Re: “Boundary changed, but no new plans yet,” March 15 news story

The residents of the Tri-Lakes area have reached a breaking point. Despite overwhelming and documented opposition, the El Paso County Board of Commissioners continues to facilitate a land-use process that effectively treats the community as an obstacle to be bypassed rather than a stakeholder to be heard.

By allowing developers like to exploit administrative loopholes — such as the recent Boundary Line Adjustment — the county is signaling that deep-pocketed developers dictate the future of Monument Hill, not the people who actually live there. Residents are rightfully furious that their voices are systematically marginalized by a process that grants the applicant extensive time and resources while limiting community input to mere three-minute snippets.

The consequences of this project — ranging from water depletion and traffic congestion to permanent environmental degradation — will be borne by those in the immediate vicinity, yet the current system ignores this reality. The community is tired of the charade. They are demanding structural reforms, including equal presentation time for citizen groups and the integration of prior records, to stop this “reset to zero” cycle that protects corporate interests at the expense of local sovereignty. The message to the Board is clear: citizens versus developers.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”
A government that prioritizes the convenience of a corporation over the voice of its citizens has forgotten its primary duty. We do not exist to accommodate a developer’s site plan; the developer exists to operate within the community we have built.

 Mike Stern,  Wakonda Hills, Monument

Social Security must be saved

Re: “Social Security has to slash benefits in 2032 if Congress fails to act,” March 14 commentary

Thank you to Sen. Mark Udall and Rep. Bob Beauprez for their guest editorial on the looming insolvency of Social Security. Yet I challenge them to show what they did to address this problem during their many years in Congress. It would have been much less painful back then. Someone needs to touch the third rail. Perhaps if two touched it together, the shock would not be so great.

Joe Knopinski, Littleton

I was pleased to see Mark Udall and Bob Beauprez breathlessly warn us in an opinion column that Congress needs to do something soon to fix chronic underfunding of the Social Security Trust Fund.

They are absolutely correct. They left out only one thing: They offered not a single concrete suggestion for what Congress ought to do. This is no way to get to a solution.

Let me help out here. Income is taxed at 12.4% for Social Security. Employees have 6.2% withheld from their paychecks; employers pay the other 6.2%. Those who are self-employed pay the whole 12.4%. But only up to $184,500 in income this year. In other words, once your income passes that threshold, a smaller portion of it you pay in Social Security taxes. This is fundamentally unfair.

The Social Security Administration projects that simply removing the cap on Social Security taxes would solve the underfunding problem in a way that is equitable and would lead to benefit increases overall. And some percentage of taxpayers at every income level would see benefit increases, while none would see benefits decrease.

It����ap certainly worth a try.

Steve Lang, Denver

Nebraska’s canal project threatens Northeastern Colorado

Re: “Colorado’s water war with Nebraska comes to a head,” Sept. 21 news story

Farming in northeastern Colorado has never been easy, and it is getting harder. Markets are tough, input costs are up, and young people are leaving. What keeps communities in Northeastern Colorado going is agriculture, the water, the ground, and the community that ties everything together, and the proposed Perkins County Canal threatens all of it.

When you take water off farmland, the damage does not stop in crop yields. Equipment dealers, elevators, local banks, and businesses all feel it. Schools and roads will suffer. We have seen what happens to towns that lose their agricultural base, and we cannot let that happen again without a real fight.

That fight needs to be a regional one. I am asking communities across northeastern Colorado to come together and hire an independent economic consultant to assess the true local impact of this project (acres affected, jobs at risk, income lost, tax base eroded.) The Corps of Engineers will do its own analysis, but we need our own numbers. If their conclusions do not match what our communities are actually facing, we need the documentation to say so and demand they take another look.

Rural communities have always figured out how to help each other when it counts. This is one of those times. I urge local officials, water boards, farm bureaus, and civic leaders to set aside any differences and work together on this. The permit process will not wait, and neither can we.

Kimberly L. Kinnison, Ovid

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Nearly one million Coloradans receive Social Security benefits each month. The program provides critical financial support to retirees, individuals with disabilities, widows and widowers, and their families. For these Coloradoans, Social Security is a lifeline that helps them and their families.

But here’s the truth: Social Security is in trouble, and failure to act would have real consequences for those who depend upon the program.

According to projections from the Social Security Trustees, the Social Security retirement trust fund will go insolvent in late 2032. When that happens, by law, program costs must be reduced, meaning an across-the-board benefit cut for beneficiaries, to match incoming revenues. The Trustees estimate that cut will equal 24%, the equivalent of an annual $18,400 loss for a typical couple retiring in 2033.

This is the reality many in Washington have been loath to acknowledge. Too often, when we hear promises made about Social Security, they involve pledges “to protect Social Security by not touching it.” This may sound good, but it essentially guarantees that those benefit cuts will go into effect.

Social Security has been on a fiscally unsustainable path for decades. That is partially due to demographics – people are living longer and having fewer children, causing fewer workers to pay into the system relative to the number of retirees receiving benefits. But it is also due to a structural mismatch between benefits and revenues, where benefits are growing over time and revenues are failing to keep up. As a result, the program has been spending more than it takes in, tapping into its reserves to cover the gap.

The good news is that we can fix this. There is no shortage of options to save Social Security, avoid the benefit cut, and secure the program for future generations. But we need to act now. The sooner we act, the smaller the adjustments, the greater the options, the more time workers have to plan and adjust, and the easier it is to distribute the changes across generations.

2032 may seem a long way off, but having served Coloradans in the Senate and the House, we know firsthand just how fast the years fly by – and, how slowly the wheels of change turn in Congress.

This November, Coloradans will cast their ballots for who they want to represent them for the next six years in the Senate. That means this issue has finally reached the ballot box – insolvency will hit in the final year of the term for those elected to the Senate.

As citizens, each of us has a responsibility to press our elected officials for solutions. We can start by asking one simple question: What����ap your plan to save Social Security?

If they start talking about “not touching the program,” ask if they’re in favor of the benefit cut that comes with their position. Chances are they’ll say no – so, what����ap their plan?

Since 1940, Social Security has played a vital role in the lives of millions of Americans. Today, more than 70 million people receive benefits and over 40% of seniors rely on the program for a majority of their income.

All of us probably know someone who relies on the program. Which is why our elected officials can no longer ignore this issue. Six years will be here before we know it.

It was obvious long before we served in Congress that the system needed reform, but it was also obvious that too many members of both parties refused to touch the proverbial “third rail of politics” and instead preferred to kick the can down the road. However, catastrophic consequences are now just around the corner. The option of delaying action will soon expire.

Social Security is a sacred commitment to current and future retirees, one that assures all Americans that they will be supported in their old age and retirement. That commitment is on the financial rocks thanks to a longstanding bipartisan failure to preserve the program for future generations. We as voters deserve honest answers on what will be done to address Social Security’s insolvency, before it����ap too late – the clock is ticking.

Mark Udall represented Colorado in the United States Senate from 2009 to 2015 and in the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009. Bob Beauprez represented Colorado in the United States House of Representatives from 2003 to 2007.

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To Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet:

Your bravery is lacking. You put the soggy into milquetoast. You clearly do not realize the time to stand up is now (and has been for a while). Donald Trump’s willingness to use our military to overthrow the leadership of another country that presented no imminent threat to us is the last straw, even if Congress rubber-stamps the action.

The Coloradans who voted for you to represent us didn’t do so in the hopes you would both be in perpetual self-preservation mode — holding back and biting your tongue so as not to discourage moderates from voting for you in the next elections. Your ultra-lame social media posts (with awful production values) don’t cut it by a Colorado mile high.

Do you recall Neville Chamberlain? Maybe you ought to pin his name up in your campaign headquarters and make his visage your smartphone background, because he appears to be your hero. For further perspective, call Mark Udall.

Your legacy will not be formed by your past, but by what you both do now. Get off your butts and get on TV, radio, the internet, and town-halls and help get others motivated to stop the GOP and Trump.

Geof Erdahl, Evergreen

Stickers to cover up Trump on Parks pass should be removable

Re: “National parks: Feds say stickers could invalidate annual passes,” Jan. 7 news story

We read in the paper this morning that Donald Trump is putting his face on the 2026 Parks Pass right next to George Washington. Seriously?

Here is my solution for those of us who do not want to see his face in our cars. Simply get a sticker to cover his face that you can remove as you are enter a park and then reattach it once you have completed your time in our wonderful parks.

It would be better if we did not have to find another way around Trump’s dictatorial edicts, but at least this is a pretty easy one to erase.

Kelly Krattenmaker, Greenwood Village

The theft of Lakewood: How ‘affordable housing’ is a cover for developer profits

Lakewood City Council’s isn’t thoughtful planning. It����ap a green light for rushed, cheap, builder-grade development that trades functioning neighborhoods for short-term profit. Mature trees are scraped away. Fire access, water, traffic, parks and open space are treated like inconveniences, even as existing infrastructure already strains to keep up. Tens of thousands of people have been packed in over the last decade, with plans to pack in tens of thousands more, while homes sit empty and residents flee the state.

Officials keep repeating the same line: “We need more housing.” No. We need housing people can actually afford. Supply alone does not create affordability. Developers don’t build what communities need. They build what maximizes their profits. That����ap why Lakewood keeps getting million-dollar skinny homes jammed lot-line to lot-line and apartment blocks priced at market-rate or luxury. For seniors, people with disabilities, or families with young kids, these homes are impractical.

And the word “affordable”? It����ap become meaningless. One person’s affordable is another family’s financial impossibility. Here’s the part rarely said out loud: These rezoning changes do not require a single affordable unit from developers. Not one. If it isn’t written into law, it won’t happen.

This isn’t progress. It����ap a transfer of wealth and power. Lakewood is dismantling the very things that made it desirable: large lots, mature trees, historic homes, and neighborhood continuity. An unlimited-growth model isn’t planning. It����ap destruction. Once it����ap gone, it����ap gone for good.

Regina Hopkins, Lakewood

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Duran, a Democrat, is a four-term state legislator who represented northwest Denver. She was House speaker from 2017 to 2019, and she briefly attempted to unseat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in 2019.

She now seeks to succeed outgoing Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who’s term limited and running for governor in the 2026 election.

“Like many Coloradans, I’m deeply concerned about the future of our country and know that a new path forward is required in times like these, when it can seem as though nothing is sacred,” Duran said in a statement. “As our next attorney general, I will work to protect consumers, increase affordability, combat corruption, and stand up to greed and those who manipulate outcomes at the expense of the people of Colorado.”

A Colorado native, Duran earned her law degree from the University of Colorado and worked for a Colorado Supreme Court justice after graduating. She later worked as the political director for Mark Udall on his successful 2008 U.S. Senate campaign, shortly before she won her first state House race in 2010.

After serving as the House’s majority leader, Duran became the chamber’s first Latina speaker in her final term.

More recently, she worked at and served as an adviser to , a group that advocates for “pro-voter policies.”

Duran’s announcement comes two days after Boulder County District Attorney Michael Daugherty, also a Democrat, became the first candidate to enter the AG’s race. They — and any other Democratic candidates — will face off in a primary in June 2026.

No Republican candidate has filed to enter the race yet.

Voters will weigh in on . If passed, they would amend the Colorado Constitution or change state law on topics as varied as property tax exemptions for veterans with disabilities, abortion and reproductive rights, firearm taxes, mountain lion hunting and how the state conducts elections for major offices.

Each measure has core constituencies. But less than two months from Election Day on Nov. 5, they do not have equal pocketbooks.

Campaign finance records filed through Aug. 28 show the avalanche of cash some proponents are willing to dump on the electorate — especially to argue in favor of election reform and abortion rights.

The early numbers are just a prelude as campaigns gear up to stuff mailboxes with campaign literature and flood airwaves with ads, as some are already doing. Two years ago, state issue committees reported more than $47 million raised; in 2020, the last presidential election year, they reported more than $64 million in fundraising.

As the fall campaign begins, the state’s campaign finance reporting deadlines are now coming every two weeks. The next round of reports are due Monday, covering the period through last Wednesday.

Here’s an early snapshot of ballot races.

Ranked-choice voting tops money list

The biggest war chest, by a comfortable margin, has been amassed by Colorado Voters First, an issue committee seeking to remake how Colorado elects members of Congress, state officials and the state legislature.

If passed, Proposition 131 would create an open primary, with the top four candidates advancing to the November election. The winner would be determined using ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank their choices by preference. Until a candidate won a majority of votes, the lowest-performing candidate would be eliminated in each round, with their supporters’ next choice added to the results.

The issue committee mustered nearly $5.5 million before Labor Day and spent nearly $4.7 million of that to gather signatures, hire consultants and run advertisements.

Most all of that money has come from either the political action committee Unite America or from Kent Thiry, a multimillionaire with a long history of political activity. Over the past two decades, Thiry has spent nearly $10 million to influence Colorado politics, according to campaign finance records, including $1.4 million — so far —  on this latest effort.

Asked in a recent interview how much he plans to spend this time, Thiry was noncommittal.

“I don’t know,” Thiry said. “The good news is, there’s lots of other people that are contributing to the campaign, so I’ll play it by ear as to what I do. But we’ve been really thrilled by the number of people who are willing to invest in this big step forward.”

In addition to Unite America, which reports dozens of donors in — often contributing six-figure amounts — the Colorado effort is driven by Thiry and three other individuals, including the son of a Broncos co-owner and Walmart heir.

The effort isn’t unopposed, however. The state political parties have come out against Prop 131 because it would effectively end partisan primaries, and lawmakers amended a bill in May to slow the proposal if it passes.

The campaign against the proposal, Voter Rights Colorado, has raised comparatively little through the end of August: just $46,000. A representative for the group did not return a request for comment.

Abortion rights supporters take to airwaves

Colorado, which already has some of the strongest laws protecting abortion access , could enshrine the right in the state constitution if voters pass Amendment 79. Initiative backers already have shown they can raise serious money in their bid to push it across the 55% support threshold necessary to amend the constitution.

Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom so far has raised more than $4.2 million and has spent nearly $4 million of that. Of that, $1.5 million has gone to TV advertising.

And that����ap just the tip of the iceberg, according to advocates. As of Sept. 6, according to organizers, total donations have topped $13 million, with much of that not yet reported.

“Coloradans are enthusiastic in the belief that it����ap time to secure abortion rights into the Colorado Constitution, and our fundraising of more than $13 million reflects that,” said Karen Middleton, the president of Cobalt and co-chair of the coalition backing the measure, in a statement.

Opponents, through a handful of separate committees, have reported raising less than $100,000. The disparity reflects Colorado’s recent history with measures relating to abortion access: In 2020, the last time abortion opponents ran an initiative to limit access to the procedure, it failed with only 41% support among voters, while raising a fraction of what abortion-rights advocates did.

More even footing on pair of measures

Two other measures, one to add veterinary professional associate as a newly created pet-care position in Colorado and another to ban hunting of mountain lions and bobcats, have seen much less of a cash advantage between supporters’ and opponents’ camps.

The group supporting Proposition 129, to create the new class of veterinary professionals, has reported nearly $1.4 million in total donations, while the opponents have raised about $965,000.

Proposition 127, the cat hunting ban, has a similar split between the for and against camps.

The proponents, , reported raising $586,000 to the opponents’ $635,000. The group recently touted a slate of celebrity endorsements, including wildlife conservationist Jane Goodall, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican, and former Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat. The chief opponents, , meanwhile features on its website a fundraising thermometer with a goal of $3.5 million.

Unknowns remain

This early, some aspects of the election cycle’s financial picture are still emerging.

One of the state’s most ardent utilizers of ballot measures to push its policy goals, the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, successfully petitioned proposed laws onto the ballot that would force the state and . It’s also behind a proposed constitutional amendment to .

Beyond securing spots on the ballot, committees supporting those measures haven’t appeared to ramp up. A committee associated with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has formed to oppose the criminal justice measures, but its fundraising hasn’t broken six figures.

Advance Colorado, which does not report its funders, is the same group that recently forced a special legislative session to cut property taxes in exchange for pulling two ballot measures that would have instituted severe caps on future property tax collections and other restrictions.

Those initiatives were yanked as part of a deal with elected leaders — but not before some of the money to support and oppose the measures had started to materialize. Supporters reported about $190,000 raised, while an opposing group reported raising about $313,000 in cash, plus another $118,000 in nonmonetary contributions.

Staff writer Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

Harris’ local campaign staff will include several people with ties to current and former Colorado officials as the Democratic nominee attempts to solidify the blue status of the former swing state in recent elections. Leading the staff will be state director Kayla Calkin, who previously has worked as federal campaigns director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Sophia Escobedo, a former outreach director at Personal PAC, an Illinois abortion-rights group, will serve as the general elections director. Kara Powell, who works as the press secretary for U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, will serve as the campaign’s deputy communications director. And Simon Tafoya, who runs a government affairs agency in Denver and previously worked for former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, will serve as the political and coalitions advisor.

They are joining Serena Woods, who previously served as a senior advisor to Gov. Jared Polis and recently was hired as a senior advisor for Harris’ campaign.

Woods joined the campaign soon after Harris announced she’d seek to replace President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket upon his withdrawal in July. She helped lead a Zoom call of Colorado Democrats at the end of July to rally support for the then-presumptive nominee.

Harris officially won the Democratic nomination last week, ahead the Democratic National Convention that starts this Monday in Chicago, and announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

Dan Kanninen, the Harris-Walz 2024 battleground states director, said in a statement that Colorado voters will have a choice between the Democrats’ “vision of the future that will strengthen our democracy, protect reproductive rights, and ensure that everyone can get by and get ahead, and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda that would drag our country into the past.”

“This battle-tested team will make that choice clear to communities across the state and help deliver Colorado once again in November,” he said.

Biden July 21 after weeks of building pressure following a disastrous debate with Trump, now the Republican nominee. Biden endorsed Harris as his replacement.

In the 2020 election, Biden beat Trump in Colorado by 13.5 percentage points.

Trump’s campaign did not respond Monday to a request for information about its Colorado staffing plans. Earlier this year, it , but his duties were later shifted to help with the planning of last month’s Republican National Convention.

A Trump spokesperson told in June that the campaign would combine forces with the Republican National Committee to defeat Democrats this November, but “we do not feel obligated … to discuss the specifics of our strategy, timing and tactics with members of the News Media.”

Re: “Third-party candidate on state’s ballot could spoil Biden’s election,” June 17 commentary

Mark Udall misses the point of national interest in third-party candidacies. It is not about tilting an election to a Democratic or Republican candidate. It is borne out of disgust with both parties and their years-long inability to capably govern.

To assert that less than 10% of voters are “toss-up voters” ignores overwhelming evidence of shifts out of both major parties to non-partisanship — voters are desperate for new choices. Udall is doing the very thing voters are sick of — intransigently circling the wagons around his viewpoints. He contends a third-party candidacy would do nothing to solve our political challenges? Well, the two-party system has shown just how inept they are at the task. American voters are sick of politicians whose governing strategy is grounded in holding their breath until they get their way.

Luke Lands, Parker

For a third-party candidate to be more than a spoiler, the states must first implement Ranked Choice Voting. While I would love to be able to vote for something other than the two parties we have, I wouldn’t dare chance it if it might throw the election to Trump, much as a vote for Ralph Nader may have resulted in a George W. Bush victory and the disasters that followed. With Ranked Choice Voting, I could safely vote for a third-party candidate knowing that if they did not get more than 50 percent, my second choice would get my vote.

Kevin Erickson, Westminster

Agree with tax reduction, but not the math

Re: “De-Brucing, Gallagher repeal are the real culprits of Colorado’s property tax hike,” June 21 letter to the editor

A letter on Wednesday stated that “respectable estimates are pegging property tax increases at 40%. Given that, the same mill levy used last year would garner a 40% increase in tax revenue. If the mill levy were to be cut in half, the counties would still get 20% more”.

While I agree that a mill levy reduction for the 2024 taxes should be addressed, cutting the mill levy in half would actually produce less property tax revenue than last year, rather than 20% more, because of how the formula works.

Paraphrasing the Douglas County Assessor’s website, it states that the Assessor determines the “actual” (market) value (based on recent sales) for all real and personal property. Then, a percentage of that value is taken in order to derive the “assessed” value. For residential property, the assessment percentage is set at 6.765%. Then, the assessed value multiplied by the mill levy (mine is 9.2507%) produces the property tax.

Jim Malec, Roxborough Park

Work requirements for Congress

Maybe we should impose stricter work requirements for members of Congress. For starters, how about a minimum weekly hour requirement? Say 32 at the very least. Members of Congress can have two weeks of vacation a year along with six days of sick leave. And six paid holidays. Alright, they are federal employees so we’ll give them nine holidays. Any more time off will be time off without pay.

And how about some accountability as in pay for performance? Members of Congress who are highly effective i.e. bringing up legislation, passing bills, and showing up for votes will be paid more. Less effective members who are more interested in drama and theater will be paid less. Committee members will be expected to actually solve problems, not just grandstand. Congress should acknowledge that their job is to keep the government running. Upon failure to do this, i.e. government shutdowns or debt default, pay to all members stop and will not start again until the problem is solved. Lost pay is forfeited and not retroactively paid.

We expect recipients of SNAP and other programs to work, it is only fair that we expect others who feed at the public trough at taxpayer expense to expend a minimum effort also.

Brenda Johnson, Englewood

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Most guess Republican or Democrat, but it����ap actually “unaffiliated” by a mile. Unaffiliated voters number 1.7 million, compared to 957,000 Republicans and around 1 million Democrats. And Colorado isn’t unique in this regard. Nationally, there are as many independents as there are Republicans and Democrats combined, and the number is growing as more voters reject the extremism in both parties.

It should go without saying that this commonsense majority deserves to be represented in our politics, but it hasn’t been for decades — until now. A group called is fighting to give the majority a voice in 2024 by establishing a ballot line for a potential independent Unity Ticket, which would feature a Republican and Democrat together as running mates. This is a direct response to so many Americans voicing strong concerns about another term for either Trump or Biden.

Every advocate for democracy should welcome this development, but they don’t. The D.C. establishment is seething mad because a unity ticket could threaten their “chosen one” — President Joe Biden. The latest self-proclaimed savior here to rescue us is former Senator Mark Udall, who argued in this paper that voters shouldn’t be trusted with a third option because they might accidentally throw the election to former President Donald Trump. How dare he presume to tell the unaffiliated voters of Colorado what they must do?

This is condescending, not to mention richly ironic. Senator Udall’s party has spent years telling us about Trump threatening democracy, painting themselves as its saviors, only to now use Trump as an excuse to undermine democracy themselves. It is hypocrisy and elitism at its most dangerous.

Colorado voters are smart enough to make their own choices without self-proclaimed oracles telling us what will happen, or worse, what our options should be in the first place. These voices from Washington are the reason our country is in its current mess to begin with. The two-party system has served up progressively worse and more extreme candidates year after year, abandoning the commonsense majority in the process. It is exactly why unaffiliated/independents make up the largest voting block in the United States.

The 2024 cycle is a case in point. The party establishments are likely nominating Donald Trump and Joe Biden again — two candidates that many didn’t want the first time, much less a second time. If Udall is such an enlightened pundit, he should be aware of the many polls showing that a large majority of voters, even within the two parties, are not satisfied with either choice, so much so that the Wall Street Journal started calling it “the election of dread.” Udall does know this, yet he is telling voters to shut up and be grateful for their choices.

In his op-ed, Udall also argued that No Labels may use its ballot access to run Senate candidates, thus “drawing votes away from Democrats in tight races.” Where is he getting this? No Labels is only working on the presidential ballot line, and that effort is not a “third party,” as Udall claims, but a one-time ticket at a unique moment in our nation’s history. Udall needs to stop the fear-mongering.

The truth is, a Unity Ticket is likely to pull from Republicans and Democrats evenly, like Ross Perot did in 1992, meaning it wouldn’t be a spoiler for either side. They also ignore the very important fact that No Labels has promised to only utilize its ballot line if there is a clear path to victory for the independent ticket.

Therein lies the establishment����ap real fear — not that Trump would win, but that the third option might win. They are afraid of anything that disrupts the two-party status quo because the status quo is the source of their ill-gotten power. The two-party system has winners, it just isn’t voters. It����ap elites who get their kicks by going to cocktail parties, rubbing shoulders with power, and cashing consulting checks. A movement of commonsense voters threatens those spoils, and they will do anything to stop it.

It����ap easy for self-styled “champions of democracy” to be in favor of “the little guy,” because the little guy can’t disrupt their power. But unaffiliated, independent, commonsense voters are not the little guy — we are the majority. And the D.C. establishment, which Senator Udall has sided with, is terrified of any majority that stands against them.

In my view, they are right to be afraid.

Roger Hutson is a co-chair of No Labels Colorado, a board member of Colorado Concern, and the CEO of HRM Resources IV, LLC

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Groups tied to Democrats spent millions on ads that nominally criticized some Republican contenders as being “too conservative” for Colorado — a tactic observers saw as boosting candidates in the conservative party’s nominating contests in the hopes of more favorable matchups in the general election.

In Colorado, the most prominent candidates seen to benefit from the tactic were all 2020 election deniers. None won their respective primaries, however.

The letter, , called it “Democratic investments to weaken truth-telling Republican candidates.”

“It is risky and unethical to promote any candidate whose campaign is based on eroding trust in our elections. We must stop this practice, and stop today,” the letter states. “Our democracy is fragile, therefore we cannot tolerate political parties attempting to prop up candidates whose message is to erode our dedication to fair elections.”

It was signed by Colorado’s former U.S. Sens. Gary Hart (1975-1987), Tim Wirth (1987-1993) and Mark Udall (2009-2015) and former U.S. Reps. Patricia Schroeder (1973-1997) and David Skagg (1987-1999) and former Gov. Roy Romer (1987-1999), all Democrats. In total, 35 Democrats from 20 states signed the letter.

Democrats defended the practice as highlighting candidates who were out of step with the state, regardless of timing of the messages. Two of the candidates who question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, state Rep. Ron Hanks and Greg Lopez, secured the top spot in their bids for U.S. Senate and the governorship, respectively, with victories at the Colorado Republican Party’s state assembly in the spring.

Backers of a federal super PAC that funded ads calling Hanks “too conservative for Colorado,” said it was an aim to weaken both campaigns. Hanks lost the Senate nomination to businessman Joe O’Dea.

“We saw two deeply flawed candidates running against each other so we worked to weaken both their campaigns,” Senate Majority PAC President J.B. Poersch said in a July 20 statement after federal disclosures of the funding.

Poersch bragged his group’s spending forced O’Dea to “burn through cash” and, in an effort to shore up party support, campaign further to the right than the general election electorate.

For his part, O’Dea’s campaign distributed mocked-up front pages on election night that announced “O’Dea defeats Schumer.” Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, is the U.S. Senate Majority Leader and the PAC behind the advertisements is tied to him.

O’Dea also filed lawsuits and campaign finance complaints over the practice, specifically over mailers that some voters received touting his Republican opponent and without legally required disclosures of who paid for them. His campaign estimates those mailers also cost millions of dollars.

The Colorado Republican Party highlighted the letter while knocking incumbent Democrats U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Gov. Jared Polis for not condemning the practice. The two Democrats had previously declined to comment on the outside spending. However, the Republican party’s statement only highlighted Romer and Hart’s signatures and not the other Colorado Democrats.

“It is a sad day for the Democrat Party when the only Democrats showing leadership are ones who served in the 1980’s,” Colorado GOP Executive Director Joe Jackson said about the letter. “… I appreciate both Governor Romer and Senator Hart doing the right thing and showing leadership, I just wish Bennet and Polis would follow their lead.”

“It was not uncommon for it to take an hour to get through all of those speeches,” said Rob Fairbank, the former state representative from Littleton.

Now, said Rob Witwer, former attorney for the Jefferson County GOP and also a former state lawmaker, “It would take five minutes. You could fit all the elected officials in a phone booth.

“And that,” he adds, “in a nutshell is the trajectory of the party over the past 25 years.”

This is a low point for the Colorado GOP, now with less electoral power than at any time since World War II. Democrats control both chambers of the statehouse by comfortable margins — 41-24 in the House, 20-15 in the Senate. The governor, attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state are all Democrats. Next year, both of the state’s U.S. senators and four of its seven U.S. representatives will be Democrats. In November, the University of Colorado Board of Regents, previously the last statewide body controlled by the GOP, flipped blue for the first time in 41 years.

Just 18 years ago, roughly the opposite was true.

The Denver Post examined data and spoke to more than 20 Republicans, including many current and former elected officials, and found most attribute the powerlessness of a party that was competitive here just a few years ago, and dominant as recently as 2002, to a mix of factors: allegedly mismanaged campaign money; fundamental disagreements within the party over its direction and message; the increasing strength of the Democratic Party; demographic shifts that contributed heavily to the GOP’s disadvantage in voter registration; and , whom one pollster referred to as a “rocket booster” for Colorado Democrats.

Jefferson County, once firmly red and later a bellwether, is run by Democrats now. In fact, Democrats dominate the Denver area suburbs in general. Arapahoe, Adams, Broomfield, Jefferson and Douglas counties cumulatively went for Hillary Clinton by five points four years ago — on par with the statewide margin. This year, those counties combined went for Biden by more than 15 points.

That leaves the party in soul-searching mode. A slew of party bigwigs, such as U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, former House Minority Leader and current state Rep. Patrick Neville, outgoing U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner and incoming U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert have allied themselves with a far-right politics despite an electorate that’s now about 33% Democratic, 27% Republican and 40% independent. Those independents disproportionately lean left, favoring Joe Biden by about 25 points this year.

“You have to be a big tent,” said state Sen. Kevin Priola, a Henderson Republican and a moderate by close to 10 points — a rare bright spot for the GOP. “You have to have a number of interests and voters and coalitions that support what you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it. Unfortunately, that idea has kind of been pushed out in some areas of the GOP in the prior decade. That philosophy has been seen as equivocating or being soft or not fighting enough.”

The disappearance of the Priola brand of politics within much of the GOP — he said he’s felt marginalized at times — and the electoral consequences of it, are perhaps best exemplified recently by the state House Republican caucus, where the GOP seat deficit in the chamber of 65 ballooned from three to 17 in just four years.

House money and leadership in question

Whatever other problems the GOP faced, they appeared to culminate in the election of undisciplined or otherwise fringe candidates in safe seats over the last decade, said Frank McNulty, former Republican speaker of the Colorado House.

One of those candidates was Neville, of Castle Rock, who was elected in 2014. House Republicans then elevated him to minority leader in late 2016, handing him the keys to the caucus bank account.

That fund is meant to protect sitting Republicans, attract new candidates and contribute to their campaigns. Members of the caucus across the state add to its balance, so it����ap meant for the entire group.

.

The new minority leader renamed the fund “Values First Colorado” and registered the account to his brother, Joe Neville.

He also fired the old advertising vendor — who would send out mailers, buy media ad spots and more — and hired his brother’s company, Rearden Strategic.

“I said ‘OK this looks bad, but I won’t be upset if they win,’” said former Republican state lawmaker Greg Brophy, from Wray.

They didn’t win. House Republicans lost five seats in 2018 and broke even this year. Not since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency has their deficit been so great.

“You start looking at the money transfers and the way they hid expenditures so you can’t even tell what the money’s being spent on,” Brophy added.

After the 2018 losses, some House Republicans — including Rep. Jim Wilson of Salida — raised an eyebrow over retaining the Rearden connection.

“I said, ‘You know, with the Broncos, if the coach goes 1-11, you don’t hire that coach back,’” Wilson said.

But the checks to Joe Neville’s company kept coming.

Since November 2017, Values First cut at least $207,800 in checks to Rearden Strategic, campaign finance filings show. In addition, the House fund gave two other committees run by Joe Neville — Citizens for Secure Borders IEC and Take Back Colorado — at least $274,200 and $545,000, respectively.

In turn, Take Back Colorado has paid Rearden at least $306,554 between May and November of this year, the finance documents show. And Citizens for Secure Borders has paid Rearden at least $140,873.

Values First also wrote three checks in 2018 worth a total of $363,000 to Colorado Liberty PAC, controlled by Neville ally and , the financial documents show. Between 2018 and 2019, Yates’ PAC transferred at least $340,271 back to Rearden. Yates did not return messages seeking comment.

That means in a little over three years, Rearden Strategic cashed in just under $1 million from those four funds alone.

Corporations created by Neville ally Matt Arnold — Values First����ap designated filing agent — also received at least $21,250 in “consultant and professional services” payments from the House fund between 2019 and 2020, state filings show. Arnold did not return a call seeking comment on those expenditures.

Several House Republicans told The Denver Post the money was not spent in a transparent manner.

Rep. Larry Liston said he felt embarrassed on behalf of those who contributed to the funds and received nothing.

“ and the money was not spent on the appropriate candidates at the appropriate times,” Rep. Lois Landgraf said. “There are candidates who should certainly feel cheated and the caucus overall should feel cheated.”

Neville did not return a call from The Denver Post but in a series of text messages said he and his brother were transparent with the Values First cash. He’s also quick to note that House Republicans maintained their net total number of seats this year despite being largely outspent by Democrats, and he wrote that he’s “proud of what we did.”

Joe Neville said the 2018 and 2020 elections were difficult for Republicans all over and his company did the best it could. He also acknowledged that Rearden did not earn the House’s vending contract through a competitive bidding process in 2018 or in 2020.

“We weren’t trying to take money and fleece anybody, that����ap not the goal,” Joe Neville said. “Did it work out? No. And now it����ap somebody else’s turn.”

Priorities and infighting

Some payments from Values First were interpreted by House Republicans as an attack on a sitting member of their own caucus. Former state Rep. Justin Everett, an arch-conservative, and his company, Comma Consulting, received at least $17,500 from Values first between 2018 and 2020.

Everett was paid for some copywriting and marketing work, Joe Neville said, and the checks stopped once the former representative announced he would oppose incumbent Republican Rep. Colin Larson of Littleton in his primary this year.

Larson is young, relatively moderate and he’s shown he can win in the suburbs, unlike most of the rest of his party. And so the fact that he faced a challenge from the right this year from an old friend of the Nevilles disturbed many in the party.

“There’s no opportunity for any diversity of viewpoints within a party where any deviation from the most conservative line is considered heresy,” said Witwer, the former lawmaker and co-author of The Blueprint, a book about how Colorado Democrats rose to power. Witwer is now a registered independent.

“The roadmap is there for anybody who wants to follow it,” he added. “It was written by people like (CU Regent) Heidi Ganahl, Kevin Priola and Colin Larson. It����ap a pragmatic form of conservatism, where people are strong on their principles but understand the need to communicate and work with people who might disagree with them.”

Larson fended off Everett����ap challenge and said it����ap still unclear what concrete product his opponent produced for the caucus money, and why Patrick Neville didn’t publicly rebuke the primary attempt.

“It����ap the job of the Republican leader to defend his House caucus members,” Larson said.

than the candidates they were meant to support.

“The money is spent in a way that it and not the candidates for whom the help is intended,” McNulty said.

Patrick Neville did not run for House minority leadership this year; though it was his choice not to run, he was effectively ousted by his own caucus, which replaced him with Hugh McKean of Loveland. The end result of his leadership, many in the party agree, is lost time, money and energy, translating to lost votes for Republicans at a time when they could least afford it.

Pendulum swing

It was only six years ago in November that Colorado Republicans celebrated a mostly successful election. Cory Gardner had beaten Mark Udall in the U.S. Senate race. Wayne Williams had become secretary of state, beating now-U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a national rising star in Democratic politics. Cynthia Coffman won the race for attorney general by nine points, and Bob Beauprez lost narrowly to John Hickenlooper in the race for governor.

That feels like a lifetime ago, for many in both parties. All those big-ticket seats the GOP won in 2014 are now blue. And there’s real concern not just about the losses, but about how the state is trending. Colorado has the second-highest number of people with college degrees of all states, and the population growth here has been focused in urban areas that are trending away from the GOP. Even El Paso County, home of Colorado Springs and a Republican stronghold, is increasingly competitive; Trump won just 53.5% of the vote there this year, while Democratic strongholds got even bluer. Almost four in five Denver voters chose Biden.

“El Paso is the thing that, if I was a Republican, would’ve scared the (expletive) out of me,” said Craig Hughes, the longtime Democratic consultant. “They’re losing their base. And they’ve already lost the swing areas.”

It’s to the point, Hughes and several pollsters believe, that in a statewide election, a generic Democrat starts with a nine- or 10-point advantage.

“I think 2018 was basically plus-8, and 2016 was basically plus-4 and 2014 was minus-5,” Hughes said. “They’re in a very deep hole now.”

Added Brianna Titone, Democratic state representative from Arvada, and one of a slew of Democrats who’ve flipped previously comfortable Republican seats, “If the Republicans continue to go toward these ways of denying science and emboldening white nationalists — those kinds of things — the average suburban person, they don’t want that kind of stuff.”

Demographic and electoral shifts, in the suburbs and beyond, have lent urgency to a party searching for direction.

Part of the problem is that Republicans continue to ignore their own beyond the I-25 and I-70 corridors, said Kaye Ferry, an executive committee member for the state GOP and Eagle County Republican Party chair.

“They drive right past us on the way to Aspen to collect big checks,” Ferry said. “They’ve got 1,200 Republicans there last I checked. I’ve got 8,000 right here.”

Ferry is among a number of state party leaders keen to move on from the current state party chair, Ken Buck.

Buck embodied much GOP infighting this year. He made national headlines in May after a recording showed him pressuring a local election official in El Paso County to submit incorrect election results to the secretary of state. And then the Weld County GOP chair mentioned one of Buck’s congressional aides in a complaint alleging election fraud and corruption. Buck did not grant The Denver Post an interview for this story.

Democrats passed the first complaint to the state board that regulates attorneys, asking them to disbar Buck. And the second was passed to the Attorney General’s office for additional investigation. Both generated bad press and a distraction at a time when Republicans said they should otherwise be focused on the 2020 election.

Already other Republicans appear poised to run for Buck’s chair. He announced Thursday he would not run for a second term.

“He’s smarter than he looks because he wouldn’t have gotten elected anyway,” Ferry said. “He’s very unpopular.”

However the race for party chair turns out, there is a general feeling among many Republicans that without new leadership and a fresh vision they will continue to suffer.

“I firmly believe the Colorado GOP needs to have a deep bench and diverse bench and we need to field quality candidates that can compete with the Democratic candidates from the top of the ticket to the bottom,” Priola said. “That’s one area the Colorado GOP could focus on.”

Priola’s caucus will be entirely white next year, with one woman member. The statehouse Democrats, by contrast, are an increasingly diverse bunch, much more reflective of a diversifying electorate.

“There’s never been a circumstance where a candidate has been rejected based on their gender or their race,” said Sage Naumann, spokesman for the state Senate GOP. “We’re not going to tell someone who’s white, ‘Sorry, we have enough white people,’ but if we can show that we are a party that fights for all of Colorado, that diversity of candidates will be organic.”

Easier said than done, he and many others know. They’re encouraged that Coloradans continue to support fiscal conservatism through ballot measures, even as they reject conservative candidates. And they hope that a Biden presidency creates an opening for a red wave in 2022 — after all, recent history here shows just how quickly things can change — provided the party learns from its failures, especially those in the Trump era.

“If the extreme members of the Republican Party ever want to have power again,” Priola said, “they’re going to have to earn back the trust of the middle. And the middle, I would say, is larger than most realize it is.”