PPP’s Jensen says poll methods in Colorado vindicated by past success

Public Policy Polling this week released survey results that showed likely 2012 voters in Colorado mostly held congressional Republicans to blame for the unpopular debt deal reached in Washington and that they so far strongly preferred President Obama to any likely Republican rival. Critics of the survey howled that left-leaning PPP had skewed the results by oversampling Democratic voters in the state. Yes, PPP surveyed more Democrats than it did either Republicans or Independents, all pretty much registered to vote in equal numbers in the state, Director Tom Jensen told the Colorado Independent, and that apparent oversampling is driven not by pollster ideological bias but by the self-selecting pattern established by Colorado citizens polled– and, he said, that’s why PPP numbers have been proven highly reliable over the last two elections.

Arrest warrant issued for embattled ex-Larimer GOP chair Carillo

As the 2012 race in Colorado’s always hotly contested 4th congressional district officially kicked off this week, Republicans in Larimer County, the most populous county in the district, are suffering through another humiliating chapter in the unfolding history of incompetence and corruption that plagued the county party under the recent direction of Larry Carillo. Police issued a felony theft arrest warrant for the former party chairman Tuesday, accusing him of stealing more than $17,000 to pay bills and gambling debts. Carillo is alleged to have unwittingly set up payments to a company created by the department of Homeland Security to fight online gambling and money laundering. Carillo paid more than $27,000 in online gambling debts while he was party chairman.

Decrying ‘photocopy journalism’, news watchdog spotlights Denver TV station merger

The sprawling greater-Denver metro region is in news-media crisis. In the information age, when there seems to be more and more to know, there is less and less being reported by the diminishing number of local mainstream news outlets here. So it comes as little surprise that media watchdog organization FreePress this week is highlighting the Denver news market as a negative example for the nation. The organization reports that, on top of shrinking newspaper reporting, the local TV news market is host to a “severe” form of the kind of sly consolidation that media corporations have been effecting across the country for nearly a decade. FreePress says this “covert consolidation,” where direct ownership is never transferred, is gaining momentum and that it skirts federal ownership laws and erodes market variety and competition.

PPP Poll: Colorado GOP Chair Wadhams right to flee

On Monday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams announced he was ending his bid for reelection. He said he didn’t want to lead a party dominated by inflexible Tea Party “nuts” who know little about how politics works. If new survey results are any measure, this may be Wadhams’ best political move in a long time. Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling reports Wednesday that the GOP civil war against “rinos” will kill the elephant in the Centennial state.

Colorado Pols names Ken Buck rape story second biggest story of the year

Political blog site Colorado Pols has named the Ken Buck “Buyer’s Remorse” rape story the second biggest story of 2010 in Colorado.

Top campaign story of the year? Ken Buck’s implosion

Politics took on surreal tones in Colorado this year, with relative unknowns elected to major offices while other candidates rose from the ranks of the unknown only to fall back to near anonymity. Earlier this week. Today, we roll out out top two, the order of which could easily be switched.

Top campaign stories of 2010–You had to see it to believe it

This was a year of surprises in Colorado politics, from the announcement that Governor Ritter would not seek re-election to the paper-thin victory of sitting Senator Michael Bennet over Tea Party favorite Ken Buck, Colorado went months without a dull…

Crazy Colorado election exchanges feed Hotline’s annual quote list

It will come as no surprise to local politics watchers that National Journal Hotline writers Wednesday turned up quotes from Colorado’s wacky midterm election campaigns to complete a list of the top political quotes of the year. U.S. Senate candidates Michael Bennet, Ken Buck and Andrew Romanoff made the list. So did gubernatorial candidates Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo. Of course they did!

In lengthy Statesman interview, Wadhams fends off critics, weighs future

The Colorado Statesman this week published a massive interview with Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams. The reading is good but, for the most part, the information he relates is not that new.

It’s a good read, and the…

A problem: Climate change remains mostly a political story

One of the standout moments in the last weeks of the heated U.S. Senate race in Colorado pitting Republican Ken Buck against Democrat Michael Bennet came when Buck appeared on the stump with famous climate-change-denying U.S. Senator James Inhofe,…