So, how much is safe drinking water worth to you? Or K-12 education? Or decent roads? If you’re an average Colorado family with an…
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Colorado Companies Drop From Fortune’s Most Admired List
Fortune magazine lists two Colorado corporations as industry ‘contenders’ for its annual ‘most admired companies’ list, but no local firms reached the level of most admired.
It’s a poorer showing for the state than in years past, when there w…
World
Lila Nordstrom: The Next March To Freedom
America has a new group among the marginalized. I’m not talking about people of any particular race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender. I’m speaking of the victims of corporate intolerance.
World
Sen. Michael Bennet: Reform the Filibuster
The obstructionist actions of Republican senator Jim Bunning left no doubt that Washington is broken, and it’s getting worse. That’s why I am introducing new legislation to reform the filibuster.
World
Sen. Bennet Introduces Ambitious Filibuster Reform Bill
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.) has formally introduced a bill that would fundamentally alter a minority party’s capacity to hold up legislative business, becoming another in a handful of Senate Democrats to champion procedural reform.
The fres…
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Colo. family won’t file appeal for frozen remains
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado family has decided not to appeal a judge’s decision to allow their mother’s remains to be cryogenically frozen.
Mary Robbins, 71, signed a contract with Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 2006 and se…
Politics
AR-Sen: Lieberman’s best buddy
It was 2006, and we had Joe Lieberman on the run. We had defeated him in the Connecticut Democratic primary, and there was a full-court effort to get him to slink away quietly into the night.
Problem for us, Blanche Lincoln was in his corner, refusing to back Lamont despite being on the DSCC leadership team:
“Senator Lincoln remains neutral in the Connecticut Senate general election,” said her press secretary, Katie Laning.
I sent an e-mail back asking Ms. Laning if Lincoln is sure that’s the story she wants to stick to, given that she’s on the leadership team on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) whose mission is to…. elect Democrats.
No response to that.
And after the election:
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman strode into a Democratic caucus gathering like he owned the place or, at the very least, like someone who is a flight risk and could leave at any minute, taking the Democrats’ new majority with him.
In other words, everyone was extra-special nice to the wayward Democrat on Tuesday.
“It was all very warm, lots of hugs, high-fives, that kind of stuff,” said Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon marveled, “One senator after another kept coming up and shaking his hand.”
And Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas noted, “I gave him a hug and a kiss.”
Too bad we don’t have a photo of that kiss.
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AR-Sen: Reaction
Democracy for America (in an email blast):
Blanche Lincoln is a Wall Street puppet for the insurance industry that has contributed over $2 million to her campaign. While over 56% of Arkansas voters wanted the choice of a public option, Lincoln vowed on the Senate floor she’d filibuster healthcare reform unless the public option was stripped from the bill. Senator Lincoln stood up and the insurance companies won [...]
Bill Halter is a solid Democrat, an Arkansas progressive, and a populist leader. He’s fought for working men and women and delivered real change for Arkansas. His track record as Lt. Governor proves it [...]
We told the Healthcare Villains we would not forget. We showed them how popular the public option was in their state and nationwide. We warned them not to choose insurance companies over the Americans people.
Now it’s too late for Senator Blanche Lincoln.
Check out billhalter.com, and you’ll see instantly why incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-AR, who was already facing a very rough re-election effort with her abyssmal approval ratings, should be even more worried.
A fresh-faced, charming young lieutenant governor, named Bill Halter, in announcing his bid to take on Lincoln, is actually seen getting out of a pickup truck at one point in the campaign ad (is this the Scott Brown formula??) — and even more astounding, one of the things he touts is healthcare reform. It’s not clear what version, because he rather craftily keeps it general in nature. Halter castigates Washington as “broken” – a place that’s “protecting insurance company profits, instead of protecting patients and lowering healthcare costs.”
Sam Stein, Huffington Post:
The race is likely to become a proxy battle for the larger debate within the Democratic Party between progressives who believe sticking to core values is the best way to win office and the self-styled pragmatists who argue that they must adopt more conservative positions when running in traditionally more conservative states.
John Brummett, Arkansas News:
Republicans will celebrate the Democratic divisiveness and that Lincoln must now deplete her mammoth resources in the primary.
Establishment Democrats, meaning party insiders, didn’t like Halter anyway, certainly don’t like him now and will rally the apparatus, to the extent it exists with effectiveness, to push him back.
Right away we need to see if Halter, whose impetus into this race is from the unlikely left, favors card check, cap-and-trade and the health care reform bill as advanced by Harry Reid and modified last week by the White House. Those are three good opening questions for him when he files tomorrow. The state’s business establishment, meaning the chambers of commerce, the Farm Bureau, the utilities, will be scared to death of Halter.
Meantime, there’s been an interesting dynamic lately as I’ve been around the state talking to this group and that. It’s that I deliever some remarks about the anti-Obama fervor in the state and how Lincoln is caught up in it, and then the first question I get is from some liberal mad at Lincoln from the other direction over health care or estate taxes.
Politics is largely about passion, and I see none for Lincoln and the potential for some for Halter.
MoveOn, in fundraising email:
Blanche Lincoln is one of the worst corporate Democrats in Washington. That’s why 92 percent of Arkansas MoveOn members voted to support Bill Halter over Blanche Lincoln in a primary election. Instead of fighting for the health care reform Arkansas families desperately need, she took nearly a million ($866,000) from Big Insurance and HMO interests and then played a leading role in opposing the public health insurance option. She took $1.3 million from Wall Street banks and helped kill legislation that would’ve allowed struggling homeowners to stay in their homes. And she sponsored a bill to roll back the Clean Air Act to protect corporate profits. With Bill Halter, our Arkansas members see a candidate who will stand up to special interests. Arkansans deserve someone who’ll fight for them, not Wall Street.
MSNBC’s First Read:
While Arlen Specter vs. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet vs. Andrew Romanoff in Colorado are competitive Democratic primaries, they haven’t featured the same level of involvement from the left that we’re now seeing in the Lincoln-vs.-Halter race.
Max Brantley, Arkansas Times:
Lincoln’s money quote: ”I know that I am not only fighting for you, I am fighting for what is fair and right.”
For who — credit card companies? Polluters? Health insurance companies? Wall Street tycoons?
Another money quote: She’s the rope in a “tug of war” between outside special interests.
Special interests: Working men and women of Arkansas. Sick people in Arkansas. People who want to breathe clean Arkansas air. People who favor sustainable agriculture. Those kinds of special interests are indeed tugging, against the Chamber of Commerce and tycoons of Arkansas on the other end. And losing with Lincoln.
Politics
CO-Sen: Norton De-Funded Planned Parenthood
How’s this for a campaign bragging point? Colorado Republican Jane Norton’s new ad says she:
cut government spending, eliminated waste, and de-funded Planned Parenthood. (Emphasis added)
Voters are supposed to hear “Planned Parenthood” and think “abortion,” of course. But given that in 2006, 38% of the services Planned Parenthood delivered were contraception, 29% were STD testing and treatment, and 19% were cancer screening and prevention, how many people — women in particular — are going to hear that and end up wondering why Jane Norton de-funded one of the few affordable sources of health care they have?
World
Bruco Eastwood May Have Contacted Deer Creek Students Online
LITTLETON, Colo. — Among items seized from the room of a man accused of wounding two students at a Colorado middle school were photos of youths who appear to be in their teens, prompting the accused’s father to speculate that his son may…
World
Gerald Ford’s Beaver Creek Home For Sale For $13M (PHOTOS)
The owner of a Beaver Creek, Colorado mansion once owned by President Gerald Ford is selling the home for $13 Million, the AP reports.
Ford, an accomplished athlete and avid skier, died in 2006 at the age of 93, at which point his widow sold …
Politics
Musical Chairs and the 2010 Elections
This week has offered a handful of examples of a continuing phenomenon in the 2010 election cycle–candidates jumping from one campaign to another, often totally by surprise. Just in the past five days, we have seen Indiana Congressman Brad Ellsworth express interest in jumping over to the U.S. Senate vacancy created by Evan Bayh’s retirement, while we also watched Ohio GOP Senate candidate Tom Ganley, a wealthy self-funder, take his million-plus warchest to a challenge to Democratic Congresswoman Betty Sutton (OH-13).
They are hardly the first–perhaps the best case would be Pennsylvania House candidate Steven Welch, who jumped from the open-seat 7th district House race to the (briefly) open-seat 6th district to off the ballot altogether, all in the span of several months.
This has, for a number of reasons, been a very unique election cycle. Some of the eccentricities of this cycle are the probable causes for the game of political musical chairs that has been perpetuated throughout the cycle and continues unabated.
1. Unexpected Developments
Part of this fluidity between races can be owed to the fact that there have been a series of unexpected political developments that have added a lot of opportunities for ambitious politicos.
This phenomenon began actually on Election Day, 2008. With the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the Presidency, it created the first two open-seats of Election 2010: the Senate seats being vacated by President-elect Obama and Vice-President-elect Biden. In Illinois, the prospect of an open Senate seat tempted Chicagoland Republican Congressman Mark Kirk, who might have been further encouraged to switch race because of the increasing fragile hold his party has on his suburban 10th district. Meanwhile, in Joe Biden’s Delaware, the prospect of an open Senate race lured Mike Castle, the Republican that has held down the state’s sole House seat for nearly two decades, to leave his safe House seat and run for the Senate.
Retirements have also played a role. While there have not been an unusually high number of retirement announcements, there have been some interesting ones that created political opportunities. Nearly every race in Kansas is open, for example, because Senator Sam Brownback (perhaps eyeing a future presidential run) is leaving the Senate to seek his state’s governorship. It’s been fourteen years since a Senate seat has come open in the state, which might explain why two of the state’s three GOP Congressman (Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt) elected to take the plunge and seek the promotion.
2. Party Preferences
One of the reasons the Florida Senate race proved so interesting in its early stages was the emergence of Marco Rubio as a viable challenger to Charlie Crist. The emergence of Rubio was notable because it ran so counter to the clear wishes of the NRSC, which caught ten types of Hell from the activist wing of the party for making an endorsement of Crist (which it then was forced to retract).
This has led to the delicate dance of the 2010 election cycle, where the party apparatus tries to advance the causes of their most electable candidates without being too overt in their interference.
Take Pennsylvania, where Congressman Jim Gerlach made a long-term commitment to seeking the Governorship of the Keystone State, only to backtrack and announce that he will seek re-election to the House, instead.
Now, part of this might be owed to the shifting political winds (more on this in a bit), but a big part of it was owed to the fact that there was a clear preference, both in public opinion polls and among the PA GOP party faithful, for another candidate–state Attorney General Tom Corbett. Deprived of any political oxygen, Gerlach made the calculation that even a 50/50 House race was preferable to a near-certain defeat to Corbett.
This also undoubtedly played a role in Ganley’s decision this week to jump from a Senate race to a House race. The NRSC, leery of formal endorsements in the wake of the Crist/Rubio debacle, still found ways to make it clear that their preferred candidate was not Ganley, but rather former Congressman (and consummate insider) Rob Portman. Indeed, Senator John Cornyn, the head of the NRSC, appeared at a November fundraiser on Portman’s behalf, little more than a week after the NRSC also promoted a fundraiser conducted by the U.S. Chamber PAC.
3. Climate Change
The shifting political winds have certainly played a role, as well, in particular on the Republican side.
Particularly in the wake of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, GOP spirits have been buoyed to the extent that several among the party faithful no longer believe that there is such a thing as an electoral victory being “out of their reach”, no matter how historically inhospitable the district.
Ryan Frazier might well be the exemplar of this phenomenon. Frazier, a young (32) and ambitious city councilman from Aurora, Colorado, announced a long-shot Republican bid for the U.S. Senate in early 2009. After about six months running for the U.S. Senate, he announced in October that he would instead challenge sophomore Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter.
Frazier was far from the favored candidate in the Senate field, especially after the entrance of former Lt. Governor Jane Norton on the GOP side. But the change in electoral climate had given Frazier a fallback position in the 7th district. The district leaned heavily in the favor of Democrats in 2008 (Obama carried the district 59-40 while Perlmutter was elected easily with 63% of the vote). But it is also a district that went just 51-48 for John Kerry in 2004, while at the same time re-electing a Republican Congressman (Bob Beauprez).
Perlmutter is still a considerable favorite in the race, but Frazier was able to take a sizeable statewide warchest (nearly half a million dollars) over to a House bid, and he will be considerably stronger than either Republican Perlmutter has defeated to date.
The shifting nature of partisan strength also, without question, played a role in the Ganley and Gerlach decisions, as well.
Ganley certainly has the highest wall to climb. Sophomore Rep. Betty Sutton has easily won both of her House bids, and her district went for both Kerry and Obama by doule digit margins. Furthermore, this is a district that has not seen a competitive House race in nearly two decades. Helping him scale that wall, however, will be the million-plus warchest he brings over from his Senate campaign, as well as the opportunity for continued self-funding.
Gerlach, on the other hand, still must contend with an inhospitable district (the PA-06th went for Barack Obama by a 58-41 margin) that only gave him a four point win over an underfunded Bob Roggio in 2008. The seemingly favorable GOP tide, however, might be the cushion necessary to help him avoid political defeat at the hands of a capable Democratic challenger (and there are a couple of them waiting in the wings).
Set nothing in stone in this 2010 election cycle. With so many variables at work, not only are the outcomes of the cycle very much in doubt, even the players on the scorecard are not etched in granite.
As they always used to say on television, stay tuned.
World
Sam Hamilton, Fish And Wildlife Chief, Dies While Skiing In Colorado
WASHINGTON — The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service died Saturday after suffering chest pains while skiing in Colorado. Sam Hamilton was 54.
The 30-year veteran of the agency, who assumed its top post in September, died in the af…
World
Mary Robbins’ Family Battling Cryogenic Freezing Corporations Over Rights To Her Head
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado family and an Arizona nonprofit are fighting in court over who gets the head of a woman who died this month, along with a $50,000 annuity she left behind.
At issue is whether 71-year-old Mary Robbins…
World
Jeff Cohen: I Support Terry Nichols’ Hunger Strike
As a lifelong progressive committed to nonviolence, I have little sympathy for a man who conspired in the most heinous act of domestic right-wing terrorism…
World
Steven Chu: Energy Investments Could Bring Jobs To Colorado, But China Has Leg Up
AURORA, Colo. — Promoting Colorado’s renewable energy industry is key to generating jobs and easing dependence on foreign oil – but the U.S. is lagging behind China in its investment in renewables, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu …
World
GM Spending $60,000 In Campaign Against Axed Dealerships
DENVER — General Motors Co. is launching a $60,000 radio and print ad campaign against a bill aimed at reimbursing Colorado dealerships terminated by GM and Chrysler Group LLC.
The bill would require carmakers to reimburse the dealers f…
World
Obama Housing Help Announcement: $1.5 Billion For Five Hardest-Hit States
LAS VEGAS — President Barack Obama is unveiling $1.5 billion in housing help, a boost timed to his appearance in the city with the worst foreclosure crisis in the nation.
Obama’s move, detailed by aides in advance of his town hall here …
World
Hydraulic Fracturing Regulations Sought By House Energy And Commerce Department
WASHINGTON — An oil and gas drilling technique that is becoming more widespread is drawing scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that it may pose a hazard to human health by tainting drinking water and harming the environment.
Top Democrats…
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Dianne Gleason: Dean and Rove in Boulder
My husband leaned over and said, “Hey, isn’t that Howard Dean?” It was, indeed, one of my idols of the Democratic Party. He was gracious and agreed to come by our table for a photo.
World
Jason Kay, Tiger Woods Gatorade Bottle Suspect, May Enter Guilty Plea To Federal Charges
DENVER Prosecutors say a man accused of replacing labels on dozens of Gatorade bottles in a supermarket with an image of Tiger Woods and his wife and the word “unfaithful” is considering pleading guilty.
Federal prosecutors say 38-year-old…
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