October 26, 2015 11:49 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Monday (Oct. 26)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Anybody come up with a good Daylight Saving Time joke? No? 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).

Also, if you are scared of our Halloween-themed “Get More Smarter” logo, we are sorry.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Okay, seriously: If you have not yet received a mail ballot for the 2015 election, you should contact your County Clerk and Recorder’s office. Go to GoVoteColorado.com to check your voter registration status or to print out a sample ballot. You can also check out JustVoteColorado.org for more information. For more details on local school board elections, check out ProgressNow Colorado’s voter guide.

► With about 9 days to go until the ballots are tallied for the 2015 election, Jefferson County residents have been taking their signs and slogans to the streets. Colorado Pols has more — including pictures — from Friday’s “Boots on the Boulevard 3.0.”

► Congressman Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) voted again to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood on Friday. We’d say it was unlikely that Coffman will again use a Planned Parenthood logo in his own campaign ads in 2016, but, well, this is Mike Coffman we’re talking about.

► As first reported here at Colorado Pols, Republican State Sen. David Balmer plans to step down from the legislature to focus on a new full-time career with the Humane Society. Balmer would likely have had little trouble winning re-election in 2016, but after nearly a decade in the legislature, he appears to have had enough of the Gold Dome.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Did you have a bad weekend? If it makes you feel any better, your weekend probably wasn’t as bad as it was for Chris Christie.

► Colorado Springs Republican Robert Blaha won’t be announcing his campaign for U.S. Senate before the end of October, but he’s been spending plenty of time writing checks for people to work for his pending bid for the GOP nomination in 2016.

► John Frank of the Denver Post previews the Republican political mood ahead of Wednesday’s big GOP Presidential debate in Boulder:

The political climate — extrapolated from interviews with more than two dozen conservative activists and leaders ahead of Wednesday’s GOP debate in Boulder — showcases Colorado as a microcosm of the national picture and foreshadows the future direction of the peripatetic 2016 presidential race.

Colorado essentially cut itself from the Republican primary picture earlier this year when the state party  abandoned its presidential preference poll, but the debate puts the state’s voters in the spotlight well before the general election, when this swing state may determine the winner of the White House…

…”There’s a lot of fascination with the three nonelected candidates: Trump, Carson and Fiorina,” said Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican strategist and former state party leader. “I think it’s clear that those three candidates have a lot of interest here in Colorado, and whether that will sustain itself, I don’t know.”

For more on the ins and outs of the Wednesday debate, check this link from Politico.

► Coloradans will see an increase in health insurance costs for 2016. As the Denver Post reports:

Statewide, an average individual policy will cost almost 10 percent more next year, the Colorado Division of Insurance announced Friday. For small businesses and nonprofit agencies — those with two to 99 employees — the increases will average a more modest 3 percent. Overall, the average increase will be about 7 percent.

Cost increases will vary greatly from one region of the state to another. In Denver and Boulder, individual polices will cost about 6 percent more. In Glenwood Springs — a mountain region — the average individual premium will jump 25 percent.

It’s fun to blame Obamacare for everything that ails ‘ya, but heath insurance rates were rising every year anyway.

► If you’re looking for something to do in advance of Wednesday’s big GOP Presidential debate, why not get your picture taken with the offspring of a man who probably won’t end up becoming President? Jeb Bush, Jr. will be in Boulder on Tuesday for an event promoting the Presidential bid by his father, former Florida Gov. Jeb! Bush. If you do attend an event for Jeb! this week, just be extra nice to the staff — they just took a pretty big pay cut.

► Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be in the Denver area for a campaign stop on Nov. 24. No other details have yet been released by the campaign.

► Two Colorado Republicans have confirmed that they will support Rep. Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House in a vote scheduled for Wednesday. Congressman Ken Buck, a member of the combative “Freedom Caucus,” says he will back Ryan. Cortez Republican Scott Tipton will also vote for Ryan; Tipton was a backer of Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz before the latter backed out of the race last week.

► There will be yet another legal appeal in the gay wedding cake case — though nobody expects the outcome to be any different. Good work for the lawyers, we suppose.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► Colorado officials presented the White House with their plan for increasing college enrollment among low-income students.

► Colorado supporters of a single-payer healthcare plan submitted more than 156,000 petition signatures to the Secretary of State’s office in an effort to get the question to appear on the 2016 ballot.

ICYMI

► Elect Marco Rubio for President, because he’s bored of being a U.S. Senator.

► The World Health Organization says that bacon, sausages, and hot dogs cause cancer. If that surprises you, just go watch the meat cylinders rotate around the warmer at your local convenience store.

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