Elections/Campaigns

If there were any further evidence needed that Colorado’s state-lawmaker recall elections scheduled for September 10 were from the start a proxy national battle over gun policy, that evidence came yesterday, when campaign finance reports in the races came due. The reports included major donations from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, California entrepreneur Eli Broad and the National Rifle Association.

A Colorado judge ruled that voters in the upcoming recall elections cannot use mail-in ballots, and must vote in person. The ruling is a blow to Democrats, who wrote the more inclusive mail-in legislation when deciding how the election would be run earlier this year.

Weld County Republican D.A. Ken Buck announced Wednesday he is running to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate, looking to unseat first-term Democrat Mark Udall. The news made a splash, fired up conservative supporters hungry for a substantial Republican candidate to enter the race, but generated groans and sharp criticism from Democrats who were relieved to see him recede from the statewide political stage three years ago.

In the wake of this week’s historic vote to legalize marijuana in Colorado, the state’s three Democratic U.S. House members are drafting legislation aimed at easing the tension between the new state law and longstanding federal prohibition of the drug.

America’s war on drugs got a lot more interesting Tuesday night when Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana. Legalization advocates were quick to call the two measures “the beginning of the end” of marijuana prohibition in the United States.
“The beginning of the end has begun,” Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), wrote at his blog.

J. Paul Brown, a sheep farmer from the tiny town of Ignacio in La Plata County, Colorado, is one of the most conservative members of the state legislature. He votes against nearly all bills proposed by Democrats and often against bills proposed by Republicans as well. Indeed, he has cast lone ‘no’ votes in the House more than once since he was elected to office on the Tea Party wave in 2010 to replace relative moderate Ellen Roberts, who voters sent to the state senate.

Early voter numbers released this morning by the Colorado secretary of state’s office bring good news for Democrats. The lead notched by registered Republicans dipped a point over the weekend to 38 percent of all votes cast so far in the state. Registered Democrats stayed even at 36 percent and unaffiliated voters gained two points to hit 25 percent.

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.