Month: November 2022

(Colorado Peak Politics)

The gap is closing fast in the Colorado Senate race with challenger Joe O’Dea coming within two points of catching incumbent Michael Bennet, according to a new Trafalgar Group poll.

Conducted during the ongoing voting period between Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, the poll questioned more than 1,000 likely voters and has a 2.9% margin of error.

Read it and weep, libs.

New @trafalgar_group #COSen #Poll (10/30-11/01) shows incumbent #Bennet holding lead, but gap closing #copol

47.6% @MichaelBennet
46.1% @ODeaForColorado
2.2% @Brian_Peotter
1.1% Other
3.0% Und

See Report: https://t.co/NkyIjbMGCA pic.twitter.com/5g3bgSHBev

— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) November 2, 2022

The poll shows O’Dea has a real fighting chance to overtake this entrenched Democrat, who has spent more than $20 million to hold one of Colorado’s precious Senate seats while doing absolutely nothing worthwhile for the voters of this state.

The party split among those polled was 29.4% Republican, 32.4% Democrat and 38.2% Independent.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

Inflation is hitting all Coloradans hard, but at least one class of citizens has the state legislature looking out for them – retirees with public pensions, both state and local.

Bill numbers haven’t been assigned yet, so the prospective legislation is known only as Bill A, but the details have been released.  At an estimated cost of $220 million per year to Colorado taxpayers, all retired members of state and local public pensions that file Colorado tax return will get a $700 tax credit in both fiscal years 2023 and 2024.  The original bill would have increased the tax deduction to create a similar benefit, but the authors ended up opting for a tax credit to get the checks out immediately.

I serve as an appointee on the legislative oversight subcommittee for Colorado’s public pension system, or PERA, which in turn reports to the Pension Review Commission.  At a recent subcommittee meeting, some sort of tax break for PERA retirees was mentioned as a possibility, but there was no concrete shape to the plan, and no formal proposal.  There was some skepticism of the idea of a special tax break for government retirees even among Democrat committee appointees.

Unfortunately, since the bill was moved directly to the Pension Review Commission, the subcommittee – whose entire purpose is to provide outside expert oversight of PERA and input into the legislative process affecting it – never got to review, or even discuss the question.

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

The Republican nominee for Congress in District 8 has been called out as a liar by Colorado’s favorite newscaster to hate, who claims she is intentionally misleading voters about her opponent’s stance on fentanyl.

Kyle Clark of 9News got a little rabid in his latest “fact check” claiming State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer intentionally lied with pants on fire and a Pinocchio nose the length of an AR15.

NEW: This @Kirkmeyer4CO ad is based on a lie. Her campaign knows it. And they know 9NEWS can’t pull it from the air due to FCC rules. But I can point out the lie on @nexton9news. And here. #copolitics pic.twitter.com/nAP7uRKRyX

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 2, 2022

The devil, as always, is in the details of Kyle’s assertion.

Yadira Caraveo did in fact vote to decriminalize possession of fentanyl in the amount Kirkmeyer refers to in her ad.

If possession of fentanyl in small amounts that are enough to kill is a misdemeanor that gets offenders a slap on the wrist and a fine with no jail time or punishment, then hasn’t it in effect been legalized?

It’s no more serious than jaywalking at this point.

Kirkmeyer did not tell a flat out lie. We know what she means — when the cops catch someone with small amounts of fentanyl, it’s no big deal.

He’s splitting hairs and claiming a malicious intent on her part,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Candi CdeBaca didn’t get the latest rewrite of Democrat talking points instructing the progressive base to abandon all defunding police efforts until after the brutal crime wave gripping the nation passes, or Election Day.

Denver City Council’s favorite socialist Democrat is trying to pass 29 budget changes amounting to $127 million to the city’s police department.

Instead of police services and money to help protect the community from crime, CdeBaca wants Denver to get into the real estate business and become slumlords to the homeless.

CdeBaca’s wants $25,000 for a community luncheon. Yes, that’s one lunch. Must be surf and turf.

Plus, she wants $40 million to purchase hotels to house vagrants and another $20 million to lease apartments to the homeless.

Altogether, the changes would have effectively halved the police department’s proposed $257 million allocation from the city’s general fund for 2023, which is up 4.6% from 2022.

The police department’s total proposed budget for 2023 is $308 million, which includes grants and special revenue.

No other council member voted with CdeBaca on her defund police measures.

They obviously got the memo that police are needed to protect residents and arrest criminals.

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District has shifted to the “leans Republican” category in a new political forecast that projects the GOP will take control of the House in Tuesday’s election with a 19-seat majority.

That would give the Republicans a total of 236 members, with a gain of 23 seats for a solid hold on the House of Representatives that would strip the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi.

From the Fox News power rankings:

Inflation and crime are still registering as the top two issues of concern for voters, and they favor the GOP by double digits. The border is also proving to be salient, with the latest national Fox News Poll showing voters favor the GOP on that issue by a whopping 21 points. Democrats have focused on the Supreme Court’s reversal of reproductive rights to some success, and Republicans have put a ceiling on their gains by nominating very far-right candidates in about a dozen swing districts. However, overall, the issues suggest the GOP is in for a good night.

The battleground for the Senate gives 47 seats to the Democrats and 49 to the Republicans, with four toss-up races deciding control in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Joe O’Dea is still fighting down to the wire to boot Michael Bennet out of the Senate seat he’s held for 13 years, through one failed presidential run, and with zero accomplishments to change lives for the better.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

PUEBLO — The Democrat running for Colorado’s State Senate District 3 is leaving some Pueblo-area voters scratching their heads trying to determine if he is pro-life or pro-choice on abortion, a topic that has been the focus for Democrats in most every political race in America since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Some don’t know if Nick Hinrichsen is really the pro-choice candidate he’s campaigning as, since both he and his wife, former House District 47 Rep. Bri Buentello, have in the past led the Pueblo community to believe they are pro-life.

Hinrichsen, who was appointed to the SD-3 seat in February 2022 to replace Leroy Garcia, after Garcia took a position at the Pentagon, is on record in this election saying men shouldn’t have an opinion on the medical decisions women make regarding their own bodies, and he has pledged to support continuing access to abortion if elected.

He most recently took part in a protest at A Caring Pregnancy Center (ACPC) in Pueblo. The center works with pregnant women, providing resources they need to give birth rather than get an abortion.

However, in 2018 when Buentello was running for House District 47 everything was much different. In fact, the Executive Director at ACPC, Tamra Axworthy, told Complete Colorado that Hinrichsen and Buentello were allies of the center, with Hinrichsen even donating to a fundraiser held on behalf of ACPC.

Axworthy said Buentello came into the center during her election run in 2018,

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

A new poll by the Trafalgar Group shows Gov. Polis with a seven-point lead over Republican challenger Heidi Ganahl with just one week left of voting.

This is why Colorado can’t have nice things, like crime-free streets and poop-free sidewalks. Instead we have tent cities, which have become the preferred lifestyle of drug users and assorted other welfare millennials.

Less than 50% of all Coloradans supported Polis in the poll, and yet it looks like the spoilers in the race are throwing a monkeywrench into the works.

An internal poll conducted by @trafalgar_group shows that just like Lee Zeldin in New York, I am only 7 POINTS away from Polis. Despite @jaredpolis and his dark money groups flooding TV with $25M in negative ads over the past 8 weeks, he is STILL polling under 50%. #HeidiForGov pic.twitter.com/w3rb5tgEnX

— Heidi Ganahl for CO Gov (@heidiganahl) October 31, 2022

We’ve gone so far blue; some would rather sing the blues and curse the darkness rather than shake up the one-party system and try for something better than an authoritarian millionaire.

The spoiler candidates are as much to blame, pulling critical votes away from the only viable challenger to His Nibs.

“Just like Lee Zeldin in NY, we are 7 points out despite Jared Polis and his dark money groups spending $25 million,” Ganahl told Complete Colorado.

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(Complete Colorado Page Two)

(Editor’s note: You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.)

Jared Polis and Heidi Ganahl endorsed Prop 121, my citizen’s initiative to permanently lower the state’s flat income tax from its current 4.55% to 4.4%. I’m grateful.

Jared’s endorsement certainly doesn’t sit well with his friends on his leftist team who hate Colorado’s flat tax and would rather a progressive tax like California’s, which would chase away businesses, job creators and the productive class — you know, like it’s doing in California right now.

Polis’s progressive allies must certainly hate the lip service he’s giving to ending the income tax completely. Though they likely know it is only lip service, it can’t help their cause of class-baiting when their leader is saying taxing income is counterproductive.

Polis isn’t serious about ending our income tax because for four years he has done nothing to move the issue other than say he’d replace it with a carbon tax. At the same time, he’s promising to make Colorado a zero-carbon state by 2040, leaving no carbon to tax.

So, he’s lying about replacing the income tax, or he is insane.

Polis’ rhetoric still leaves a little problem for Colorado’s left. They want to punish wealth, vilify success and redistribute income by force of government … all while their leader in Colorado is a very wealthy, successful man who publicly supports lowering our flat income tax and ending it all together.

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(Colorado Peak Politics)

Has Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold turned into the very dark political money machine she pledged to fight against?

Sure sounds like it.

Jimmy Sengenberger writes in a Denver Gazette column that Griswold pledged to “fight for more transparency in political spending,” and yet as chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) she led an effort connected to dark money leading back into Colorado and supporting her own campaign.

Let’s break this down: The Griswold-led Democratic Association of Secretaries of State works with End Citizens United to disburse campaign funds around the country. Among them, ECU funneled money to a Colorado organization (DDF) established to reelect DASS’s chairwoman, Jena Griswold. The various organizations overlap with many of the same donors and key players.

Jena Griswold chose to lead a partisan, national organization while running for reelection as secretary of state. At DASS, she has the ability and the obligation to set the example for transparency in political spending. Instead, Griswold doubled down on the very thing she claims to reject — and failed her own transparency test.

With Griswold leading the national organization of Democrat secretaries of state, she was less than transparent and continued to play the very games she promised to end, Sengenberger writes.

Bylaws were changed, and so too was the process of how the organization’s treasury was spent and by whom, with Griswold now directly supervising the daily operations.

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