Tag: Steve Rodriguez

Senator Minority Leader Mike Kopp is leading opposition to the so-called Asset legislation that would grant in-state university tuition to students who have attended at least three years of high school in Colorado but who are neither U.S. citizens nor legal residents of the country. The Littleton Republican wrote an op-ed for the Pueblo Chieftan last week making a case that drew fire from conservative Latino group Somos Republicans. In a release Friday, the group said Kopp was demonizing Colorado youth with preposterous arguments based on shoddy research.

As the nation's political class wrestles with the violence in Arizona that killed and injured more than twenty people and landed Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the hospital with a bullet through the brain, leading national Latino conservative organization Somos Republicans is spotlighting the harsh backlash it drew from members of the Colorado GOP to a campaign it launched last week lauding former state Republican Muhammad Ali Hasan for speaking out about growing bigotry in the party.

Conservative Latino organization Somos Republicans, which has battled the rise of what it sees as bigoted, big-government positions on immigration among Republican leaders, is courting high-profile Colorado Republican Party defector Muhammed Ali Hasan. The group Monday asked Hasan not to become a Democrat, as he announced he would do last month, but to work with Somos Republicans and its supporters to "change the Republican Party from within."

The Colorado Republican Party's effort to win back top seats has been characterized nationally as a "gaffapalooza” and a "farce," with many analysts pointing fingers at state GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams. Observers on the ground in Colorado, including GOP staffers and candidates, say that in the year of the Tea Party, Wadhams simply failed to properly vet candidates. The top-of-the-ticket false starts and shuffling have drawn plenty of attention and spawned mockery but the farce grows dark at the bottom of the ticket, where GOP candidates with criminal histories of violence and abuse dot the ballot.