ivan Moreno:
“Colorado Democrats Plan To Pass Tuition Aid For Immigrants”
Then, the GOP response toward the end of the story:
Arvada Republican Rep. Libby Szabo said it was too soon to tell whether her party would support the tuition legislation.
“One thing I learned in my first legislative session is that I don’t comment on anything I have not seen,” she said.
Szabo, who was elected to be her party’s assistant House minority leader Thursday, made her gender and her Latino background part of her pitch for the leadership post, saying, “I am a woman Latino, and I think it would speak big if we didn’t just talk about reaching out to them, but we said we are going to put someone in leadership who is actually one of them.”
So Szabo couldn’t even commit her own support to the state version of the Dream Act, much less the members of her party who organized opposition this summer when Metro State University dared to lower tuition rates for undocumented kids.
Instead, Szabo makes a parody of herself by saying, look at me! I’m proof positive that the GOP likes Hispanics!
So here’s the point of this blog post: Reporters shouldn’t let Republicans get away with saying they support Hispanics without asking for those ugly specifics, which go beyond good looks and leadership positions.
As The Denver Post’s Alicia Caldwell said during an excellent discussion of the election on Rocky Mountain PBS’ Colorado State of Mind Nov. 9, “You have to change policies as well as faces.”
As my colleague Michael Lund pointed out, polling shows Hispanics, to the extent you can generalize, care most about jobs and the economy, as well as education, immigration, and healthcare. Project New America polling also showed that basic concern and the poor matters.
The question is, what will Colorado Republicans offer Hispanics in any of these areas?
Will Republicans offer anything on the economy except de-regulation and tax cuts? On healthcare, will the Colorado GOP stop trying to block implementation of Obamacare? On education, will they finally get behind the reduced tuition bill that Szabo is noncommittal about? Will they support a pathway for citizenship both for undocumented children as well their parents? Do Republicans think they need to become Democrats to win over Hispanics?
If Republicans aren’t pressed, we’ll get the kind of rhetoric Penry and Witwer offered up this weekend in The Post about how it’s time “to bury the hatchet and forge bipartisan agreement on immigration reform.”
Great, a reporter should say to Penry and Witwer, but where’s the burrito?
(added a break in the middle for promotion. Interesting… – promoted by ProgressiveCowgirl) I did a comment last month on the phenomenon of the recent surge of unaffliated registered voters based on some revealing numbers in Larimer County which I published in the comment posts since the numbers were quite a shocker to me. Re-published […]
Twenty-nine senators signed a letter to President Obama recently urging him to leave Social Security and Medicare “off the table” when dicussing budget cuts and deficit reduction with Republicans. Their concern is that Obama will try to strike some kind of “bipartisan grand bargain” in an effort to avoid going off the fiscal cliff. This […]
Jefferson County Commissioner John Odom has been invisible on the campaign trail this year, raising pittance for his re-election bid and spending little of the $20,000 he loaned his own campaign. And, aside from the spirited introduction he gave to Mitt Romney when the Republican swung by Jefferson County in early August, Odom hasn’t done much in line with traditional political strategy: No speeches, no fundraisers, and no field effort to speak of.
Even when given a free opportunity to define his candidacy and connect with voters, Odom couldn’t find the time.
From the Columbine Courier:
The economy and the climate for Jeffco businesses were discussed by 11 political hopefuls from across the county last Friday morning at a candidates forum sponsored by the Jefferson County Economic Development Corp.
The forum, at the Holiday Inn at Wadsworth Boulevard and U.S. 285, was attended by about 50 people.
As might be expected, the discussion focused largely on what the candidates have accomplished in the business world and how much they are committed to improving conditions in the business sector.
John Odom, who is running for Jefferson County commissioner in District 2, was not able to attend, but he sent a stand-in [Pols Emphasis], Ben Engen, who described himself as a friend who was also on the vacancy committee that interviewed Odom for the commissioner vacancy after Kevin McCasky resigned to become president of the EDC.
A Jefferson County native, Odom is a businessman who years ago opened a coffee shop in China and has high regard for personal property rights, his stand-in said [Pols Emphasis]. Odom believes that what sets America apart are its strong legal protections for property and contracts, he said. “Here’s a man who says your property should be yours to develop as you see fit.”
He described Odom as a business booster who once purchased airtime at a charity auction and used it to run an advertising campaign encouraging businesses to move to Jefferson County. “That’s the kind of guy John is, always looking for creative ways to improve life in Jefferson County.”
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with candidates occasionally sending surrogates to public events — sometimes day-to-day life gets in the way of campaigning. With Odom, though, sending a Republican operative to this particular community forum is endemic of a larger problem with his strategy: Nobody has seen or heard from him in months. This would’ve been the perfect opportunity for Odom to discuss his diverse experience in the business world. If John Odom has such a high regard for property rights, why couldn’t he show up to a forum to discuss that regard?
In a campaign, it’s not good enough to have a few friends awkwardly telling voters what “kind of guy you are” or discussing your beliefs. You have to show them yourself.
John Odom has run his entire election bid thus far assuming that, because he’s an incumbent Republican, he doesn’t have to work very hard to win another term.
Although Democratic challenger Casey Tighe has been doing a remarkable job for a first-time candidate — he has the wherewithal to attend community events, after all — it’s an unfortunate reality that Odom might just be right.
This is the second poorly vetted mailer from the Sias campaign and the third from a Jefferson County Republican this cycle.
There’s simply no way to defend such general sloppiness when it comes from candidates locked in hyper-competitive races. These Republicans, after all, are spending coveted campaign dollars on literature that hurts their electoral efforts. Make no mistake, mail pieces that contain typographical errors aren’t only wasteful, they paint the candidates represented within them as careless at best and stupid at worst.
If you’re going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to design and distribute a lit piece, you surely can afford to spend the 15 seconds it takes to guarantee you’re being presented in the best light. Doubtless the Sias campaign or its consultants debated which photo to use and what text to highlight. Those fastidious decisions, however, are effectively canceled out when simple, grade-level mistakes aren’t caught and corrected — especially in literature about education.
With so much spent shooting themselves in the feet, you’d think these campaigns would the common-sense to hire somebody to proofread. Hell, they could probably share the same guy! It couldn’t take more than one billable hour for an editor to say “Hey, you forgot to finish your sentence” or “Your list isn’t numbered correctly.”
Bottom line: This type of laziness — and that’s what it is — is not now and will never be acceptable for ostensibly “credible” general election candidates.
—–
Another from the unfortunate campaign mailers department (a regular favorite of ours), here’s a new piece that just arrived in Senate District 19 mailboxes–the key race in northern Jefferson County between Democratic incumbent Sen. Evie Hudak and Republican Lang Sias. From the flagship Republican Senate “independent effort,” the Senate Majority Fund:
Got that, swing voter? Sias will help our kids compete–you just don’t know what at! It’s best to not allow the recipient’s mind to wander as a result of a printing error like this. Glossy color mailers, after all, are quite expensive. A mistake of this glaring nature and magnitude defeats the purpose of sending the mailer. It’s worse than sending nothing at all, beyond the wasted money. For those that don’t wind up directly in the circular file, this screwup is the only thing that’s memorable. In short, better proofing urgently needed at the Senate Majority Fund.
What will Sias “make sure our kids can compete in?” Since they don’t specify, a poll follows.
I just love this piece of Joe’s lit. Where clearly he’s hiding in your coffee, ready to leap out and startle the bejesus out of some voter’s otherwise serene morning. In a tribute to that, was thinking of some other places Joe might turn up suddenly to win votes. Where will Joe turn up next?!? […]
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