Tag: U.S. Senate

Here's our daily roundup of some of our favorite news from around Colorado. • There will be no coyote hunting inside the Colorado Springs city limits, The Gazette reports. The city council "put a bullet between the eyes" of a proposal to issue permits to shoot the critters, citing more pressing concerns for the town government. Officials received an unusually high number of calls -- most in opposition -- about the plan, which would have restricted coyote season to certain times of day and required completion of a hunter safety course.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar blasted Republican senators Wednesday for voting down his pick for deputy secretary. The Senate's 57-39 vote fell three votes shy of the 60 votes required to thwart a threatened Republican filibuster against the nomination of David Hayes, an environmental lawyer who served as Interior's No. 2 for the last three years of the Clinton administration. It was the first time the Senate has blocked an Obama nomination.

Colorado freshman Sen. and Deputy Whip Mark Udall is a pivotal figure in the intended Obama revolution, according to a profile fronting today's Congressional Quarterly. Udall's tall-order task is to help Obama succeed where Ronald Reagan failed by getting the record-breaking number of majority party newcomers in the senate to support the president's agenda without alienating the moderate voters who elected them.

The smart folks over at the Bell Policy Center have some suggestions for nascent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet who's wrangling a compromise within the $900 billion federal stimulus bill a mere three week after his swearing-in.

Colorado's two freshman senators, both Democrats, are part of a bipartisan group that spent Thursday forging a proposal to trim up to $100 billion in spending from the economic stimulus bill in hopes of winning support from moderate Republicans and Democrats who have complained the package devotes too much money to programs that won't create jobs fast enough. "The American people are expecting this to be a recovery bill, not a Christmas list," said Sen. Michael Bennet Thursday evening between votes on the bill.

With Monday's withdrawal from the Senate race by Attorney General John Suthers, state Republicans lack a clear front-runner to take on newly appointed Democrat Michael Bennet in 2010. Other top GOP prospects have hesitated to enter the race, weighing both their own fortunes and the emerging profile of Bennet, the former Denver Public Schools chief, who lacks a voting record and has never before run for office. It's a markedly different tone than state Republicans sounded last month when contenders jostled for the chance to take on an appointed senator.

Even as we learn embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich considered appointing Oprah Winfrey to fill Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat -- Oprah was glad she wasn't on her treadmill when she heard the news -- and New York Gov. David Paterson raised the ire of the Kennedy clan by finally naming an obscure, upstate congresswoman to take Hillary Clinton's place, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold plans to introduce a constitutional amendment that would require U.S. Senate vacancies be filled by special elections instead of gubernatorial appointments. Feingold, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, released the following statement Sunday:

Putting the kibosh on speculation he would seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced Monday he plans to seek re-election to the state's top law enforcement office and won't be seeking higher office next year. "I will not run for the U.S. Senate," Suthers says in a lengthy statement filled with "soul-searching."

Sen. Ken Salazar officially said goodbye to the U.S. Senate Friday morning as he looks forward to serving as the next secretary of the interior. In his remarks, Salazar paid tribute to his family's lengthy history traced back to 1520 in the American southwest, calling himself a proud "12th-generation son of the southwest of New Mexico and Colorado." Salazar plans to step down from the Senate once his colleagues vote on his nomination.

Colorado's next U.S. senator, Michael Bennet, sat for a newspaper interview Thursday and plans to take viewer questions in a TV interview set to air Sunday, amid grumbling the Denver Public Schools chief picked by Gov. Bill Ritter to fill Ken Salazar's term is a big unknown.