Tag: pac money

With two close primary races for the U.S. Senate, some Colorado voters will go to the polls today or drop off last-minute mail-in ballots to determine who will battle it out in November. The vast majority of votes in what could be a record for a primarily mail-in election are already in. And the candidates for both parties would have voters believe that what’s at stake is the soul of the state – grassroots, western self-determination versus entrenched, inside-the-Beltway career political cronyism.

Democratic camps collided over the weekend when supporters of U.S. Senate candidates Andrew Romanoff and incumbent Michael Bennet traded chants and jibes as Bennet challenged a Romanoff attack ad that condemns Bennet for looting a movie chain and costing thousands of jobs. Bennet said the ad casts aspersions; Romanoff's campaign said Bennet was a hypocrite.

The heated Colorado Democratic U.S. Senate primary race faced off this week not on policy matters but on campaign ethics, with former state House...

DENVER-- U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and his Democratic primary rival Andrew Romanoff met for a debate in Denver last night. There wasn't much debate. The main area of disagreement came when Romanoff challenged Bennet to decline to accept Political Action Committee, or special interest, campaign money. The challenge was expected. Romanoff, who has lagged seriously behind Bennet in fundraising for half a year, announced in January that he was eschewing PAC money. The campaign had returned PAC money it received in the fall. Bennet dismissed the challenge on stage and he dismissed it more fully in comments he made to the Colorado Independent after the debate ended. He characterized the challenge as not fully considered and opportunistic. He also said it was unrealistic, given the price tag of a political race where Republican rivals were unlikely to voluntarily limit their fundraising abilities.

DENVER-- Former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff minutes ago announced that he was rededicated to his primary campaign to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. He told a crowd of roughly sixty people gathered outside his campaign headquarters here that he called this fraught press conference only to "clear the air," explaining that he had received hundreds of emails and phone calls over the past week urging him to drop his Senate bid to run for governor in the wake of news that Gov. Bill Ritter would not seek a second term. Politics watchers in the state expected he might declare that he planned to run as lieutenant governor on a ticket topped by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. Romanoff sought to put an end to any speculation along those lines. "I am running for U.S. Senate," he said. "I will not accept any other job offers."