John McCain

Colorado right-wing warrior and former GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo told Dutch paper Handelsblad Sunday that he didn’t feel Sarah Palin was exactly president material. He said she’s not a big issues thinker and probably just doing good career business by “staying in the mix.” That was the nice part. Then he called her a “Republican.”

U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton reportedly spoke at a Colorado Restaurant Association Political Action Committee meeting in Denver Thursday and told the audience that the country needs a “workable immigration system.” The comments spurred Tom Tancredo’s American Legacy Alliance to send out the kind of watchdog-style press release that seems to increasingly follow Norton speaking events, this time coming not from a Democratic Party organization but from a champion of the state’s grass roots right.

In an interview with a Colorado Springs radio talk show host Tuesday, former lieutenant governor and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Jane Norton said she has never worked as a lobbyist. She was responding to callers looking to feel out her conservative credentials.

“On the lobbyist thing, I’ve not been a lobbyist,” she said.

In the wake of Scott Brown’s stunning U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, the New York Times this weekend sought to measure the evolving relationship between the mainstream GOP and the fired-up anti-establishment Tea Party movement, largely by recounting events that have taken place in Colorado over the past year. Kate Zernike builds her story around the rocky ride GOP candidates Scott McInnis and Jane Norton have endured as they have “strained to ride the Tea Party tiger,” as the headline to the story puts it. Not included in the Times report is the latest chapters in the story, which unfolded on the floor of the state Senate and in the Colorado blogoshere this week.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision freeing up corporate and union spending on elections portends sweeping changes to our already circus-like political campaigns. Is it a victory for free speech and cherished American-style liberty or a victory for the corrupting power of cash? It’s both.

Former Lt. Governor Jane Norton said she was spurred to try to win Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet’s U.S. Senate seat by what she sees as the dramatic expansion of government in the Obama era. In stump speeches, emails and interviews, she has vowed to work to cut federal spending as a way to end the “government takeover” of the private sector. One of the ways Norton proposes to trim spending is to eliminate the federal Department of Education. That dramatic proposal has predictably shocked members of the left-leaning Colorado politics-blogosphere, but it also surprised at least one conservative member of the small crowd gathered two weeks ago at the Lamplighter restaurant in Alamosa, where Norton reportedly first unveiled the proposal.

Aurora City Council member Ryan Frazier was touted by the local and national media as an excellent choice to run for the GOP against Democrat Michael Bennet for the U.S. Senate. Then U.S. Sen. John McCain made some phone calls and Frazier’s ambitions were put on hold. This week it’s deja vu all over [...]

Lang Sias is a Republican candidate running for U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s 7th District seat. Today Sen. John McCain sent out an email in support of Sias. It’s the kind of move you might imagine a flyboy Airforce guy would make that would drive the Army grunts on the ground crazy. Fact is, [...]

Friday night, self-identifying “average person” Dean Madere made his first real candidate appearance at the Ranch in Loveland, where the Tea Party of Northern Colorado and local Glenn Beck-born 9-12 groups hosted a well-attended “meet the candidates” forum. Running to challenge U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, excitable Madere prowled the stage in a distinctly nondesigner gray [...]

Some water experts warn the upper Colorado River is an endangered species if current residential growth patterns and water consumption patterns continue along the state’s Front Range, and they’re increasingly concerned proposed energy production on the Western Slope will accelerate its demise.

“I hope America can’t come here and trash out my country here to support the current [oil shale] industry,” said one Routt County commissioner.