Wayne Allard

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck got creamed on the numbers this week. He drew $40,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to GOP frontrunner Jane Norton’s $550,000 haul. Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet pulled in a cool $1.1 million.

“That’s today’s story,” said Buck campaign manager Walt Klein.

Poor Wayne Allard. The recently retired Republican senator from Colorado seems to have gone down the memory hole at The Washington Times, like an out-of-favor Politburo member erased from history by Pravda.

One of the two Coloradans who will actually have a vote whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor sits on the Supreme Court applauded the nomination Tuesday. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, heaped praise on Sotomayor in a statement, calling her pick “historic” because she could be the first Hispanic on the court.

The Colorado State University chancellor search committee is meeting this afternoon to review a second round of roughly 12 candidate applications for the university’s new top spot. The committee reviewed a first set of about the same number of applications last month, according to CSU spokesperson Michele McKinney. So far, none of the names of the candidates for the position have been revealed.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has put out its “Version Three” spreadsheet of earmarks contained in the omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2009. It’s an Excel document that can be searched by bill, earmark, representative, senator, state and more!

The Colorado delegation pulled down its share of cash, but none of the state’s officials ranked among the top earmark getters.

Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter denied any wrongdoing Thursday in discussing earmarks the congressman secured for defense consultancy IHS, Inc., a client of disintegrating lobby firm PMA, which is under investigation by the FBI.

Gentlemen, go to the back of the class, says the Sargent Shriver National Center for Poverty Law.

Rep. Doug Lamborn and recently retired Rep. Tom Tancredo earned failing grades on the center’s new poverty scorecard ranking the 110th Congress on its votes on bills legislating fair pay, housing, college financial aid, unemployment and other measures designed to lift working class folk out of poverty.

As Colorado’s newest members of Congress are being sworn in and readying their offices, the messages for two of the Centennial State’s outgoing federal lawmakers have been less than flattering. Indeed, a Denver Post profile about former Rep. Tom Tancredo and retired Sen. Wayne Allard has hardly turned out to be swan songs for the lawmakers, at least to the many who’ve left comments of response.

Rampant speculation has fingered retiring U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., as a likely suspect for holding up the nomination of Neil Barofsky to be the Treasury Department’s special inspector general in charge of overseeing the $700 billion (and climbing) Wall Street bailout.

Sen. Wayne Allard has floated his name out there. State Rep. Bernie Buescher says he’d do it. Perennial college presidential favorite Hank Brown has been mentioned. And now former Republican CU Regent Jim Martin is promoting the man he thinks is the obvious choice to lead Colorado State University: former congressman and current executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education David Skaggs.