Tag: Ken Gordon

What happened? Rivera is a former policeman with no legislative experience, a fact he readily admits. So he asked his experienced colleague, Minority Leader Bill Cadman.

Ken Gordon was a noodge. He pressed people to do the right thing. He actually believed politics could be used to accomplish something useful. It was a good thought on Day One of the legislature.

  Ken Gordon, former Senate majority leader, was the kind of politician who actually believed in the idea of doing good. He was a...

Over the course of a five-hour rulemaking hearing Monday, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler probably got the message that a lot of people are unhappy with proposed rules that would stop county clerks from mailing ballots to inactive voters in some elections, change the way canvass boards are selected and give county clerks more power to determine how much access election watchers have.

In Colorado, organizing, infrastructure and fundraising within the Democratic Party and progressive organizations are the stuff of legend. The story of how liberal mega-millionaires and single-minded cooperation on the left turned this formerly solid red state to purple and blue have been told and retold for years. The story of coordination among conservatives groups, however, and the way millions of dollars each election cycle slosh to candidates and causes on the right has received relatively scant attention.

On the 2nd anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, human people gathered on the West Steps of the Colorado Capitol to protest the decision they say granted human-like rights to corporations.

Redistricting happens every 10 years. It's the law. It's never pretty and it is seldom fair, but it always gets done. Last time, it took years and years before the U.S. Supreme Court finally said enough is enough. Will Colorado go down that road again this year? No one knows. Democrats and Republicans will either compromise or they can carry their briefcases from the Capitol to the Court House. It is up to them.

During election season, you never know who’s going to knock on your door. If you’re a Democrat in Southeast Denver, though, it may well be Ken Gordon.

Colorado voters are making too much law and the wrong kind of law at the ballot box, according to a growing list of elected officials, analysts and experts. Critics of the state's famously loose ballot-initiative process agree it unnecessarily opens up the state constitution to improperly vetted amendments, which are extremely difficult to rework or repeal. The result: Bad laws that bog down government and generate extended and expensive lawsuits.

Gov. Bill Ritter has picked state Rep. Bernie Buescher as Colorado's next secretary of state. "Thank you for the confidence," Buescher told the governor. "I will work hard and try to do a good job." Ritter announced his pick at a news conference in his office this morning. The position came open when Mike Coffman was elected to congress. In all, 20 people applied; that number was whittled to three, including Buescher, as well as outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon.