Depending on what website you first saw the weekend news about Dick Wadhams’ new job, the former Colorado Republican Party chief is either a genius political puppet master/kingmaker or a bumbling GOP operative who badly botched the last few races in his home state.

The Denver Post first broke the news that Wadhams will be running the U.S. Senate primary campaign of Clark Durant against establishment Republican Pete Hoekstra in Michigan, with the winner taking on incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow.

“SUCKS TO BE SABENOW,” proclaims Colorado Peak Politics, which goes on to portray Wadhams as “a dragon slayer, taking down U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Add to that helping elect conservatives from Bill Armstrong to Wayne Allard and Bill Owens [in Colorado] and his electoral record is pretty hard to match.”

But Wadhams’ record in Colorado since those GOP successes has been checkered at best, starting with the 2008 U.S. Senate race in which former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer lost by a wide margin to Democrat Mark Udall. For a little under a month, former six-term Republican U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Western Slope stalwart, was the presumptive GOP frontrunner.

McInnis pulled out for family reasons, but later told the Colorado Independent that the right wing of the party had become too extreme. Without naming Schaffer campaign manager Wadhams, McInnis indicated a philosophical rift had developed that made it hard for so-called moderate Republicans to run for state and national offices in Colorado.

“I would have beat Udall, that wasn’t the issue,” McInnis told the Independent at the time. “Frankly I have more difficulties with the right wing of my party then I do with taking on a Democrat. Udall was not the biggest threat I faced in the election. My biggest threat was getting through the primary. Both parties have a pretty radical element to them.”

Then came the 2010 gubernatorial race, which saw McInnis once again as the frontrunner until a plagiarism scandal forced Wadhams to back tea party favorite Dan Maes, who then stumbled through his own series of political missteps. Those blunders led to former U.S. Rep. and national anti-immigration icon Tom Tancredo entering the race as an independent. Democrat John Hickenlooper waltzed into office, and Wadhams got some of the blame.

Including some from Maes, although he reserved most of his vitriol for Tancredo in his self-published book about last year’s race, “Running Without Cowboy Boots.”

Colorado Pols points out Wadhams is the right man in a scrappy primary race like Durant versus Hoekstra, even if Wadhams is now backing the anti-establishment candidate:

“It’s a bit of a role-reversal for former Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams to run Durant’s campaign, after declining to seek re-election for Colorado GOP chair under a cloud of accusations of meddling in primaries spanning two election cycles — muscling primary candidates around on the way to losing general elections to Democrats. Between Bob Schaffer and Jane Norton, Wadhams has overseen both sides of the primary coin recently, that is the winning and the losing. And while once he got to the general election it’s been more about losing in recent years, statistically that means he’s up for a win. Right? All told, we do think a sharp-elbowed GOP Senate primary is exactly what Wadhams is best at, so it’s a good hire — he just wasn’t very good at admitting this while he was GOP chairman.”

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/100689/wadhams-washed-up-or-back-on-winning-track-in-michigan/feed 0 http://coloradoindependent.com/91558/brown-owens-suthers-stapleton-announce-support-for-mitt-romney http://coloradoindependent.com/91558/brown-owens-suthers-stapleton-announce-support-for-mitt-romney#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:16:05 +0000 Scot Kersgaard http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=91558 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today announced the support of several Colorado Republican heavyweights including former senators Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, former Governor Bill Owens, former Congressman Bob Beuprez, current Attorney General John Suthers and current Treasurer Walker Stapleton.]]>

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today announced the support of several Colorado Republican heavyweights including former senators Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, former Governor Bill Owens, former Congressman Bob Beuprez, current Attorney General John Suthers and current Treasurer Walker Stapleton.

“I am proud to earn the support of so many well respected Colorado leaders,” Mitt Romney said in a press release. “I look forward to working with them during my campaign to promote job creation, balance our exploding budgets, and reverse President Obama’s failed policies.”

Announcing his support, Brown said, “Mitt Romney has the proven record to pull our economy out of this downturn. His extraordinary success in both the private and public sectors will help provide the leadership our country needs to restore our economy and the American spirit.”

As Mitt Romney wraps up a Colorado visit with a fundraiser, Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio released the following statement:

“While it’s heartening to know that Romney knows how to choose a travel destination, that’s not enough to hide his disastrous record on the economy, and how harmful his policies would be for Colorado.

“During Romney’s tenure as governor, Massachusetts’ economic performance was one of the worst in the country on all key labor market measures. Under Romney’s watch, Massachusetts not only lagged behind the country as a whole – they even slipped to 47th in job creation.

“Now, Mitt Romney offers to double down on the same flawed policies that led to millions of job losses in 2008. In Colorado, we’ve been down this road of failed economic policies and proposals before, and we’ve seen the result: a harsh blow to middle-class Coloradans.

“While our families are fighting to continue the upward trend in the economy, one thing is clear: Mitt Romney’s policies are far out of touch with Colorado priorities.”

“How many Nortons is that now?” asked the Colorado Independent. Klein’s smile turned into a grin and he shot three fingers into the air.

“Gale Norton was the opponent of Wayne Allard in the 1996 Senate primary and Wayne won a big victory, not entirely unlike this one tonight,” he said. “It was Tom Norton who ran against Bill Owens in the [1998] governor’s race. Tom was a state senator and ran a tough primary campaign, but we won that primary too.”

Klein said he has been lucky to work for talented politicians but he clearly played a major role in the race against Jane Norton. The victory is the product of a highly focused incremental strategy designed to build grassroots support on the road. That was all Klein, who took charge as soon as he came on board with the campaign in May 2009.

Buck had already spent weeks in April sending out semi-announcements suggesting he was planning to run while apparently struggling to put a team together. When Klein came on in May he said he immediately put Buck to work on the stump.

“You’re a good candidate,” he said he told Buck. “But you could be a whole lot better.” He said Buck tirelessly began barnstorming the state.

“The campaign spent 15 months trying to catch up with the momentum Buck was generating,” Klein said, arguing that the approach couldn’t have been a better match with the mood of the electorate.

“In the primary, Ken was focused on what you’ve got to do first, which is line up a base of support. You can’t fake grassroots support. You either have it or you don’t have it. You can’t send a letter out to people who have never met you and expect them to sign onto support your campaign. He did the work for almost a year, in every part of the state. He lined up the base. Among people who had met him, he was winning straw polls by a country mile.”

Klein said media outlets reporting on the Buck campaign mostly by examining fund-raising tallies were missing the larger part of the campaign story.

“Voters are clearly looking for a different kind of candidate in this election cycle and they saw, I think with Ken from the beginning, they saw here’s a guy who has the potential. And the more they saw him, the more they listened to him. The more they saw him with the other candidates, the more attractive he became.”

Klein believes the campaign against Norton has positioned Buck particularly well for the general election run against Bennet, another comparatively wealthy and well-connected candidate.

“Norton outspent us three-and-half to one. They had an army of lobbyists raising money in Washington DC and 25 or 30 United States senators that had endorsed her and all that.”

Yet, he said, none of it mattered in the end due to the connection Buck had made with voters on the stump.

The night of the primary victory, Buck told the Colorado Independent that the plan going forward was simple. “I’m going to chase Michael Bennet all over the state on his voting record. The stimulus, the health care bill, the financial reform bill… He’s now going to have to answer to the people of Colorado.”

Klein’s grassroots boot camp has given Buck confidence. Despite recent high-profile gaffes, he lingers with reporters and will talk on any topic. Over the past two months, his name recognition has rocketed. To the left, he is a member of the new radicalized mainstream right, a partner to Sarah Palin and candidates like Nevada’s Sharon Angle and Kentucky’s Rand Paul. Among his supporters, though, he’s a new kind of anti-establishment Republican and that’s a good thing.

“If you read the newspapers in the fall and early spring, you would hardly have known there were candidates running against [Norton]. She was treated as the appointed-anointed candidate,” said Klein.

But then Buck won the precinct caucus voting in March.

“Even though Buck only won that by a half a percent, it was the preliminary to winning the state convention and it set in motion a couple things: one, that he was a terrific candidate and; two, that there was a choice in the Republican primary.”

Fundraising finally came together for Buck only in the last quarter before the primary voting. Indeed, the campaign raised more money in the second quarter of 2010, which ended in July, than it raised in the preceding three quarters. In the last quarter of 2009, the campaign raised a mere $40,000, clearly a result of Norton’s entering the race and siphoning off big donors.

Klein admits that the bleak fundraising picture dissolved in large part as a result of the Senate Conservative Fund‘s spring endorsement.

“They didn’t just give Ken a pat on the back,” said Klein. “They stepped up and raised critical funds. In fact, I think we added 2,500 people to our donor base as a result of the messages the Senate Conservative Fund was sending out over their website, [because] when you get check from the Senate Conservative Fund, you also get the names and addresses of the people who have contributed, small contributors, and some of those lists included 1500 or 1600 names. ”

Bennet has long led the fundraising race in the campaign for his seat. In July, he announced a cash-on -hand total of $2.6 million, which was about $2.2 million more than Buck at the time had to spend.

Although Buck is no stranger to Washington power brokers (like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for example) and has drawn most of his paychecksas an adult from the government, he will be running hard against Bennet as the Washington insider, the same way he ran against Norton.

“People in Colorado were frustrated with Republicans going to Washington and voting one way and campaigning another way here. Unfortunately, Jane Norton, although she hasn’t been in DC and doesn’t have a voting record, she was associated with that group of people that have done that in the past and so I was able to capitalize on that.”

Bennet has never run for office previously and was appointed to the Senate last year after former Sen. Ken Salazar joined the Obama administration as Secretary of the Interior.

But Bennet is in Washington now and he has voted with the majority to advance Pres. Obama’s agenda, an even riper target for Buck on the stump than were Norton’s ties to the high-profile lobbyist community.

“When people understand the differences between Ken Buck and Michael Bennet, Republicans will unite and we will be able to reach out to unaffiliated voters and Democrat voters,” he told the Colorado Independent.

“There’s a contrast between a conservative and a Washington DC liberal and it is going to be stark for voters in November.”

[Image: Walt Klein at the Buck Victory party August 10 ]

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Ken Buck (Wendy Norris)

“That’s today’s story,” said Buck campaign manager Walt Klein. “That’s one piece of the puzzle. Look what’s happened since the first of the year. Follow the candidate on the trail, watch him in front of people and you see a story of a candidate gaining momentum. Ken Buck is the underdog in this race and he’s proud of it.”

Klein gets paid to spin, of course, but part of the reason Buck’s low contribution totals surprised political watchers yesterday is that the campaign has seemed to gain traction recently. As Norton has struggled to demonstrate to skeptical activist voters here that she is neither the Washington-insider and special-interest candidate her resume suggests she is nor the Tea Party panderer the media has described, Buck has caught the eye of national grassroots and anti-Washington groups.

The libertarian Virginia-based Campaign for Liberty bought $350,000 worth of air time in Colorado this month to broadcast a commercial it made extolling Buck as the best choice in the race. Bloggers at the Colorado conservative grassroots site Rocky Mountain Right speculated that Buck may be winning support from the the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by RedState’s Erick Erickson and Sen. Jim DeMint.

Klein says that the energy fueling the right-wing blogosphere is reflected on the campaign trail.

“All of that is happening now and for a good reason,” he said. “At this point we’re seeing activist voters, the media and political observers beginning to just now draw a sharper focus on the candidates. That’s what’s changing for us. People are really comparing the candidates.”

Still, many believe it costs an estimated $10 million to run a winning U.S. Senate campaign. Norton told radio listeners last week she thought the candidates for Senate running in Colorado would spend “$8 million to $10 million on all sides before Election Day.” According to his Q4 report, Buck has only roughly $200,000 on hand.

Klein is taking a long view. He worked on campaigns for Republican U.S. Senators Bill Armstrong, Wayne Allard and Hank Brown and said the fundraising record so far reflects “typical grasstops versus grassroots” campaigns. He said Norton entered the race essentially as the fourth quarter was beginning in October, siphoning off big donations and racking up big numbers. “The grasstops went to Norton,” he said.

But the profile of donors to the two campaigns from Q3 are distinct, he said, and he predicts that when the full Federal Election Commission documents come online in a few weeks they will tell a similar story.

“Forty percent of Norton’s first quarter donations in Q3 was raised outside the state– mostly lobbyist donations, the DC crowd. Compare that to Buck’s first quarter. He raised about $337.000. She raised around $300,00 in the state her first quarter. His donations are more than 95 percent from Colorado. The fourth quarter the percentage was pretty much 99 percent. She pulled down 60 percent support here. Now we’ll see a repeat [in Q4]. That’s my prediction.”

Norton campaign spokesperson Nate Strauch told the Denver Post Tuesday that the campaign was “extremely happy with where we are with fundraising right now.”

Tom Wiens, a wealthy businessman who lives on a ranch in Douglas County, is also running for Bennet’s seat. Wiens reported raising $725,000, although he hasn’t elaborated on how much of the money came from his own personal accounts.

In the past year, Buck has been a lightning rod for controversy in Weld County, where he’s the District Attorney. He was the man behind two high-profile prosecutions. He filed hate-crime charges against the killer of transgender teen Angie Zapata, irking conservatives, and he spearheaded a hardline identity theft probe that targeted thousands of undocumented workers and was later ruled unconstitutional.

Buck considered dropping out of the Senate race in the fall when Norton entered with clear support from the national party. Republican Aurora City Council-member Ryan Frazier did drop his bid then, opting instead to make a run at Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter in the Seventh District.

Given the vast sums it takes to run a U.S. Senate campaign, the Colorado Independent asked whether there was any talk at the Buck campaign about the candidate likewise switching races. Would Buck drop his Senate bid to run for Rep. Betsy Markey’s seat in the Fourth District, whereBuck is well known and well liked?

Klein laughed. “No way,” he said.

“Listen, one thing I know is that there’s a path to victory in this race. You have to get on the ballot. You have to win the primary. Only then do you get to run against the Democrat. Candidates that forget there are three steps or get them mixed up are not successful.”

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In a bubbly, Panglossian story about the Colorado GOP’s imminent resurgence, the all-but-official organ of the Republican Party airbrushes Allard from the political landscape when it describes how very on-the-ropes state Republicans were last fall:

Colorado voters swung for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, ousted Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave and kept Democrats in charge of the state’ General Assembly. Given that Colorado already had a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, the election effectively erased the Republicans’ last hold on what was once a bright red state and moved it into the purple – or even blue – column. [emphasis added]

Given that Colorado didn’t already have “two Democratic senators” before the Obama win and Musgrave ouster, the 2008 election was even more decisive than Washington Times reporter Valerie Richardson lets on.

It’s true Allard checked out prematurely, shutting down e-mail contact with constituents months before his term ended, but even in repose, the two-term senator hadn’t somehow transformed into a Democrat.

A call to the Times’ deputy managing editor for news on Tuesday yielded an admission the description of Colorado’s pre-election delegation was mistaken, but a day later the paper’s Web site hasn’t corrected the story.

It’s not as though the Times is unaware Allard exists — a few paragraphs later, the story has Allard joining former GOP Gov. Bill Owens to meet “with the party’s emerging leaders to brainstorm, trouble-shoot and plot strategy,” in a hush-hush post-defeat summit first reported by The Denver Post.

Among the glimmers of Republican resurrection Richardson finds in Colorado:

But unlike the national Republican Party, which is fighting among itself as it tries to find a voice to counter a popular president, party leaders in Colorado have jumped into action.

That lack of infighting might be news to Scott McInnis, but let’s grant the state GOP is less at odds with itself than the national party. What’s the come-back trail the Times discerns?

In the past few months, at least two Republican-themed organizations have emerged, founded not by the usual Republican suspects, but by newcomers to the political scene.

The Times might know of “at least two” organizations but keeps their identities to itself, mentioning only the brief eruption of anti-big-government sentiment on display at a handful of Tea Parties last month.

With GOP hopefuls lining up to challenge Gov. Bill Ritter, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Markey, all incumbent Democrats considered vulnerable, recently re-elected GOP chairman Dick Wadhams finds hope amid strife:

Avoiding contentious primary battles doesn’t seem to be part of the Republican strategy, which is fine with Mr. Wadhams. “I like contested primaries. I think it makes our candidates stronger,” he said.

Long-time watchers of state GOP intrigue might get a hearty chuckle out of that one.

All in all, recasting Allard as a Democrat could be the least of the story’s stumbles.

“Sonia Sotomayor is a tremendous choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a thoughtful and balanced judge with a keen intellect and a broad academic and legal background. Her skill and fair-mindedness on the federal bench has won the praise and support of Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is historic. If confirmed, she will be only the third woman and the first Hispanic to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She brings with her a compelling life story and personal experience that will add to the Court’s diversity and its shared understanding of how its decisions affect the daily lives of hardworking Americans.

“Today, President Obama has showed us how he can bring this country together. By selecting Judge Sotomayor, he has chosen a nominee who has previously been nominated for judicial appointments by President George H.W. Bush and by President Bill Clinton. Judge Sotomayor has been confirmed twice before by the full Senate and her nomination to the Supreme Court should be considered swiftly.”

Bennet reminds that Sotomayor won bipartisan support when she was confirmed to the 2nd Circuit as a federal judge in 1998. The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent makes the same point in a post noting seven sitting GOP senators backed Sotomayor, which could portend a rift in the party if Republican hard-liners oppose her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Colorado’s two senators — both Republicans — split on Sotomayor’s confirmation to the federal bench a decade ago. Former Sen. Wayne Allard voted nay, along with 28 of his colleagues, all Republicans. But former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell joined 24 Republican senators and 42 Democrats voting yea.

As Sargent notes, current GOP senators Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, Robert Bennett, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch, and Judd Gregg all voted to confirm Sotomayor. Arlen Specter, who recently switched parties, also supported Sotomayor in 1998.

CSU Board of Governors members, from left, Marguerite Salazar, Ed Haselden and Joe Blake. Salazar and Haselden also serve on the chancellor search committee. (Photo/Colorado State University)

The secrecy surrounding the candidate list and the committee deliberations, as well as the questionable decision to expand the university’s administrative budget by adding a stand-alone chancellor position, have raised concerns among CSU faculty and students. The same concerns prompted the majority leaders of the state legislature last week to introduce a last-minute bill this session that would set down guidelines for public university leadership searches in the state.

On Friday, CSU interim president Tony Frank proposed cutting 40 jobs and raising tuition 9 percent next year after Gov. Ritter announced budget shortfalls that would cut CSU funding by $30 million.

The CSU Board is scheduled to vote on the proposed job cuts and tuition hike in June, the same week the chancellor search committee — made up mostly of CSU current and former board members — is scheduled to conclude its deliberations and make a hire. The new position will cost the school hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars in administrative salary and associated costs in the coming years.

The CSU search comes in the wake of former-president Larry Penley’s sudden resignation amidst curious financial transactions and personnel decisions uncovered by The Colorado Independent. Echoing news from executive offices on Wall Street last fall, Penley had expanded administrative salaries and benefits at CSU out of all proportion to previous budgets, tipping dwindling resources away from faculty and students toward his own office and staff favorites.

In the absence of public statements about the candidates for the new chancellor position, rumors have taken flight. Secretary of State Bernie Buescher and former Sen. Wayne Allard’s names have been floated, as have the names of two conservative CSU board members, Joe Blake and Pat Grant. Grant, however, is a member of the chancellor search committee and therefore ineligible for the job.

At 4:45 p.m., the CSU search committee is still reviewing applications and the House of Representatives has yet to hold a final vote on the HB 1369, the majority leaders’ bill proposing regulations for hiring university leaders. If the bill passes the House today, it goes to the Senate, where it must pass through a committee hearing and a final vote tomorrow or Wednesday, the last day of the session.

**UPDATE: The Transparency in Higher Education Leadership Selection bill sponsored by majority leaders Paul Weissmann and Brandon Shaffer passed third reading in the House tonight, 34 votes to 31.

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

In the Senate, Democrat Ken Salazar, now interior secretary, ranked 69th. He secured $44.6 million. Republican Sen. Wayne Allard ranked 79th. He secured $30.7 million.

In the House, Democrat Ed Perlmutter led the pack, ranking 212 of roughly 450 representatives. Perlmutter secured $11.9 million. Democrat John Salazar ranked 338, with $4.7 million. Democrat Diana DeGette came in at 366 with $3.5 million, and Republican Doug Lamborn, came in at number 375, securing $2.9 million.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that once the omnibus bill is passed and behind them, members of Congress will be happy to work with President Obama on reforming earmark funding. As Congressional Quarterly puts it today:

“After we get through the omnibus . . . then we can work with the administration to see what else we can do. But the idea is lower number, more transparency, total accountability,” said Pelosi, D-Calif., making it clear that any review of earmarks would only follow consideration of the House-passed fiscal 2009 spending package (HR 1105) now moving through the Senate.

CQ also noted this spreadsheet nugget, which pretty much goes to the heart of U.S. politics:

Ron Paul, R-Texas, who touted his fiscal conservatism in his bid for the GOP presidential nomination last year, was the top House Republican earmark recipient in the omnibus. Paul, who routinely votes against spending measures, got $73.7 million in earmarks, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

(Photo/Rep. Ed Perlmutter)

Perlmutter spokesperson Leslie Oliver asked The Colorado Independent to run a correction, as she described the line Perlmutter draws when it comes to the business that mixes earmarks and campaign donations.

“We took no campaign money from IHS,” Oliver said. “But yes, we received campaign contributions from PMA’s political action committee.”

IHS won an extra million dollars thanks to Perlmutter and other members of the Colorado delegation who voted for the IHS earmark, a group that included Wayne Allard, Ken Salazar and Tom Tancredo.

According to a Congressional Quarterly study of a Taxpayers for Common Sense database, IHS paid PMA to lobby Colorado members of Congress to secure defense contracts.

The FBI investigation of PMA turns on suspicion that the company acted as a conduit for campaign cash, making sure money got to the right people when relevant federal appropriations were being considered and decided upon.

Is accepting campaign donations from the lobbying firm representing a company ultimately any less suspect than taking campaign donations from the companies themselves?

Many observers see the practice as merely a “workaround” that puts merely puts one level of distance between the companies and the lawmakers for the sake of appearances.

“That’s a question for investigators to decide,” says Oliver. “We’ve given the money to the Boys and Girls Club.”

She said Tancredo, Allard and Salazar came to Perlmutter and asked him to consider the earmark for IHS.

“We then met with IHS,” she said. “What IHS does is catalog all F-18 components. Without being able to catalog those, mechanics can’t provide important services to the planes. We thought it was a clearly important national security project that would also provide jobs in Colorado.”

Pork is an old issue, a reality of the political scene and something at least one prominent senator has defended.

Rolling Stone dubbed Hillary Clinton the “Queen of Pork” last summer as news of her profligate earmarking as a senator began to break far and wide. The news was no secret inside the beltway and it didn’t significantly affect her fading presidential campaign.

Although she danced around the issue, ultimately Clinton made no bones about what she was up to. “Senator Clinton has asked the Appropriations Committee to support defense projects for New York firms and institutions which will promote our national security,” her spokesman told members of the media pressing the issue. “And she is pleased that the conference committee agreed in providing funding for these vital projects.”

There’s nothing illegal nor unusual about campaign contributors reaping benefits from earmarks. It remains for now an ethical question, as opposed to a legal question.

That’s part of the reason Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) submitted a resolution this week to establish an ethics committee that would investigate the relationship between earmarks and campaign contributions, a resolution that, whatever its intent, amounted from the beginning to nothing but a scold. Last month, Flake introduced H. Res. 85 to investigate the connection between campaign funding and earmarks — the bill remains in committee.

As Congressional Quarterly put it: “All involved knew in advance that the measure had virtually no chance of success; minority parties generally use such resolutions as a way to underscore a point or try to embarrass the party in power.”

The resolution was killed by House Democrats who took thousands of dollars in campaign money from PMA and who secured millions in earmarks for PMA clients.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, recently retired Rep. Tom Tancredo and Sen. Wayne Allard all earned failing grades on the center’s new poverty scorecard. The Republican trio ranked dead last in the 110th Congress for their votes on bills legislating fair pay, housing, college financial aid, unemployment and other measures designed to lift working class folk out of poverty.

Tancredo, in fact, bought an abysmal F-minus rate for voting against every bill in the survey despite Colorado’s 12 percent poverty and creeping unemployment rate.

Lamborn narrowly missed the minus designation by voting for a bill to prevent homelessness among veterans and to expand protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Allard voted for a single measure that increases financial-aid programs and funding to post-secondary schools that historically serve minority students.

Former Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, who once recounted her impoverished childhood living in a “Mexican shack” because her alcoholic father drank the family’s income away, squeaked by with a “D” grade.

Lamborn, Tancredo and Allard join a rogues’ gallery of fellow flunk-outs comprised of some of the most conservative members of Congress: Sens. Tom Coburn, R-OK, Jim Inhofe, R-OK, Jim DeMint, R-SC, Bob Corker, R-TN and Reps. Kenny Marchant, Ron Paul and Jeb Hensarling — all members of the Texas delegation.

The rest of the Colorado delegation fares much better:

Click to enable the interactive chart to read the bill summaries. (Illustration/Sargent Shriver National Center for Poverty Law)