Tag: 2010 Elections

Despite claims by Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis on his facebook page that he's staying in the race in the wake of plagiarism allegations,...

Republican leaders addressing the crowd at Friday night's second-annual Larimer County GOP shrimp-boil fundraiser and straw poll event in Fort Collins steered clear of social issues like abortion and gay marriage that have featured prominently in Larimer County politics of the past. They focused instead on calls to rein in government spending and pass more pro-business legislation. That message, peppered throughout with references to Ronald Reagan and aimed chiefly against the Obama administration, suggested the steep challenge these candidates face in winning office in 2010.

Radio talker Hugh Hewitt -- fresh off his call for American consumers to boycott General Motors -- arrives in Colorado on Friday for a congressional fund raiser in Denver and the chance to mingle with up-and-coming conservatives in Parker.

Conservative Republican and CD 4 hopeful Tom Lucero hosted a campaign breakfast Tuesday in Loveland at a strip-mall cafe and ended up talking to eight likable, earnest people there about the need to affect major cultural change if they were ever going to restore a sense of personal responsibility in the United States and succeed in abolishing income taxes and the Internal Revenue Service. "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.

State Rep. Ellen Roberts, a Durango Republican, announced she'll run for the sprawling southwest Colorado Senate seat held by term-limited Democrat Jim Isgar, the Durango Herald reports.

The national antiabortion group, Susan B. Anthony List, is the recipient of a cool 50 grand courtesy of defeated U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave's campaign fund. The Fort Morgan conservative, who now works for the List's Votes Have Consequences outreach effort, will fund the "Young Leaders" training program, an initiative of the group's separate tax-exempt charitable education foundation. That organizational do-si-do may allow Musgrave to effectively skirt a federal campaign finance rule that prohibits candidates from donating unused war chests to their employers.

Boulder Democrat U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who cruised to election last fall after surviving a bruising three-way primary, has formed a joint fundraising committee to raise campaign cash for 30 of his Democratic colleagues, including fellow Colorado freshmen U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, CQ Politics reports. The Jared Polis Victory Fund will also parcel out donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and four PACs run by House leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Not to be outdone by Joe-the-Plumber's recent rant about not letting "queers" near his children, former U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave has penned a fiery letter promoting her new gig at "Votes Have Consequences."

"We will spread the truth about their destructive agendas, drag down their approval ratings, force them to publicly defend socialism, authoritarian gun-grabbing, gay marriage, infanticide and everything else they vote for in Washington, and ultimately, on November 2, 2010, we will take their jobs away from them."

Freshman U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey raised a record-breaking ton of cash this quarter for her re-election in 2010. And despite announcing his CD 4 candidacy to oppose her mere months after she was elected, University of Colorado Board of Regents Vice Chair Tom Lucero, a Republican, has been relatively invisible -- at least when he wasn't ducking impropriety charges on the stand in the Ward Churchill witch-hunt trial. Lucero's fund raising, like his record of experience, will surely be no match for Markey's.

Welcome to the Möbius strip that is the Iowa presidential caucus. Our Iowa Independent colleague Chase Martyn has the skinny on recent pre-, pre-, pre-caucus favorability polling on Sarah Palin.