With two months left in the election cycle and swing-state Colorado still up for grabs, the national spotlight keeps flickering over state politicians, giving them opportunities to raise their profiles.
“Jared Polis is a far left-wing candidate but Kevin Lundberg is even farther out on the right,” said Brett Moore, campaign manager for Boulder businessman Eric Weissmann, who lost in a neck-and-neck Republican primary last night to Christian-right state Senator Kevin Lundberg.
Depending on how things go in Colorado’s primaries June 26 and in the general election in November, this will either be the year that congressional challengers were able to buy their way into office or the year in which challengers spent millions of their own money only to say in the end that they gave it their best and lost anyway.
DENVER– Opposition to a gay-rights civil union bill defeated here last month was directed in large part by Colorado Springs-based evangelical empire Focus on the Family and the Colorado Catholic Conference. The Christian-right campaign, however, also reenergized a leading anti-gay rights activist organization of the 1990s, influential rough-and-tumble group Colorado for Family Values.
A unanimous federal appeals court ruling issued in Boston today found the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional in that it discriminates against same-sex couples. The ruling is a victory for the Obama administration and supporters of both gay rights and states’ rights and a blow for the national anti-gay marriage movement and for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who filed a controversial and critics say confused amicus brief in the case last year in support of the embattled federal law.
Colorado legislative debate this year on education, gay rights and women’s health policies reflected larger well-worn national political back-and-forths, where showy speeches on immigration “illegals,” “traditional marriage” and religious freedom often sidetrack efforts to serve the public good.
DENVER– The House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday evening to advance a state civil unions bill that would grant legal recognition to same-sex couples. The bill died in the same Republican-controlled committee last year but on Thursday won the deciding vote of Loveland Republican Rep. B.J. Nikkel.
On the one hand, you have Jared Polis, an openly gay, socially progressive multimillionaire as the incumbent Democrat in Colorado’s Second Congressional District. On the other hand you have two very different Republicans running for the chance to run against Polis. You have current Colorado State Senator Kevin Lundberg, an arch social conservative who has been among the legislature’s leaders in fighting against civil unions legislation.
DENVER– At a state Senate committee hearing on a same-sex civil unions bill held here Wednesday, a series of witnesses battered Republican lawmakers opposed to the bill, suggesting they were confused in their ideology, nonstrategic in their thinking and enslaved to an outdated anti-gay “hateful bigoted mantra.” The harsh criticism came not from Democrats and their allies but from Republicans testifying in favor of the bill on the basis of conservative principles and out of partisan interest in the future success of the party.
Christopher Hitchens died yesterday of cancer. He was a learned and caustic cultural critic who wrote for the popular press and who was at his best when eviscerating the hypocrisy and pretense of people in power. He famously hated organized religion. It’s easy to imagine that, had Hitchens ever trained his talents on Colorado politics, he might have reserved his best stuff for the small-town Christian moralizing and persecutorial grandstanding that erupts in regular intervals from certain corners of the state capitol.
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