The historic administration building at Colorado State University. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

“I think the best way to describe the feeling around here today is surprise,” said CSU spokesman Brad Bohlander. “People were not expecting this.”

Penley resigned the presidency late Wednesday afternoon via a letter to the CSU Board of Governors’ chairman, Doug Jones. In his letter Penley said he was resigning to pursue other, unspecified leadership opportunities in higher education. In an interview with The Colorado Independent Wednesday night, Jones said Penley chose to leave CSU on his own accord and that he still had support on the board. But the unexpected nature of Penley’s midsemester departure has left the campus community abuzz with rumors — some that Penley was forced out, others that he wanted to lead a better-funded institution and might be offered a position in President-elect Barack Obama’s new administration. Whatever the reason, news of Penley’s departure dropped like a bomb on Thursday with many of his one-time critics offering him good luck on his new endeavors.

“I’m surprised at President Penley’s resignation,” said Sen. Steve Johnson, R- Larimer County, a Joint Budget Committee member who has been a vocal critic of Penley in recent years. “I appreciate all he has done to position CSU for a better future in difficult times for higher education in our state and his contributions will be long appreciated by alumni, students, and Colorado citizens.”

Transitioning to new leadership
With Penley’s resignation effective at the end of the month, all eyes have turned to CSU’s popular academic provost, Tony Frank, whom the board named as CSU’s interim president as it conducts a nationwide search. Although Jones said a full and thorough search will be conducted, he indicated that Frank, who has been at CSU for 16 years, will seriously be considered for the top job.

“Everyone has been very impressed with the leadership qualities of Dr. Frank,” Jones said.

A search committee will be formed in coming months, and a new president might not be announced until well into 2009. On Thursday CSU administrators said no immediate changes will be made to the university’s structure or operation under Frank’s leadership.

“Classes are continuing, school and business are proceeding as normal,” Bohlander said. “Dr. Frank is working hard to ensure a smooth transition for the students and the university and a large impact should not be felt by the students. Everything will continue as normal as that is Dr. Frank’s first order of business. I don’t foresee any major changes being made in the near future.”

The challenges facing the new leader of CSU in coming years will admittedly be tough as the state heads into an economic recession that will most likely significantly decrease the amount of public funding being made available to the state’s higher-education institutions. It took CSU nearly two fiscal years to recover from the 2002 recession, which forced major budget cuts to higher education in Colorado. With few options to increase state revenue since 2002, Penley increased tuition and mandatory fees to levels that raised concern among students and some longtime professors.

But with few options to fund higher education in Colorado beyond increasing student tuition, some state lawmakers said they are concerned CSU’s new leadership might be faced with tough decisions.

“Certainly, I wish the best for CSU’s new leadership because these are trying times for the state,” said Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins. “That could have been the impetus for President Penley to leave. He might have wanted to look for greener pastures in a state that will fund higher education at more sustainable levels.”

Bacon, who has been a Penley supporter over the years, said he is aware that some within the CSU community had concerns about funding shifts made by Penley since 2003 that redirected state funding away from academic colleges to be used for administrative functions and an enhanced effort to bring in more federal research dollars.

“The faculty and some students are suggesting that the university needs to invest more into the classroom and into the undergraduate education,” Bacon said. “I think that the new leadership should be aware of those concerns.”

Some longtime professors who were critical of Penley’s shift in funding priorities said Thursday they are hopeful CSU’s new leadership will bring a level of transparency to the university operations that some felt was not present under Penley.

“There must be more openness at every level of the university to the point that every (department) should be willing to have an open audit of the books to find out where the money is being spent,” said C.W. Miller, a biology professor who has been at CSU for 40 years. “The students, faculty and staff must feel more a part of this University rather than being lead or driven by a few.”

Rep. John Kefalas gives a high-five to Larimer County Democratic Chair Adam Bowan before taking the stage to make his victory speech on Election night. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Kefalas won the seat Tuesday night by a landslide, winning 59 percent of the vote compared to McCluskey’s 41 percent. The men battled for the same seat in 2004, when McCluskey won by 500 votes, and sparred again in 2006, when it was Kefalas who ran to victory with 53 percent of the vote.

“To me, this is an affirmation of the good work I have done for the people of Fort Collins and Northern Colorado during the last two years in Legislature,” Kefalas said Tuesday night after learning his victory was imminent. “We knocked on many doors this year and hit the ground hard. I think the extra effort is paying off. I also think it’s proof you can run a 100 percent, issues-based campaign.”

HD 52 covers the eastern and northern part of Fort Collins and is in many ways symbolic of Colorado’s growing nature as a swing state. Unlike HD 53, the other state legislative district in Fort Collins that has been in Democratic hands for decades, HD 52 has a more moderate voting block, which translates into closer elections and more attention from outside political groups. Although the district’s total registration numbers have reduced significantly in recent years, HD 52 remains essentially one-third Republican, one-third Democratic and one-third unaffiliated, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Targeted by both parties this year, the race saw the influx of spending by so-called 527 groups that flooded the race withtens of thousands of dollars against McCluskey, a former representative who served two terms in the state House. McCluskey, who was not helped by outside independent groups this year, contributed $65,000 to his own campaign, or nearly 60 percent of his total financing, according to Secretary of State records. McCluskey did not return a phone call for comment Tuesday morning.

In addition to the outside spending that aided his election bid, Kefalas was able to outraise McCluskey throughout the election, bringing in nearly $100,000 throughout the cycle.

Kefalas, who worked to strengthen uranium mining regulations in Colorado — which helped stop a proposed mine in northern Colorado earlier this year — and to reduce the cost of textbooks for college students during his first legislative term in Denver, said his next term will focus on transportation and health-care policy.

“I am working to establish the Colorado Railroad Authority which will help bring a 21st century, multi-modal transportation system to Colorado,” Kefalas said Tuesday night. “I also will continue my work with the Governor’s Office to bring back the earned income tax credit here in Colorado.”

U.S. Rep.-elect Betsy Markey works her way toward the stage to make her victory speech after defeating Rep. Marilyn Musgrave Tuesday night. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

“We’re ecstatic,” said Ed Yoon, the Colorado spokesman for DOW. “We came into this race in July when many pundits were calling it a Republican-leaning race and were saying Marilyn Musgrave could not be beat. We saw that she was vulnerable and so we came in and campaigned hard. We’re happy she got trounced.”

Musgrave lost her third re-election bid to Markey on Tuesday night by a 57-to-43 margin — a gap that was much wider than most pundits and observers expected. Although it’s impossible to know how much impact any one independent group can have on an election, Musgrave herself pointed to the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund as the reason she was polling close to Markey during a discussion with reporters after the first debate between Markey and herself.

When asked at the time why the race was so tight, Musgrave quickly answered: “Because of 527s and 501c4s that have thrown $10 million of garbage against me. I have to break through that when I run again and do the best I can to present my case to the citizens of the 4th District.”

Working to promote a socially conservative agenda after being elected to Congress in 2002, including a divisive attempt to pass a federal ban on gay marriage, Musgrave quickly became a target for many wealthy Colorado progressives in recent years including Rep.-elect Jared Polis, Fort Collins billionaire philanthropist Pat Stryker and Adobe founder Tim Gill, who founded the 527 Coloradans for Life in 2006. Coloradans for Life spent more than $1 million against Musgrave in a failed attempt to unseat her at the time.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave at the final CD 4 debate in Windsor. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Musgrave sat on the Natural Resources Committee until 2006 and most recently sat on the Agricultural Committee — both of which deal with environmental legislation.

“To us, she was one of a select number of congressional members who sat on the committees that were important to us and who had one of the worst voting records of anyone for things that we care about,” Yoon said.

Although mostly targeting Musgrave, the DOWAF Colorado effort included $400,000 spent working to elect Democratic Rep. Mark Udall against Republican Bob Schaffer and to help elect Barack Obama president. In total the group spent $2 million in Colorado and sent 41 staffers to the state for the election, Yoon said.

Colorado State University President Larry Penley gives his fifth annual State of the University address in Fort Collins in September. Penley spoke about the need to continue the university

^{Copyright 2008, The Colorado Independent}

Larry Penley, the president and chancellor of Colorado State University, unexpectedly resigned his position Wednesday via a letter to the system’s Board of Governors, effectively ending his five-year reign at the state’s second-largest public university.

His resignation, effective Nov. 30, comes two months after an investigation by The Colorado Independent highlighted Penley’s efforts to shift state funds away from the university’s academic colleges and library system while injecting cash to the school’s athletics department and nearly tripling the budget of his own Office of the President. The investigation sparked criticisms and concern from longtime CSU faculty members and state lawmakers, who questioned Penley’s shift of public funding to nonacademic functions.

In his Nov. 5 letter [PDF] to board chairman Doug Jones, Penley said he was resigning mid-semester to pursue other, unspecified leadership roles in higher education.

“I believe that my leadership has contributed to significant progress for Colorado State University,” Penley wrote. “But, I want to be free to pursue other leadership positions in higher education. This resignation will allow me the flexibility to do so.”

Rumors that the board was ready to ask Penley to resign have swirled through university faculty and administrative ranks for days, and the CSU Board of Governors Evaluation Committee met in a closed executive session on Monday. At the time, CSU officials said the committee was meeting to evaluate the performance of one or more of the CSU employees who report directly to the board, including the general counsel, the auditor and Penley. On Wednesday night, Jones told The Colorado Independent that Penley resigned of his own accord.

“Someone asked me if this was a surprise and my response is, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,” Jones said. “The life span of any president at a university is usually around three to five years and [Penley] was at CSU for five years. I think he got to a point where he felt that he had achieved what he could at CSU and that he would be better able to pursue other opportunities if he wasn’t working full-time with his duties as president.”

When asked if Penley had lost support among the governing board, Jones said, “Every board member feels differently about things and has different needs and demands about what they want to see on different aspects of the operation but overall he still had our support.”

Students walk and ride their way down the middle of the historic Oval on the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Under the terms of a severance agreement, Penley will be paid $389,000 for one year of his remaining contract with CSU, which expires in 2010, said Michele McKinney, the CSU system public relations director in Denver. CSU’s Academic Provost Tony Frank will serve as interim president until a search committee replaces Penley.

Penley’s resignation comes one week after John Lincoln, Penley’s top executive vice president and right-hand man, announced his retirement from the university. Lincoln, a good friend of Penley’s dating back to their tenure at Arizona State University, was given a $70,000 separation package and immediately signed a consulting contract with the university to strengthen “public affairs and communications.” The consulting contract can pay him up to $10,000 a month.

Tripling his budget, increased tuition and student fees

During his five years at CSU, Penley restructured many university operations, including a 212 percent funding growth increase to the president’s office and a 135 percent increase in state funding to the school’s Athletics Department, according to an analysis of university documents by The Colorado Independent in September.

The increase to the budget of the president’s office was nearly three-and-a-half times the 66 percent increase that Penley’s predecessor, former CSU President Al Yates, employed during the final five years of his tenure. Penley’s budget included large salary raises to some top administrators, a doubling of the number of vice president positions within his office and a beefed up public relations campaign.

The result was a dramatic increase in the amount of money being used for nonacademic purposes at CSU. Meanwhile, student tuition increased by 52 percent, mandatory student fees rose by more than 70 percent and the number of credit hours taught by tenured professors shrunk, while class sizes grew.

None of Penley’s efforts suggested legal improprieties, but all were largely made with little, if any, public input — and without the oversight of state lawmakers, who assign the money to Colorado’s higher-education coffers.

In September, administrators defended the tuition increase and funding shifts, saying it was part of a larger effort to rebrand the university as a worldwide leader in renewable energy research, to attract more private and federal research dollars, and to help cut its dependence on state funding, which is susceptible to economic downturns.

Among other efforts, Penley created a nonprofit center at CSU aimed at streamlining the university’s research to the commercial market and to attract additional research dollars to CSU. Penley’s effort indeed increased the number of federal and private research grants that came to CSU since 2003, especially in the area of biomedical sciences, cancer research and global sustainability. 

Concerns over the changing core mission
Although the additional research and new direction was heralded by some, many longtime faculty members and state lawmakers expressed concern over a diminished undergraduate education amid higher tuition costs for Colorado taxpayers, along with a change to the university’s core mission to offer an affordable education to the state’s working class families.

Political science professor John Straayer is one such faculty member.

On Wednesday night, Straayer said the general direction of the university has been a concern among a growing number of people but could not say if the resignation was forced by the board or not.

“It’s no secret that I have been uncomfortable with the direction of the university recently (but) I wish Dr. Penley the best as he pursues other leadership challenges,” Straayer said, adding that he has complete confidence in Frank, the new interim president. “This institution has been a wonderful university for the state of Colorado and it has served working families well for more than a century. I hope that the new leadership, when it arrives, will take stock of that and make sure that tradition continues.”

The national search for Penley’s replacement will begin in the next several months, Jones said.

Click here for links to The Colorado Independent’s September series.

Newly resigned CSU President Larry Penley (Photo/Colorado State University)

Larry Penley, the president and chancellor of Colorado State University, unexpectedly resigned his position Wednesday via a letter to the system’s Board of Governors, effectively ending his five-year reign at the state’s second-largest public university. 

The resignation came weeks after The Colorado Independent published an investigative series highlighting the decisions made during Larry Penley’s tenure to increase administrative and athletics funding during the last five years.

“I want to be free to pursue other leadership positions in higher education,” Penley said in a letter to the board chair Doug Jones. “This resignation will allow me the flexibility to do so.”

Rumors have been floating among university faculty ranks for a number of days that Penley was going to be asked to resign. In a public statement released through the university, the Board chair Doug Jones said:

“Today, President Larry Edward Penley announced his resignation as President of Colorado State University and Chancellor of the CSU System. Dr. Penley has served Colorado State University for five years with capable leadership and ambition helping to place CSU on the map of preeminent institutions. He has helped, in collaboration with the faculty and others, to position Colorado State University as a leader in research and education in Colorado and the nation. The Board is grateful for his leadership and direction in improving the position of the university in biomedical sciences, infectious disease, and global environmental sustainable solutions, particularly the establishment of the new School of Global Environmental Sustainability. The entire Board of Governors wishes Larry success in his future pursuits.”

In September, The Colorado Independent published a three-part investigative series on Penley’s tenure at CSU raising questions by faculty and state legislators on the probity of a directive to shift millions of dollars in state funds away from the academic colleges and library system, while beefing up the school’s athletics department and nearly tripling the budget of his own Office of the President.

Read The Colorado Independent Thursday for an in-depth report.

John McCain made a gracious speech to supporters Tuesday night in Arizona, where he congratulated his Democratic presidential opponent, Barack Obama, for a good campaign that has made political history. Colorado Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer called his opponent, Democratic Rep. Mark Udall, to congratulate him for his victory before making a thank-you speech to his supporters.

Betsy Markey celebrates her victory on Election night. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Don’t expect the same from incumbent Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in the 4th Congressional District in Colorado. After Democrat Betsy Markey’s victory became apparent Tuesday night, the Markey campaign expected to hear from Musgrave. It didn’t happen.

“We exchanged phone numbers, but I haven’t heard from her,” Markey said after 11 p.m. Tuesday, following her victory speech in Fort Collins.

When asked if she were going to call Musgrave, Markey said: “No. Usually the loser of the race is the one who reaches out.”

Musgrave, who was soundly defeated by Markey Tuesday night by a 57-to-43 margin, made a brief appearance before supporters at Jackson’s Bar and Grill in Greeley at about 7 p.m. to say votes were being counted and that she was hopeful. After it was apparent she had lost the election, Musgrave left the building without thanking her supporters.

Republicans will remember that in 2006, when Democrat Angie Paccione narrowly lost to Musgrave, she didn’t call to offer congratulations either. But Paccioine, posting on the blog Coloradopols.com, said Musgrave wouldn’t divulge her phone number at the time, making it hard to make the call.

Rep.-elect Betsy Markey waves to members of her staff during her victory speech after defeating Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

FORT COLLINS — Talk about a breakout year and a historic election in Colorado. Not only did Barack Obama become the first African-American to win the presidency, but Betsy Markey overran Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave to become the first Democrat elected to Colorado’s 4th Congressional District in 36 years.

Markey secured an overwhelming win in one of the most closely watched and politically important congressional races in the country Tuesday night, 57 percent to 43 percent.

For months, politicos and national media swapped rumors and delved into a never-ending barrage of political predictions — some favored Markey to best Musgrave while others thought the voters in the 4th, where Republicans hold a 13 percent registration advantage, were just not yet ready to elect a Democrat.

They were and they did.

“What can I say — I think voters were absolutely ready for change, and a lot of people came out, and it showed,” Markey said after her victory speech. “I was very surprised by the margin, very surprised. I thought it was going to be much closer.”

Despite a political climate that favored Democrats in 2008, Markey faced huge challenges coming into the campaign. Early internal polling showed the never-elected former Senate staffer had zero name recognition outside her northern Colorado hometown of Fort Collins and was unknown among most voters in the 4th, including Democrats in surrounding cities, including Greeley. Ramping up that recognition would be difficult, especially in a district as geographically large as the 4th which encompasses Colorado’s Eastern Plains and the north Front Range.

But the same polling also had a bright spot for Markey, a window where victory could be seen — intense voter dissatisfaction with Musgrave.

Reworking an image

After three terms in Congress, Musgrave had made a name for herself as a socially conservative politician who was best known for leading a very public fight to ban gay marriage. Voting with the Republican Party more than 93 percent of the time, Musgrave spoke out against abortion, trumpeted gun rights and decried taxes.

Two woman cheer for the news coming from the big screen at the Democratic celebration party in Fort Collins. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

But times and politics can change, even in the traditionally Republican 4th CD, and Musgrave’s support for socially conservative wedge issues did not come without a price. After four years, many moderate voters viewed the Fort Morgan resident as radical and out of touch. Her re-election margin in 2006 was less than 3 percentage points.

So, in 2007, while Markey drove the length of the district hitting every county fair and backyard barbecue she could find, Musgrave set out on a mission to rewrite her political persona. She began walking Main Street in Fort Collins, Greeley, Loveland and Longmont — cities where her support had faded — portraying herself as a moderate Republican more concerned with the economy than gay marriage. She teamed with Democrats on legislation to protect Rocky Mountain National Park and to keep the military out of Pinon Canyon in Southwestern Colorado. She broke ranks with President Bush and voted against a number of his presidential vetoes, including the Farm Bill.

But her conservative reputation dating back to the early 1990s on the Fort Morgan School Board could not be undone in one election cycle, and indeed Musgrave struggled to shake her unfavorable rating among many voters. Despite efforts to change her persona, limited public polling throughout the race showed Musgrave trailing the unknown Markey for the length of the campaign.

When in doubt, go negative

Faced with flat polling and an inability to fundraise, Musgrave turned to negative campaigning against Markey — a strategy that was overwhelmingly effective in her first three congressional races.

In 2002, Musgrave successfully labeled her opponent, former Colorado Senate President Stan Matsunaka, “Taxanaka” and warned of increased taxation if he were to win. It worked. In 2006, Musgrave took advantage of a bankruptcy in Democrat Angie Paccione‘s past and ran a successful campaign convincing voters she could not be trusted with the nation’s finances. It worked.

But this year it was harder for Musgrave to sell her claims. Markey, a small-business owner and former field director to Sen. Ken Salazar, lacked a voting record and had a clean personal history. Not to be deterred, Musgrave’s campaign raised questions about government contracts Markey’s family business, Syscom Systems, received after Markey was employed by Salazar but failed to provide proof for the allegations saying it was Markey’s responsibility to prove her own innocence. After the allegations, Salazar called Musgrave “an agent of hate,” and reporting by The Fort Collins Coloradoan showed the Government Services Agency, led by Republican appointees made by President Bush, could not find a conflict of interest between Syscom’s contracts and Markey’s service under Salazar.

Representative-elect Betsy Markey works her way toward the stage to make her victory speech after defeating Rep. Marilyn Musgrave Tuesday night. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Taking the advice of frustrated Democrats in the 4th CD who felt Matsunaka and Paccione lost to Musgrave because they failed to publicly respond to her attacks, Markey wasted no time responding to each negative ad Musgrave threw out with one of her own. At every level of the campaign Markey jumped head first into the mud pit, slinging dirt at Musgrave as fast as it was thrown at her.

Markey called Musgrave out for sponsoring legislation to cut taxes on precious metals collections — an effort that if passed would directly benefit Musgrave’s husband — and worked to tie Musgrave to the unpopular Republican Party. During their final debate, neither Musgrave or Markey held back and the two spent most of the hour-long discussion pounding on the other.

Despite enjoying relative fundraising success, Markey was greatly helped by the nearly $3 million in outside spending by independent groups that relentlessly attacked Musgrave in television ads and through targeted mailers. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, seeing Musgrave’s weakness, entered the race spending more than $760,000 in the final weeks.

To counter the DCCC, the National Republican Campaign Committee threw more than $1 million into the race too, but amid tightening contests around the country and bad polling numbers for Musgrave, the NRCC pulled out of the 4th late last month. In the end, the barrage was too much for Musgrave.

As the newest Colorado Democrat elected from a traditionally conservative district, Markey will no doubt face Republican challengers in the future and do it with a voting record. But unseating congressional incumbents is hard, and defeating first-term incumbents is even harder.

Markey, rightly so, wasn’t thinking beyond Election Day on Tuesday night.

“I’m going to catch up on some sleep,” she said after he acceptance speech in front of about 500 people at the Hilton in Fort Collins. “It’s been a very long campaign. It has seemed like a lifetime.”

(Photo/Colorado Luis)

Reports are streaming out of Weld County that Latino voters are leaving polling places without voting because voter information, including ballots, had not been translated into Spanish and because of a lack of translators available at polling places.

Lindsey Hodel, organizing director with the Colorado Progressive Coalition, said her group has been speaking with Weld County clerk Steve Moreno’s office for weeks over concerns they had that many Spanish-speaking voters would not be able to vote unless ballots were printed in Spanish.

Their concerns have been realized, Hodel said.

“Some people are bringing their children in to help translate the ballot, but others are showing up by themselves,” Hodel said. “And, with less than half of the vote centers having bilingual translators on hand, there are only a couple of options for people. They can wait for a translator to be sent out from the county office, which our studies show can take two hours, you can vote on the English ballot that you don’t understand or you can leave and come back later. Unfortunately, a number of people are choosing to leave.”

The federal government only requires clerks to print bilingual ballots if more than 5 percent of the total population speaks a given language. During the last census report in 2000, less than 5 percent of Weld County spoke Spanish, but numbers have grown considerably since then.

In fact, Moreno said he believes Weld County today is probably above the 5 percent threshold of Spanish-speaking residents but he chose to use translators, which is within his legal right as a clerk, and not to print dual-language ballots out of an issue of fairness.

“First of all, I am a Latino and I am not out to disenfranchise anyone here,” Moreno said in an interview with The Colorado Independent Tuesday. “Second, we are within the law. If we put Spanish-speaking ballots out there that would be unfair because we have a large number of German voters here in Weld and we have a large number of Samoan voters here. We can’t open the box to one group but not another. There would be an outcry.”

Moreno said he has staffed Spanish-speaking translators at eight of the 34 polling locations in Weld County — each targeted at areas with a high Spanish-speaking population — and said he has a number of translators in his office who he is ready to dispense at the first sign of need.

“We have not got any reports here from voters or from (voter’s rights) groups,” said Moreno, who since coming to office in Weld County has created Spanish-speaking translator positions in each of his county offices and the DMV. “If we had reports we would be glad to address them, but we haven’t received any reports.”

But Hodel said Moreno has not made enough translators available to handle the large influx of Spanish-speaking voters in Weld County who are only given their lunch break to vote and who often come to the polls at the same time.

“Steve Moreno made a judgment call, and it was wrong,” Hodel said. “We think the result will be many people who don’t get to vote today.”

A sign directs voters on the campus of Colorado State University on Election Day. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Standing on the Colorado State University (CSU) plaza Tuesday afternoon helping a group of college students pass out signs and stickers, McCluskey told The Colorado Independent that he thinks it will be close — especially considering the large number of independent groups that have come into the district to support Kefalas.

“They’ve been hitting me hard,” said McCluskey, a moderate Republican from Fort Collins. “Do you know how many independent expenditures have been used against John? None.”

McCluskey and Kefalas are familiar foes. The men battled for the HD 52 seat in 2004 when McCluskey won by 500 votes. In 2006, it was Kefalas who ran to victory, winning with 53 percent of the vote. Covering the eastern and northern part of Fort Collins, HD 52 is in many ways symbolic of Colorado’s growing nature as a swing state. Unlike HD 53, the other state legislative district in Fort Collins that has been in Democratic hands for decades, HD 52 has a more moderate voting block, which translates into closer elections and more attention from outside political groups.

When asked if the sour Republican brand in 2008 and the unpopularity of President George Bush made campaigning tough this year, even for a moderate such as himself, McCluskey said things could have been worse.

Volunteers pass out Bob McCluskey signs on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

During the campaign that is seen by many observers as one of the true toss-ups in Colorado, McCluskey, a former Fort Collins City Council member who served two terms in the state House, touted his work to pass legislation aimed at fighting against police impersonation and Internet predators, as well as his work to create a hospital report card to help people better choose health care facilities.

Finishing his first term at the capitol, Kefalas campaigned on his work to strengthen uranium-mining regulations in Colorado — which helped stop a proposed mine in Northern Colorado earlier this year — as well as his efforts to lower the cost of textbooks for college students and to help the poor. Kefalas worked with Gov. Bill Ritter’s son, August Ritter, as well as other CSU students to pass the textbook legislation this spring.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave at the final CD 4 debate in Windsor. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

In fact, during the last six days, Musgrave has collected $85,050 in donations, nearly twice as much as her opponent, Democrat Betsy Markey, who collected $47,050 during the same period, according to FEC campaign finance reports both campaigns filed this week.

By federal law, campaigns are required to disclose all donations larger than $1,000 in the final days of the election. FEC documents show Musgrave, who failed to out-raise Markey during the last three campaign finance filing periods, has brought in large donations primarily from conservative political action committees and other Republican members of Congress. Markey, who has enjoyed more fundraising success than any other Democrat to challenge Musgrave for the 4th Congressional District seat, also received large donations from Democratic incumbent members of Congress as well as progressive political action committees.

“It may be like a year-end house cleaning,” said Colorado State University political science professor John Straayer. “You got some left over bucks, you shoot it over to another campaign. Impact? Well, always some, I suppose, but with so many already voted, others with minds made up, and with voter fatigue with ads, I am not inclined to see a huge impact.”

Markey outraised Musgrave by a 2-1 margin during the first two weeks of October, according to campaign finance records filed with the FEC last week. Markey, a former Senate staffer, raised an average of $25,546 per day between Oct. 1 and Oct. 15, far outpacing Musgrave, who collected $10,001 per day during the same period.

The fundraising to Musgrave from other members of Congress this late in the game is somewhat surprising considering that the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled $400,000 in TV airtime out of the race during the final week, and that a leaked GOP “death list” of seats the party believes are lost or are close to lost includes Musgrave’s name.

The race between Musgrave and Markey has become extraordinarily negative in recent weeks, kicking into high gear after Musgrave’s campaign released a new ad that implies Markey could face jail time for contracts her family business, Syscom Systems, received after Markey became employed with Sen. Ken Salazar’s office. After the ad went up, Salazar called Musgrave “an agent of hate,” and Markey has called for a public apology.

Markey’s campaign has thrown its own mud at Musgrave, running negative ads throughout the campaign. It has also tried to link Musgrave to a convicted executive at Spectrum Marketing Services Inc., a firm Musgrave paid $30,200 for production of yard signs, campaign brochures and business cards.

The latest FEC filings don’t include independent expenditures from outside groups, which historically have been a factor in 4th CD elections. In fact, outside groups have kicked in nearly $2 million this year, primarily for negative campaign ads against Musgrave. The environmental group Defenders of Wildlife has already spent more than $1.4 million for a negative advertising blitz against Musgrave, and smaller buys were made by VoteVets.org and the 527 group Majority Action. In addition, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has poured more than $650,000 into the race in recent weeks, including media buys throughout the last seven days.

A recent analysis by The Fort Collins Coloradoan showed political parties and interest groups have spent more than $3.6 million in the 4th CD this year, the third-highest rate of any House district in the country.