November 28, 2011 07:29 PM UTC

More reporters should try to find out if Coffman, Gardner, and Tipton still support Personhood

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• by: Jason Salzman

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

The Colorado Statesman went where no other media outlet dared go last week and asked Colorado’s congressional delegation whether they support the personhood initiative, born again last week at a Denver press conference.

One could argue that the 2012 personhood initiative isn’t actually “born,” or alive in any way, really, until it makes the ballot, but for our purposes, a personhood amendment is considered alive when the proposed wording of the personhood petition has been officially submitted, and this occurred last week.

The Statesman reports:

Colorado’s Republican congressional delegation was mostly silent on the measure this week. U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn is “a supporter of personhood,” according to an email sent by his spokeswoman, but press aides for U.S. Reps. Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton didn’t respond to inquiries from The Statesman and a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman said his boss was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

The Statesman failed to note that Coffman, Gardner, and Tiption are all former supporters of Colorado’s 2010 personhood initiative, and former Colorado Personhood poster child, now grown up, Kristi Brown, said Gardner was, in fact, “one of our main supporters” in Colorado in 2008.

Nor did the Statesman report that, despite endorsing personhood in Colorado, Coffman, Gardner, and Tipton have yet to endorse bills in Congress, backed by GOP lawmakers, aimed at making personhood the law of the land. Lamborn hasn’t endorsed federal personhood bills either, despite telling the Statesman last week that he supports personhood.

But the Statesman did quote Colorado GOP Chair Ryan Call as saying that “there is often a difference of opinion within our party on how best to advance that cause.”

Also, the Statesman briefly told the strange tale of failed Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck’s relationship with personhood, consumated with a full endorsement of the measure. But Buck later admitted to having prematurely endorsed personhood, without understanding it fully, so he un-endorsed it.

Still, Buck didn’t shed his personhood-like position on abortion, and it is widely believed to have played a key, if not decisive, factor in his loss to Sen. Michael Bennet.