Scott Gessler

Gessler revealed the proposed changes when asked by the Post how he would view requests to reduce the nearly $100,000 in fines amassed by the Larimer County Republican Party for failing to file disclosure reports – a story broken by the Fort Collins Coloradoan this week.

Larry Carillo, former Larimer County Republican Party chairman, told the Coloradoan he just didn’t open certified letters from the SOS because he assumed they would just tell him he needed to file reports, something he was clearly unwilling to do.

“If someone is willfully blowing it off, yes, that merits a higher fine,” Gessler told the Post. Gessler represented a group called the Colorado Independent Auto Dealers Association that had its fines for failing to file reports dropped from more than $504,000 to just under $8,500 – a story that came up during his campaign last fall but failed to gain traction with voters.

And Gessler also represented a group called the Colorado League of Taxpayers, incorporated by Republican operative Scott Shires, that was hit with a more than $7,000 fine for failing to register its electioneering activities in a 2008 Garfield County commissioners race that pitted oil and gas interests against two Democrats who ultimately lost. Fines in that case grew to more than $8,000 and went unpaid for years.

Shires was the original registered agent for Western Tradition Partnership, a conservative, pro-energy nonprofit active for years in a slew of elections across the West. But Gessler’s law firm, which earlier this year he tried to continue working for even while serving as secretary of state, took over the registration of Western Tradition, which was sharply criticized for its campaign tactics during the past election cycle.

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When The New York Times posed that question in Estes Park a few days ago, the answers they got indicated that just maybe the body politic has warmed to the game.

In the passage below, two women — one Republican and one Democrat — talk about how this past election cycle reignited their passions for politics.

Both said this election, whether out of defeat or victory, was a renewed call to action and engagement — an alarm signal to push harder than ever in support of steadfast convictions. Many other voters, in a post-election swing through this deeply divided, fought-over county, expressed a similar thought: election over, game on.

“It’s a call to participation,” said Ms. Adams, 49, a yoga instructor. “I’m planning to just show up and see what I can do. Now more than ever, we have to just keep showing up. Obama needs us on his team.”

Ms. Craddock, 58, a small-business owner, said her energy was over-brimming, too, pointing full speed ahead toward reversing everything that Mr. Obama and Democrats have done in the last two years.

“I think this is going to end up probably being the best thing in American history that’s ever happened,” she said. “We have awakened.”

The Times, which produced a long series on Larimer County voters prior to the election, says the county mirrored the state in voting this year.

What will it mean for the nation to have a divided Congress? What will it mean to have people so deeply divided over issues such as health care and federal spending? Well, it may not be all bad, this small slice of America seems to say:

Many voters here, interviewed on a recent gray and frigid day threatening snow at 7,500 feet in the mountains, said they thought that gridlock in Washington and a stalemate over partisan politics were possible outcomes with a divided government and a passionately aroused, divided population at home.

But while some said that gridlock and a failure by the Republicans to compromise with Democrats in solving problems would lead to a backlash in two years, others said the opposite — that failure to push vehemently enough on Republican promises like repealing the health care overhaul would be enough to replenish voter anger and lead to a second wave of change.

“What’s crucial is that they listen,” said Annyce Stone, a college professor and Republican who was working on her laptop at a downtown coffee shop. “If they don’t listen, I think they’ll be voted out.”

Others said that divided government might not be so bad. Amy Hamrick, 34, a Democrat and the owner of Kind Coffee, a roaster and coffee house on Estes Park’s main street, said history made her optimistic about the next two years.

“In the Clinton and Reagan eras, when the power balanced out a little bit, they actually ended up figuring more stuff out,” she said.

Analyzing the jobs report for 2009, Moore predicted with job losses primarily in the urban centers of the district, U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, a Democrat, could see those numbers chained to her by opponent Republican state Rep. Cory Gardner. Moore said with Republicans working to link congressional candidates to Barack Obama and the state of the economy, Markey will struggle to contrast herself with Gardner.

Pointing to Wednesday’s Department of Labor and Statistics release of 2009′s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages report, the Coloradoan extrapolated job loss numbers for the district, finding that non-farm jobs decreased in 16 counties 3.7 percent between 2008 and 2009. That is in comparison to job losses across the nation of 4.6 percent and 4.7 percent in the state over the same period of time.

The data showed that more urbanized Weld and Larimer counties lost 4.2 percent of jobs between 2008 and 2009, while the rural parts of the district lost only 1.2 percent of their jobs.

Whether the loss of 9,500 jobs is still being felt in the district in 2010, and whether Markey is tied to Obama’s White House, may provide an indication as to how voters will place their allegiances in the urban centers that largely were Markey’s stronghold come Nov. 2.

Bennet Campaign manager Craig Hughes told the Denver Post that the voting signaled a victory for his candidate as well. Hughes said he expected Romanoff’s lead to be considerably larger because he viewed the caucus as a gauge of support among Democratic Party activists, many of whom had worked with or voted for Romanoff in the past.

Bennet said that “as someone who isn’t a political insider, tonight’s support is especially meaningful.”

That sentiment was a whisper amid the cheers echoing in Romanoff country last night. While his campaign staff and supporters celebrated, Romanoff was clearly not entirely buoyed by the vote totals. He answered questions from reporters and then returned to quietly studying the tally sheets. In a state where the mountains are more red than blue, Romanoff needs strong support in deep-navy Boulder and populous-purple Larimer.

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Tom Lucero rallies the crowd at the April 15 'Tea Party' protest in Denver. (Photo/Wendy Norris)

“We have to replicate Obama’s Chicago-style politics, Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals,’ if we’re going to beat the [Democrats],” he told the small group of almost-all retirees. They nodded in agreement but said nothing.

Lucero faces a tough slog between now and Election Day 2010, and he knows it.

He has served the maximum-allowed two terms on the University of Colorado Board of Regents and is looking for a job — as the next U.S. representative of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.

But his own Larimer County, a must-win area, is in transition. The bellwether northern county has faded over the last few cycles from far-right Republican red to conservative-Democratic purple. Indeed, Larimer County took a star turn in the November election, when voters overwhelmingly helped unseat hardcore social conservative Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave in favor of moderate Democrat Betsy Markey, a long-time Fort Collins resident. Part of that undoing was the result of high profile, local Republican leaders — former U.S. Rep. Jim Johnson, former state Rep. Bill Kaufman and former Republican Party Committee member Betty Ehn, among others — openly defecting from the race amid heated disputes over Musgrave’s campaign tactics and policy priorities.

Sipping a coffee, taking a measure

The Penguin Cafe breakfast attendees were deeply concerned. In discussion spiced with references to membership in Fox News personality Glenn Beck’s 9/12 movement, they all agreed that the country is becoming socialist and that the local GOP was unprepared to meet the challenges presented by today’s army of digitally organized Democrats.

But Lucero wasn’t discouraged. He pointed to the energetic tea party crowds that came out this spring to protest Obama’s big-spending policies. He pointed to how, as a CU regent, he had helped establish the Center for Western Civilization as part of an incremental approach to bolster conservative views on campus, no easy task.

Despite his upbeat efforts, the breakfast conversation kept ringing alarm bells.

Lucero admitted that a lot of people in Larimer choose to identify themselves as conservatives or independents, not as Republicans. The party has fallen out of favor, he said.

Voter registration data supports that impression. As the Colorado Independent reported just before the election last fall, the Larimer County voting population was split into rough thirds with unaffiliated voters coming out on top: 28 percent registered as Democrats, 35 percent as Republicans and 36 percent as unaffiliated. Comparing those figures to figures from 2004 — 26 percent Democrats, 35 percent unaffiliated and 39 percent Republican — makes it clear GOP voters have been peeling off.

“I keep telling people here, you have to choose,” said Lucero. “If you register as a Republican, you can have an influence. It’s in the primaries that you can make a difference and that’s coming up. We have to build that base of voters now.”

Grassroots and Astroturf

One of the breakfasters responded gloomily by relating a story about visiting the Fort Collins GOP office in the fall in search of McCain-Palin lawn signs.

“I guess they were too busy for me. There were just a few young people in the office and they took no interest… I have to ask: Do we have a totally inept GOP organization in Northern Colorado?”

Republican leaders have made mistakes, Lucero admitted. The McCain campaign was badly managed and alienated locals.

“A man like you, who comes into a campaign office to get signs, will probably be eager to make calls and do canvassing. That was a clear lost opportunity.”

Lucero said the party basically “made it as difficult as possible to get involved” but that he knows there is an “organic conservative movement” in Larimer and that candidates like him just need to “build on that momentum.”

The need to emphasize such a basic observation — that there is an “organic conservative” presence in front-range Colorado — would have been unimaginable just half a decade ago.

The GOP representative formerly known as …

Lucero was notably careful to put none of the blame for the local GOP’s woes on Musgrave. In fact he never mentioned the three-term devout Pentecostal congresswoman who the American Conservative Union celebrated in 2006 with a top-dog 99 lifetime rating.

Lucero’s silence regarding Musgrave would come as no surprise to Larimer Democratic Chairman Adam Bowen, who said in an interview that perceptions of the two main political parties have changed over the last three election cycles. Musgrave’s aggressive values agenda, he said, which targeted abortion and sex-ed and gay marriage seemingly above all else, alienated voters.

“Pro-business and fiscal conservatives looked at what was happening with the economy and they saw a narrow Republican social agenda,” he said. “The budget deficit and debt of the Bush years put the lie to Republican fiscal conservativism.”

“Look at the races and the vacancy committees here. You see that business Republicans run for these positions and are defeated. The most active Republicans here are far-right social conservatives and they’re driving folks out of the party.”

For Bowen there is also an important history of grassroots Democratic action in the county that is paying dividends now.

“We never had the big money behind us. Larimer is a microcosm of the kind of organizing [Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard] Dean took national last year.”

It is a crucial point Lucero’s breakfast club found easy to concede. They referred each other to the “Facebook classes” held at a bar in Fort Collins.

“Do you know Tweeter?” one asked. “I mean I guess you can get 10,000 people on a Tweeter and that can have a huge effect.”

Lucero nodded. The others nodded.

“So, how many of you are on a computer at this point?” someone else asked.

O’Malley’s office has taken “extraordinary measures,” as Wednesday’s news release says, to absorb the so-called “check box” voters. Several thousand individuals statewide have been saddled with an “incomplete” designation for failing to check a box on their registration forms indicating that they would be using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers — rather than a state ID or driver’s license number — as identification. Coffman has refused to provide relief to these voters. The “check box” crowd can still vote provisionally. But unless the voters fix their their forms eventually, the provisional ballots will be tossed.

In addition to sending letters to 1,400 “check box” voters urging them to cure before Election Day, Denver County has allowed these individuals to fix their registrations at the polls and vote by regular ballot.

“After consulting with the Denver City Attorney’s Office it was determined that we would be
within the law in having a voter cure this problem at their polling place on Election Day,” O’Malley said in a press release. “In September, we made several appeals to the Colorado Secretary of State to reconsider his ruling that a voter’s registration is incomplete due to their failure to check an ID box. We feel 1,400-plus voters should not be denied an Election Day ballot due to what is essentially a voter’s technical error.”

Denver County is not the only county to admit “check box” voters. Larimer County and Jefferson County absorbed these individuals into their voter rolls as well, much to Coffman’s chagrin.

Coffman released a statement saying that Denver “was irresponsible” not to run the plan by him, according to the Denver Post. He said he intends to ask Attorney General John Suthers about the issue; Suthers’ office has backed him in his “check box” stance in the past.

As many as 10,000 would-be voters in the state accidentally neglected to check a box on their registration forms to indicate they did not have a state driver’s license or ID and would use the last four digits of their Social Security number as identification instead. Clerks in Larimer and Jefferson counties absorbed the incomplete forms into their rolls, even though Coffman said that applicants needed to cure their registrations before being placed into the voter database.

Coffman was widely criticized for his unyielding stance by voter rights groups who said the minor technical mistake would potentially disenfranchise voters.

(Photo/mystereys, Flickr)

The clock is ticking down until Colorado’s big day. And with the John McCain campaign all but pulling out of the state as Barack Obama pushes forward, the result of the November election in Colorado may be coming into focus.

Unfortunately, when it comes to election administration in Colorado, things are getting muddier and muddier by the day. In our election bungle roundup last week, we guided you through the week’s most important news: national groups slamming Secretary of State Mike Coffman on his voter registration policy, Attorney General John Suthers backing Coffman in his recent voter purge, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink further disenfranchising student voters, and more. Read on to for the latest foul-ups:

Come one, come all! Vote early! Vote by mail! Oh, wait…

This Monday kicked off the start of two weeks of early voting in Colorado. Long-touted as the antidote to massive Election Day lines, Monday’s early vote went smoothly, according to The Rocky Mountain News. But not so with another type of voting. County clerks across the state found their offices gummed up with mail-in ballot requests and unable to quickly deliver ballots to waiting voters. In Adams County, election workers were put on mandatory 12-hour shifts this week to deal with the avalanche of mail-in forms, as the Rocky reported. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s office added an election tracker on its Web site complete with the ever-increasing number of mail-in ballot requests. Now you can watch the inundation unfold in real time.

Think you’re registered to vote? The answer depends on where you live.

A few county clerks got feisty this week by accepting some incomplete voter registrations onto the rolls. According to the Rocky, Jefferson and Larimer counties absorbed registrations with the so-called “check box” issue, in which applicants wrote down the last four digits of their Social Security numbers but neglected to check a box indicating as much. Other counties have been rejecting these forms until the applicant cures his or her registration, per the secretary of state’s wishes. Coffman, who has ignored voting experts’ pleas to change his policy, issued a wrist-slap to the clerks, telling them to follow the law, according to The Denver Post. Meanwhile, Denver County has pulled out all the stops to get “check box” voters to cure their forms before Election Day. The most recent attempt? Robocalls.

A little extra oversight on Election Day? Not for those of you in Arapahoe County…

Voting rights experts aren’t the only ones fretting over Colorado’s ability to pull off the national election. Early this week, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat who represents Arapahoe County, sent a letter to Secretary of State Coffman asking him to pick an independent election monitor to survey the Arapahoe County polls on Election Day, according to The Denver Post. Perlmutter specifically worried that the county — which will use electronic voting machines this election — is unprepared to deal with machine failures, and he asked Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty to stock paper ballots at the polls. Traditionally Republican Arapahoe County has seen a huge increase in Democratic registrations this year, and Perlmutter said he wants things to go smoothly on Election Day. But in keeping with his no-way-no-how reputation, Coffman rebuffed Perlmutter, saying in a letter that he won’t post a monitor “unless there are concerns submitted to my office that election laws in Arapahoe County are not being adhered to,” according to the Rocky.

(Photo/unquiet, Flickr)

With Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman unwilling to budge on incomplete voter registrations, several counties across the state have come up with partial resolutions on their own.

The ever-evolving “check box” drama has to do with the state’s new voter registration form. Applicants without a state ID or a driver’s license must indicate as much by checking a box and then giving the last four digits of their social security numbers. But at least 6,700 new would-be voters–and as many as 10,000 by one estimate — neglected to check the box. Several thousand have since cured their applications, but many more remain barred from voter rolls.

While counties throughout the state have warned “check box” applicants to fix their registrations before Election Day, a few localities have gone above and beyond. According to the Rocky Mountain News, election officials in Larimer and Jefferson counties absorbed the incomplete registrations into their rolls, asking only that these applicants show IDs at the polls to vote.

Coffman decried the practice. “It is absolutely essential that election law be uniformly applied to every voter across this state and anything less than the equal treatment of all voters compromises Colorado’s ability to hold fair elections,” Coffman told the News. Despite mounting pressure from state and national voting rights groups, he has maintained that applicants must cure their registrations to appear on the rolls.

Meanwhile, elections officials in Denver County have deployed a robocall to remind applicants with incomplete registrations to cure their forms before Election Day. “We will work hard to get these voters in our poll books come Nov. 4,” Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley said during a conference call with reporters this morning.

Denver fielded around 4,000 incomplete voter registration forms (this includes those with “check box” and other problems), and all but 1,400 of those have been cured. O’Malley said that she asked Coffman’s office about placing these individuals on the rolls anyway — as Larimer and Jefferson counties have done–but was met with a resounding “no.”

“It was an effort on our part to have inclusivity, but the Secretary of State’s office, standing firm on the letter of the law, said we could not place these applicants on the poll books.”

But counties are not the only ones that need to address the issue. One voter registration group set up an online database with the names of every person with a problem application in the state. New Era Colorado, which registered 12,000 voters in the state, urges people to use the searchable database to make sure they’re not on the Secretary of State’s incomplete list.

“[Coffman] can and should issue a directive to the county clerks to allow anyone with a valid identification to vote in Colorado,” New Era Colorado’s executive director, Steve Fenberg, said in a press release. “In the meantime, New Era Colorado will at least provide the information to voters so they can complete their applications. Voting in a democracy is too important to let anyone lose their right because of misinformation.”

Applicants who don’t cure their registrations before Election Day may vote by provisional ballot. These ballots are tallied in the two weeks following the election. However, provisional voters must still fix their registrations for their votes to count.

A truck sits in a field off a rural Larimer County road in northern Colorado. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Home to the state’s only agricultural university, Rocky Mountain National Park and many ranches, Larimer County has traditionally been a Republican stronghold in Colorado. But, as President George W. Bush’s approval ratings play gutterball, the unpopular war in Iraq continues and the economy continues to implode, Larimer County’s electorate is starting to swing in a moderate direction with upticks in the number of Democrat and unaffiliated voters. That shift is being eyed by strategists and politicos carefully this year as the northern Colorado county could be one of a handful to play a pivotal role in the November election.

As of last week, 73,969 voters in Larimer County — or 35 percent — were registered Republicans, while 59,123 — or 28 percent — were registered Democrats, according the Larimer County Clerk’s office. Unaffiliated voters have surpassed GOP voter registration, with 36 percent, or 74,416.

By contrast, in 2004, registered Republicans numbered 39 percent of the electorate, while Democrats claimed 26 percent. Unaffiliated voters numbered 35 percent of the electorate.

With so many contested races in Larimer County this year, including the 4th Congressional race between Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and Democrat Betsy Markey, as well as the State House District 52 race between Democratic Rep. John Kefalas and Republican Bob McCluskey, the importance of the shift in political leanings among Larimer County residents is coming into focus.

“Why Larimer is changing — and why the Mountain West for that matter is changing politically — can be broken down in a number of ways,” said Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University. “Part of it is an increasingly urban and more diverse electorate, a changing economy, and a general momentum throughout the United States (away from the Republican Party).

“However, we should also pay attention to the strategy employed by the Democratic Party over the last few years in this region, what they have been doing in the West so effectively. The Democrats have played to a moderate electorate to the tune of individual rights and stayed away from divisive social issues, whereas the Republicans chose as their battleground issues terrorism and harder social issues over the past few cycles.”

Fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives

Last week and for the first time in decades, the number of active Democratic voters in Colorado surpassed the number of active Republican voters, the result of what many political observers said is a growing split among fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. That division is being seen in Larimer County, where new population growth in recent years has brought a more moderate electorate with it.

“The shift away from the Republican Party reflects what is occurring statewide and to some extent nationally,” said John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “The Republican fusion of the fiscal conservative/small government folks and the social/cultural agenda Republicans has worn increasingly thin over time.

“With the public concerned about such bread-and-butter issues as health care, transportation and higher education, the Republican agenda has become less attractive. Overlay that with the dissatisfaction with Bush, the war, growing deficits, plus the enthusiasm with Obama, the trend away from the Republicans is understandable.”

But, just what impact the shifting voter demographics will have on important races in Larimer County is hard to pinpoint, Straayer said.

“A numerical surge like that means that folks are not happy, and unhappy voters are looking for alternatives,” he said. “I don’t know if you could predict a Dem victory based on the numbers from one county, but it does mean that (Republicans) are very unlikely to get the same percentage they received in prior races.”

That could spell bad news for McCluskey, a former state representative from Fort Collins who is battling with incumbent Kefalas for the HD 52 seat, which covers the eastern and northern part of Fort Collins and is in many ways symbolic of Colorado’s growing nature as a swing state. The two battled for the House District 52 seat in 2004 when McCluskey won by 500 votes. In 2006, Kefalas ran to victory, winning with 53 percent of the vote. This year they are at it again, and by all accounts it’s another close race.

Betsy Markey in Windsor. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

The battle for Colorado’s 4th CD between Musgrave and Markey is also close, and Larimer County could play an important role in the outcome. Despite voter registration numbers in the 4th that favor Republicans by 13 percent, recent polls indicated Markey, a never-before-elected former U.S. Senate staffer, stands a clear chance of unseating Musgrave.

Although observers don’t believe some conservative strongholds in the 4th, which encompasses the north Front Range and the Eastern Plains, will shift support from Musgrave, a growing number of unaffiliated and Democratic voters in Weld County and in Larimer could be just enough to tip the scales.

Two years ago, Musgrave struggled in a three-way battle with Democrat Angie Paccione and Reform Party candidate Eric Eidsness. Eidsness, a former Republican, received more than 10 percent of the vote and Musgrave inched past Paccione by less than a 3 percent margin, one of the smallest of any Republican incumbent in the House and the closest of her career. In Larimer, Paccione gained more votes than Musgrave receiving 48 percent of the vote compared to Musgrave’s 40 percent. Eidsness won 11 percent.

Already a bad year for Republicans nationwide, Paccione looked strong against Musgrave in 2006 until she was slammed in the media and subsequently with negative advertising for a previous bankruptcy and for unpaid student loans. Paccione was never able to recover but Markey’s campaign this year is hopeful the Fort Collins business owner and former field director for Sen. Ken Salazar will be able to make up the 3 percent margin that Paccione was unable to do.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in Windsor. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

Despite a Republican registration advantage within the county, other Democrats have succeeded in Larimer in recent elections, including Gov. Bill Ritter, who overwhelmingly won the county in 2006 with 56 percent of the vote.

In 2004, President Bush beat his Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in Larimer, getting 51 percent of the vote. But, during the same election, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar outpaced his Republican opponent Pete Coors with 50 percent of the vote in Larimer compared to Coors’ 46 percent.

That isn’t to say the Republicans can’t expect to see a strong turnout on Election Day in Larimer County. Popular Republicans in the county include Sen. Steve Johnson, a joint budget committee member from Fort Collins, and Rep. Don Marostica of Loveland, and Sarah Palin seems to have excited a number of northern Colorado residents, as seen by the large number of people who attended her rally in Loveland this week.

Editors note: This is the second installment of a multi-part series The Colorado Independent is running on important Colorado counties in the 2008 election.