We have a Jesse Ventura sighting! 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).
► Democrat Morgan Carroll isn’t pulling any punches in her bid to unseat Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora). Carroll is calling out Coffman for his lack of leadership on the Aurora VA Hospital project — particularly given Coffman’s role as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the House Veteran’s Affairs Committee.
Meanwhile, the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report/Roll Call Ratings for 2016 Congressional races believes that Colorado’s CD-6 has become much more competitive, reclassifying the race from “Favored Republican” to “Leans Republican” as Carroll continues to gain momentum. EMILYs List is expected to announce today that it is backing Carroll in 2016.
► Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is expected to be joined by her counterparts from New Mexico and Utah for an announcement in Durango regarding the Animas River minewater spill. Check out this handy guide for questions and answers about the Animas River spill.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel sees the writing on the wall for the coal industry, and says that it’s time to talk transition:
Colorado utilities’ plans to invest in renewable energy, advance energy
efficiency and transition from coal to cleaner sources of power will
significantly reduce emissions. Colorado is already on track to meet 75
percent of the emissions reductions required by the final goal. And going
forward the state has a lot of flexibility in choosing how to bridge the
gap.Critics contend that enacting expensive changes in how we produce
electricity won’t significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.So why do it at all? Because if the overwhelming majority of scientists are right, we’re close to a tipping point with regard to climate change. Any decrease keeps us from getting there and finding out if the cataclysmic predictions are true.
And the plan simply seizes on a direction America is headed anyway. Coal has been in a steady decline, in part because of a natural gas boom, but also because consumers like green energy. The low costs of coal-fired electrical generation don’t reflect other costs, like treating respiratory diseases from pollutants. Things important to the Western Slope, like agriculture, wildlife, orchards, vineyards, snowpack and runoff all stand to be impacted by climate change.
► Republican Scott Gessler may no longer be serving as Secretary of State, but that doesn’t mean Colorado has stopped writing checks on his behalf. On Tuesday, Gessler filed yet another appeal with the state Supreme Court over an ethics complaint stemming from Gessler’s use of taxpayer funds to travel to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida in 2012. The SOS office continues to foot the bill for defending Gessler, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
► Carbondale Republican Joyce Rankin will succeed Marcia Neal on the State Board of Education, all but ensuring that the State Board will remain in disarray.
► Residents in one Adams County neighborhood are concerned about 20 new oil and gas wells scheduled to begin drilling right in the middle of their Thornton-area community.
► Colorado Springs will ask voters to raise the sales tax for five years in order to generate funding to fix pothole-addled roads. Apparently the “free market” does not magically fix roads by itself unless someone is paying for it.
► Is it really Ryan Frazier time for Republicans still searching for a 2016 U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado?
► Famous rich person Donald Trump leads all Republican Presidential hopefuls in new polls conducted in New Hampshire and Iowa. Elsewhere, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura thinks he would be a good running mate for Trump. Yes, that is a real sentence.
► Former Florida Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has a new strategy for 2016: Picking a fight over the war in Iraq, which was the handiwork of his brother George W. Bush’s Presidential administration.
► Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig says he may seek the Democratic Presidential nomination because…eh, who cares?
► Colorado marijuana regulators are considering replacing the word “candy” on edible treats with an image of a red stop sign. Because the best way to keep kids away from something is to tell them not to touch it.
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Cook Reports calls the Carroll/Coffman race a tossup. One of only four tossup races in the country.
Oops. Cook has 4 Dem seats as toss-ups plus 12 GOP seats (including CO CD6) as toss-ups. Yesterday at her grassroots kickoff, Morgan reported that the CD6 race is considered one of the top five competitive races in the country.
And Cook generally leans right. Morgan Carroll's best chance will be to continue doing exactly what she's been doing…. ignoring the conventional "wisdom" of past failed campaigns. We know that the Udall/Romanoff style campaign not only doesn't work but doesn't come close to working and, in fact, takes close numbers and makes them worse for the Dem over time. Something completely different is not a guarantee of success but the same old thing is a guarantee of failure. So far Carroll is off to a strong start. Let's hope, as it gets more serious, she doesn't let the "expert' ops steer her back in the proven losing direction.
Focusing only on so called "women's" issues to get the all important for Dems women's vote doesn't work because women are also people and care about all the important issues.
Focusing only on Coffman gottchas (he flip flopped, he lied) instead of substantive differences with him is a loser because most people assume most pols flip flop and lie as a matter of course. We may love to watch Coffman saying Obama isn't a real American, then apologizing, then apologizing for the apology, rinse repeat, but most voters couldn't care less about that stuff.
Potential voters for a Dem candidate, forget the ones we'll never get anyway, care most about making a decent living, opportunity for themselves and their children to get somewhere, to have some security for the future, to see their rights protected and access to jobs, healthcare, a decent life improved. They don't want to see a few families with extraordinary wealth buying all the power over them and hoarding all the wealth their work produces. And that includes women voters who are sick of being talked down to by Dem pols as if the only things they can wrap their pretty little heads around are lady parts issues, school and day care. Yes, talk about those things but not just those things.
I'm sure Morgan Carroll understands that and hope she insists on running her campaign accordingly no matter what the know it all ops who keep proving that, as far as understanding Colorado goes they're idiots, tell her.
At her grassroots kickoff event (well attended by about 60 people), Morgan rattled off a list of major legislative victories that she participated in during her legislative career. She said 85% of her bills had bipartisan support, that she is proud of her record, and will run on it. (!)
She also said her reason for running for Congress (which was not an easy decision) was she didn't want Americans to get used to this unprecedented level of partisanship, obstructionism and gridlock we've seen the past decade or so. She feels Congress is the most important institution ever created and feels it needs to be protected. I thought that was an interesting and thoughtful reason for her candidacy. (Of course, she was much more eloquent than my paraphrasing.)
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders asked the CBO how the budget sequester has affected the economy:
This would be a good opportunity, and a quite valid reason, for Senator Michael Bennet to convert from an Austerian to a Keynesian, to remove the Grover Norquist inspired economic language from his website, and to unabashedly support a true growth economy that values American Workers over Financiers and shovel ready jobs over shoveling bullshit on international trade.
Alas, I have no hopes he'll actually do anything remotely sensible on the economy or on his campaign. And, despite all the time he's spent submitting bills to ban people like him from joining lobbying firms once they leave government, I am still convinced it's been his goal all along to be a senator only long enough to increase his value as a lobbyist to the $1 Million/per range.
Stupid politics by Michael Bennet? Yes. But not stupid planning….
EMILY's is expected to announce their endorsement of Sen. Carroll? She's been touting it this morning, so I'm kind of guessing it's official.
Koch suckers' (including that puss-filled carbuncle, Caldera) attempts to impose and maintain a right-wing propagandistic death grip on the JeffCo school board and its curricula makes national headlines again:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/colorado-school-board-recall-proxy-fight