Month: April 2022

(Mile High Evening News)

DENVER — Republican Dave Williams wants his nickname included on the congressional primary ballot, but his nickname isn’t “Dave”: It’s “Let’s Go Brandon.”

The Colorado state legislator filed a lawsuit Monday against Secretary of State Jena Griswold after she rejected his request to be listed on the June 28 GOP primary ballot as “Dave ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Williams.”

She said “Let’s Go Brandon” was a slogan, not a nickname, but Mr. Williams disagrees.

“State law is fairly clear,” Mr. Willliams told The Washington Times. “There are only two requirements: that the nickname be used regularly, and that it not include the name of a political party.”

The 35-year-old Colorado Springs resident said he has used “Let’s Go Brandon” consistently since announcing his candidacy for the seat held by Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who has represented the Fifth Congressional District since 2007.

Indeed, “Let’s Go Brandon” appears on his social media accounts. He has also been introduced with the nickname in radio and podcast interviews.

This article was published at The Washington Times. Read it in its entirety here. Read More

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Someone in the Colorado media finally noticed that Jared Polis refused to move from his Boulder home into the governor’s mansion after the election and has commuted to Denver daily for three years in a gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban.

That’s right, the planet is dying from climate change and Polis is partly to blame.

Thank you to the Colorado Sun for bringing to our attention that vehicles like the one used by Polis, driven 15,000 miles a year, emits 8.9 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Is he ashamed of his daily commute?

Of course not.

The only regret of the governor’s office is that taxpayers have yet to purchase Polis a Tesla. 

Environmentalists are complaining that Polis’s gas-guzzling sets a bad example. 

The more precise phrase here would be blatant hypocrite for Polis not practicing what he preaches.

Like when his own administration tried to force private businesses along the Front Range into regulating which of their employees were permitted to drive to work, and who had to commute by other means. 

The whole outing of Polis’s non Prius ways recks of environmentalists lobbying for taxpayers to buy everyone in government a brand new electric vehicle, which in addition to costing a fortune would put quite a burden on our electrical grid. 

The simpler solution would be for the governor to move into the governor’s mansion,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

It looks like a couple of Republican candidates running for the congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter will have to sue their way onto the ballot after Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office tossed their petitions as invalid.

Both Brad Dempsey and Carl Andersen are planning to ask a court to reverse the decision.

Dempsey issued a statement calling his court challenge a “First Amendment audit of the Secretary of State’s performance of its duties.”

“To ensure that the Secretary of State’s Office has faithfully fulfilled its duty to honor each voter’s First Amendment right to nominate their candidate of choice, we must carefully review how the Secretary of State’s Office has carried out its role and reached its decision to reject such a substantial amount of voter signatures on my petition and the petitions of other candidates,” Dempsey said.

Dempsey submitted 2,232 signatures but 983 were denied by Griswold’s office. He only needed 1,500, but was left with 1,249.

Anderson fared worse. Of the 4,462 signatures submitted by his campaign, Griswold’s office kicked out 3,417 signatures leaving him with 1,045.

Republican Erik Aadland’s petitions failed to qualify so he went the assembly route to get on the ballot for the 7th congressional District. The petition from Republican Giulianna “Jewels” Gray who was running for Congress in the new 8th district was also rejected after too many signatures were rejected.

Something is definitely amiss. 

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

Ballot issue representatives are nearing the deadline to get their proposals through the Title Board. Many of the petition proponents will present several variations and if title is set, one is chosen to move forward on getting signatures.

The Wednesday, April 20 Title Board Hearing has an exceptional 60 proposals on the agenda because it’s the last chance to get on the 2022 ballot. It’s a long list, but many are variations with a slight tweak.  Nearly a 1/3 of the proposals pertain to alcohol licensing, sales, and delivery.

The next largest category is property taxes.

The property tax proposals range from relief offered by tax caps to additional taxes and fees on residential properties valued in excess of $2 million dollars. The proposed additional revenue would then go to subsidize housing under the government’s oversight.

Though I’ll be fighting against any tax hike that makes it on to the ballot, I appreciate the effort it took bigger government proponents to get there. I’m glad I get that choice to vote yes on issues like property tax relief or invest time to defeat any property tax hike that gets on the ballot.

We need the ability to initiate ballot measures as voters. The legislature can write, initiate, and pass a bill within a week if the will exists. Compare that to the voter initiative route which is months and countless hours between volunteers and the paid circulators who go out 8-hours a day in heat or cold to get it done.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

The political winds are blowing in the Republicans’ direction this year.  It would be a shame to blow it — so to speak. A lingering issue surrounds the fallout from Proposition 108, a ballot question that voters approved in 2016.  That measure now allows unaffiliated voters to participate in either Republican or Democrat primary election ballots  – but not in both.

I voted “no” on Prop 108, as did both the Republican and Democrat state chairs, on the grounds that political parties are private membership organizations. And that non-members shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in the members’ selection of their nominees. Just as elections for president of your Rotary Club shouldn’t be open to Elks.

I still believe in that principle but Prop 108 passed, nonetheless, and we have to live with political reality. So, as a Republican, I’m now reconciled to the unaffiliated voting in GOP primaries. However, a group of five members of the Republican central committee went to court seeking an injunction to block the provisions of Prop 108. Their request was recently dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge John Kane, settling the issue.

Earlier, opportunistic Democrats had changed their position and publicly opposed the lawsuit, welcoming with open arms the unaffiliated to vote in their primaries. This was designed to create the impression that Republicans don’t value unaffiliated voters in the general election, either. Which is nonsense. Without the votes of some unaffiliateds, Republican nominees can’t win statewide elections.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

EDGEWATER — Home to just more than 5,000 people, this suburban Jefferson County town bordered by Denver to the east, Lakewood to the south and west, and Wheat Ridge to the north, is looking to limit Second Amendment rights like no city before in Colorado.

Although Denver has long banned open carry and recently announced its intent to look at banning concealed carry in public spaces including parks and city buildings, Edgewater has a laundry list of items targeting gun owners coming up for discussion that far exceeds anything seen to date.

On April 5th, the city council heard a presentation on gun violence prevention from Colorado Ceasefire, an anti-gun rights organization, and subsequently decided to move forward with a more detailed discussion on possible municipal ordinances. Such local gun rights restrictions would be allowed under Senate Bill 21- 256, passed during last year’s legislative session and signed into law by Governor Polis, which unwound decades of state preemption and allows local governments to manage their own gun laws, but only so long as they are more restrictive than those at the state level, a condition that has been referred to as a “bastardization of the concept of local control.”

Sweeping gun rights restrictions

According to an Edgewater City Council agenda for the April 19th meeting, the following will be considered for passage:

• Prohibiting open carry city-wide.
• Prohibiting concealed carry in city-owned buildings and areas,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

A new poll from Blueprint Polling suggests Democrats are facing a nightmare scenario in Colorado with barely six months to go until the midterms.

Inflation, immigration, the war in Ukraine, and the general lawlessness allowed by Democrats in Colorado has turned the political landscape completely against the left.

President Biden won Colorado by almost 14% just 18 months ago, but Blueprint’s poll of 612 registered voters from April 6-8 shows Biden trailing former President Trump 42.9% to 43.1% in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.

The results track with a prediction offered by an unnamed Democrat strategist who predicted a “biblical disaster” for Democrats this fall.

The poll’s Senate results tested U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet against Gino Campana who failed to qualify for the primary ballot at last week’s assembly, so that’s useless.

Yet 46% of support is hardly encouraging for the Democrat incumbent who has never cracked 50% in either of his previous contests.

The real stunner is that Biden’s support has fallen by 12.5% since 2020 in Colorado.

That’s a pretty big problem for Bennet considering many voters may not be aware yet that he has literally supported Biden 100% of the time in the Senate.

The reasons for Biden’s total collapse in Colorado aren’t difficult to understand.

Bidenflation is even worse here than national averages, while crime continues to rise unabated.

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