This evening Andrew Romanoff held a birthday party in part to help retire his campaign debt and for some reason, Ken Buck, in a classless, antagonistic move crashed the party. Attendees who wanted to take the opportunity to question Buck's policies (and sanity) say Buck wouldn't answer any questions.
Who the f#(k does this prick think he is to walk into a hornets nest and then thumb his nose at honest questions?
What a coward. I wonder if Buck will ever prove Norton's questioning his manhood wrong. So far it seems that's the only thing she's been right about.
There are many reasons for supporting or not supporting a candidate in a primary race. I could cite many reasons to support either Andrew Romanoff or Michael Bennet -but for Democrats there is really only one thing that they should know about this primary.
It's that Michael Bennet can't win against the Republicans. From the Hill:
Sen. Bennet faces uphill battle if he wins the primary The troubling news for Bennet - and other Democratic incumbents - is that only 42 percent of the Colorado voters polled approve of him, and 44 percent disapprove. Moreover, asked whether they wanted to elect a new person or reelect their incumbent, just 34 percent would vote for their incumbent, while 55 percent prefer a new person.
This diary is serving to host a chain of emails specifially between School Board Member Jeanne Kaplan,Michael Bennet, Tom Boasberg, Theresa Pena and the rest of the school board. This is to expose the notion that the calls for an audit of the 2008 DPS banking derivative investment are being driven by 'politically motivated board members' - which the email chain below will prove to be factually wrong. In fact it appears Tom Boasberg's and Theresa Pena's opposition to providing an audit is politically motivated to protect themselves and Michael Bennet.
I have redacted the names and emails of everyone except former Superintendent Michael Bennet, current Superintendent Tom Boasberg, school board President Theresa Pena, and Jeanne Kaplan - however the names of the other board members are in the public record.
Everyone reading this diary on other sites will be redirected here to see the full list of emails.
The purpose of the emails is to get information on details of the finances pertaining to the Bank Derivative investment by the board in April of 2008.
The time line of these emails begins a full 15 months before there was even a primary and more astoundingly, 7 months before Michael Bennet was appointed to the Senate.
The last few days have been interesting to say the least in the Democratic senate race. Starting with the New York Times Financial writer Gretchen Morgenson's article, it only got more heated.
Bennet campaign spokesman Trevor Kincaid showed his Rahm Emmanuel ties by launching into a rather blunt response.
Fox News spoke with Bennet's press person, Trevor Kincaid. When asked if Bennet was going to issue a statement or hold a presser about the Times article, Kincaid said, "First of all the New York Times article is b******t." Kincaid went on to say the NYT reporter (Gretchen Morgenson) had obviously never attended a Denver Public Schools board meeting. As of this writing, the Bennet campaign has not issued an official response on the information contained in the article.
Somehow I'm guessing Mr. Kincaid has never been to a DPS school board meeting either, but it made for a headline grabbing fact-free response.
((guess this won't help win any popularity contests over at TOPB) - promoted by wade norris)
This Friday's New York Times investigation: "Payback Time: Exotic Deals Put Denver Schools Deeper in Debt" casts a laser focus on Michael Bennet's investment into a 'risky' derivative swap by as Superintendent of Denver Public Schools.
Pasts attempts by the Bennet campaign to deflect questions about this investigation are now laid bare and there are guilty parties involved.
Now, Colorado Democratic Representative Mark Ferrandino, Chair of the State Budget committee is calling for a bi-partisan audit by both the Colorado State House and Senate of this investment that has already cost Denver Public Schools 25 million dollars and counting. Listen here on local Progressive Talk show host Mario Solis-Marich's Friday show at about 1/3rd through the podcast.
So I just looked at a recent comment by Colorado Pols in Raf's diary.
As for debunking the Romanoff "disadvantage"
Any disadvantage he had in this Primary was his own doing. We discussed this many times in the last 18 months. Nobody forced Romanoff to wait until August to announce his candidacy, by which time he was already millions of dollars behind in fundraising. He could have jumped in the race in March, when he first polled on it, and it would have made a huge difference.
by: Colorado Pols @ Thu Aug 05, 2010 at 18:04:00 PM MDT
[ Parent | Reply ]
Bennet Scramble to Show Democratic Bonafides Too Little, Too Late
by: Colorado Pols Tue Sep 01, 2009 at 14:10:43 PM MDT
Sure, Bennet has raised a ton of money, but in a Democratic primary where Romanoff will start with significantly greater name ID, the latter needs only to be able to raise enough money to be competitive. Romanoff doesn't need to outspend Bennet, or even come close, because he is so much more well-known and liked among Democratic primary voters.
You can see that Colorado Pols has clearly supported the idea that Romanoff both had better name ID and 'likability' with Democrats and that this was more important than money. "Romanoff doesn't need to outspend Bennet, or even come close" the editors said.
This was not 18 months ago, but 11 months ago. And furthermore, the credibility gap for Colorado Pols goes back even further.
Felicia Sonmez of Washington Post's "The Fix" compares two Senators facing primaries: John McCain and Michael Bennet, talking about what is working and what isn't.
McCain took an early, aggressive approach to his primary opponent, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R), hammering him relentlessly...by the time Hayworth went up with his first television ad in July, McCain had spent more than $15 million slamming him and had already begun pulling away in the polls.
Sonmez's point is that this tactic clearly works: McCain was at risk of losing his seat but now Hayworth is falling back.
In case you hadn't noticed, there is a Senate primary in Colorado - pitting a Conservadem - Michael Bennet vs a people powered candidate, Andrew Romanoff - who has taken the Obama pledge to take no PAC money.
(Conservadem is not my label, Rachel Maddow gave Senator Bennet that name for joining Evan Bayh's coalition of conservative democrats)
Despite millions of corporate dollars being spent by Michael Bennet, Andrew Romanoff has taken the lead in polls with the Primary on August 10th.
Pundits have written that Romanoff's win will send a message throughout politics, that we the grassroots voters, can reverse theCorporate Stranglehold on Congress .
(with the week Bennet is having, this is not the time to give the impression that you are day dreaming in the Senate - promoted by wade norris)
Volunteers for Andrew Romanoff are busting their behinds day in and day out and Mr.Romanoff himself is crisscrossing the state connecting with voters and making his case for their vote.
Michael Bennet, a freshman Democrat from Colorado, said, "Sit and watch us for seven days-just watch the floor. You know what you'll see happening? Nothing. When I'm in the chair, I sit there thinking, I wonder what they're doing in China right now?"
uh, what? You have a primary - Guess your day dreaming is happening on the campaign trail too and Andrew Romanoff is taking advantage of it - and is surging in the polls.
(sorry to mention the blog who shall not be mentioned:) - promoted by wade norris)
There is a new poll showing Bennet 'has a lead' (41%-37%) even though this is within the polls' own disclosure that it is within the 4% margin of error.
http://www.politico.com/static...
I am calling it now - that Colorado Pols will trumpet this as a big deal and Team Bennet as well.
The Denver Post was more even handed with its title about Romanoff going up by 3% - 48% to 45% in the Survey USA poll -
by saying
Romanoff and Bennet are about even - 48 percent to 45 percent, respectively - in the poll of 536 Democrats who have voted or are likely to vote in the Aug. 10 primary. The question has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.
Recently in the Colorado Democratic Primary, Senator Michael Bennet accused former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff of voting to "privatize Social Security."
Upon further review of the record, it seems that Senator Bennet is taking a page from the Karl Rove playbook. Rove was infamous for attacking a rival's strength and where his own candidate was vulnerable.
Case in point - let's take a trip back to the fall of 2009, when I first wrote about the letter Senator Bennet signed that would have gone a lot farther towards privatizing Social Security...
(Crossposted at Square State, Firedoglake, Huffington Post, and anywhere else possible, so that everyone will know just what Senator Bennet will do to get elected.)
CBS4 ran one of their "Reality Check" segments on Bennet's most recent ad. They came to the same conclusion that many people on here have said: that the ad might technically not be lying, but is in fact misleading.
Lately in Colorado, the Republicans have pretty much gone crazy - with
Tom "bomb Mecca" Tancredo launching an independent bid in the Governor's race and Republican Senate candidates Ken Buck and Jane Norton having a standoff about wearing high heel shoes.
I was hoping that we were going to stay civil on the Democratic side of the aisle, but in the Senate primary, Michael Bennet's campaign and his supporters are trying their level best at matching the Republicans' insanity with their tactics against Andrew Romanoff.
Last election I caucused for Barack Obama. I voted for Barack Obama. I did what I could to help elect a man who ran his campaign not through special interest contributions but by people.
As I watched this video of (now) President Obama attack those who promise to clean up Washington but run their campaigns through DC special interests, I could not help but think of our current Senate race.
(Factcheck is neither a fact nor a check. Discuss. - promoted by Fong)
"You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts" is the trendy political quote of the year, it seems. Romanoff's biggest message in the campaign against Bennet is the accusation that Bennet can be "bought" and has been bought, by special interests. Bennet sat back and took the line for six months, not fighting back at all, but using as his message, "I've done a lot of good things in my year in the Senate and I want to do more."
Bennet finally threw back the mud on 7/20 with his own ad, educating voters that Andrew Romanoff was not above taking money from PACS for nearly a decade --including having his own PAC that was closed four months after he started campaigning for US Senate.
Romanoff bloggers went berzerk, claiming it was not true.
Yesterday, FactCheck.org, a neutral third party, examined the claims and checked their factual validity. http://factcheck.org/2010/07/c...
Michael Bennet reveals shocking secret...that Romanoff has been talking about for a year.
Last night Michael Bennet lost the battle to control the message. While his previous ads had been positive talking about himself, Bennet made the mistake of engaging on the one issue people can identify with Andrew Romanoff: campaign contributions.
The Bennet campaign released a new attack ad telling people what Andrew Romanoff has been saying since he started the campaign: that he has learned from his years of legislative experience and no longer takes PAC special interest money
If you're registered with a political party you should be receiving your primary election ballot in the mail very soon. The commercials are going to increase and the fights of Norton v Buck and Bennet v Romanoff are going to get real scrappy. I look forward to normally uninvolved people expressing great inconvenience at the emotive reactions felt during their normally programmed commercial breaks.
Cry babies :'(
According to the Colorado Secretary of State, Democrat and Republican party registration numbers for the entire state of Colorado as of June is
Dems: 817,458
Reps: 855,667
Unaff: 765,849
And, as Eluning points out in the comments, the Libertarians have their own primary with nearly 8,000 registered Libs.
If you have any questions or need resources from your County Clerk & Recorder, you can find contact information here.
