Tag: Rich Coolidge

ON WEDNESDAY, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office signed off on ballot language for the state’s first-ever lawmaker recall election, where Democratic state Senate President John Morse will effectively face Republican City Council Member Bernie Herpin.

DENVER-- Opposition to a gay-rights civil union bill defeated here last month was directed in large part by Colorado Springs-based evangelical empire Focus on the Family and the Colorado Catholic Conference. The Christian-right campaign, however, also reenergized a leading anti-gay rights activist organization of the 1990s, influential rough-and-tumble group Colorado for Family Values.

“I really have no idea what he is talking about,” Republican Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner told the Colorado Independent.

Denver District Court Judge Bruce Jones on Tuesday smacked down Secretary of State Scott Gessler in a topsy-turvy campaign finance trial that saw two government watchdog groups defending the Colorado Constitution against the man sworn as state head of elections to uphold it.

Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler made national news this week by filing a lawsuit to stop Denver County, and by extension all Colorado counties, from mailing ballots to the state's "inactive" voters. The case drew the attention of voter-rights defender US Reps Charles Gonzalez of Texas and Robert Brady of Pennsylvania, who wrote a letter asking the justice department to investigate. The congressional letter (embedded below) is just the latest alarmed response to Gessler's lawsuit, which has featured howls from the local and national press, complaints from voter activist groups and legal push-back from Denver and Pueblo county election officials. At the eye of the storm, Gessler communications staff has been mostly hunkered down and silent on the matter, spokesperson Rich Coolidge surfacing at last today in a Texas newspaper to dismiss the congressional concerns as political gamesmanship.

Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore reveled this weekend in the fact that he could "add Colorado to the list of states that are...

** Updated below with new numbers The hot primary contests for U.S. Senate pitting Michael Bennet against Andrew Romanoff on the Democratic side and Ken...

State Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, says the timing of his bill meant to clean up lobbying practices at the state Capitol is purely coincidental and not related to recent ethics allegations or any one case in particular. Steadman says Senate Bill 87 stems from the 15 years he spent as a lobbyist and his inside knowledge of best practices.

First there was Florida. Then there was Ohio. Will Colorado be next? The state’s got a brand new voter database system, the longest ballot in the nation, and hundreds of thousands of new voter registrations to contend with, all of which raise the specter of chaos at the polls come November. And while elections officials maintain that Colorado can pull off its elections without a hitch, several voter watchdog groups say otherwise.