October 16, 2015 11:15 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Friday (Oct. 16)

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• by: Colorado Pols

George W. Bush is coming to Denver on Sunday! Yee-haw! 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).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Ballots for the 2015 election should be arriving in your mailbox this week — in fact, many of you should have already received them. 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. [*NOTE: We’re going to keep this item at the top of the page on Get More Smarter for the next week or two]

► Things are heating up as we get closer and closer to the Oct. 28 Republican Presidential debate at Coors Events Center in Boulder. Leading Republican candidates (it’s still weird to write that sentence) Donald Trump and Ben Carson are threatening to skip the debate if changes aren’t made to the format. As the Associated Press reports, it’s hard to argue with some of their arguments:

In a joint letter to CNBC’s Washington bureau chief Thursday, the billionaire businessman and retired neurosurgeon told the hosting network they will not appear at the Oct. 28 debate unless it’s capped at two hours with commercials and the candidates are allowed to speak directly to the camera at its opening and close.

Ed Brookover, a senior Carson campaign strategist, said the campaigns were caught off-guard when CNBC sent them an email Wednesday outlining debate rules that the candidates had not agreed to. The agenda included two hours of debate time plus four commercial breaks and no opening or closing statements.

“We thought that the only way to make sure that candidates are heard early and late was not to rely on the moderators,” he said, referring to the push for opening and closing statements.

The letter came after a heated call between the campaigns and the Republican National Committee over the debate’s format.

You’ll get no argument from us on capping the debate at two hours. The last Republican debate lasted more than three hours, and we were tired of the squabbling after the first hour. The problem with making last-minute changes, of course, is that it makes it more difficult for CNBC, CU-Boulder, and the Republican National Committee to continue to keep students and other interested parties from gaining entrance to the debate. If they can change the format, surely they can add some seats for spectators.

► Congressman Scott Tipton (R-Cortez) says he likes the idea of Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz becoming the next House Speaker. As the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports, Tipton is not as enthusiastic about the possibility of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan taking the job from Rep. John Boehner, who is trying like hell to retire from Congress.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Sandy and Lonnie Phillips, parents of Aurora Theater Shooting victim Jessica Ghawi, were pleased to be mentioned during Tuesday’s Democratic Presidential debate because of the attention it brings gun violence prevention. As John Frank reports for the Denver Post:

“To get a shout out from the stage — finally, finally, finally a shout out — to really open this debate about gun violence prevention, it was astounding,” Phillips said in an interview the next day.

Sandy and Lonnie Phillips attended the Tuesday debate as guests of Democratic candidate Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor. And the next day, they appeared on national TV interviews and stood next to O’Malley at a rally in which the candidate called for the end to legal immunity for gun dealers.

The story of how the Colorado family made it into the national political headlines began with an opinion column posted online in September that described their lost legal battle against the online company that sold ammunition to James Holmes, the convicted theater shooter.

► State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg says he will not be a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2016 (not that anybody was really waiting for his announcement). Sonnenberg does think that there will be several Republican candidates in the field, however.

► Many Colorado Republicans are up in arms over the idea that some prisoners from Guantanamo Bay could end up being housed in a federal prison in Cañon City. Sadie Gurman of the Associated Press decided to actually ask people in Cañon City to see what they thought of the idea:

Its 948 cells now sit empty, and supporters say filling them with Guantanamo detainees would put to good use the shuttered $208 million facility that Colorado still has not paid off.

“The fact that these are scary terrorists from Guantanamo doesn’t bother me. That’s what these facilities were made for,” said Democratic state Sen. Pat Steadman, a state budget writer.

► Residents of Crested Butte would really, really like it if politicians and the Denver Post would stop their fear mongering over a minor spill that leaked a few hundred gallons of mine water in Elk Creek and Coal Creek.

► Democrat Joe Salazar announced on Wednesday that he will seek re-election for a third time in HD-31 (Adams County). Salazar won a narrow victory in 2014 in what turned out to be one of the most competitive State House seats in Colorado. 

► State Sen. Ellen Roberts (R-Durango) tells the Colorado Statesman that she was more than a bit naive about the process of exploring a potential U.S. Senate bid in 2016. Roberts’ brief foray into federal politics this summer did not go well. At all.

► A Colorado Pols reader tells the story of a strange public land grab attempt involving politicos from both Western Colorado and Utah.

► Colorado officials may release the first-ever Statewide Water Plan in November, a few weeks earlier than anticipated.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► A new report says the fossil fuel industry is trying to kneecap solar power development in Colorado.

► Fundraising reports for the eight dozen candidates running for President indicate that a few names are inching away from the rest of the pack. As Politico reports:

Hillary Clinton paced both parties, ending September with $33 million in the bank. But her chief challenger, Bernie Sanders, was close behind with $27.1 million on hand, and he touted raising another $3.2 million since this week’s debate. No other Democrat had as much as $1 million in their coffers.

Of the sprawling 15-candidate Republican field, the latest Federal Election Commission filings show just five contenders with the kind of $10 million-plus treasury that most political operatives consider necessary to mount a serious national campaign: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and, on the basis of his ability to tap into his much-bragged about personal wealth, Donald Trump. Only one other GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina with $5.5 million, had more than $3 million in campaign cash remaining.

Money is getting pretty tight for Republicans candidates such as Jeb! Bush, whose campaign has been cutting staff salaries for months now.

► Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will apparently run for Congress in St. Petersburg, Florida (FL-13). The former Florida Governor was once a rising star in the Republican Party, and was even considered as Sen. John McCain’s running mate in 2008; Crist has since changed his registration to Independent and then to Democrat, which is the Party he will seek to represent in 2016.

ICYMI

► It may have been a clever dodge in prior years, but 2016 voters want more from their Presidential candidates on Climate Change than just saying, “I’m not a scientist.”

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