This is getting interesting:
http://kdvr.com/...
Tom Tancredo isn’t trashing Bob Beauprez, but he’s demanding one of his biggest benefactors, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, come clean about the Republican Governors Association’s influence on Colorado’s GOP gubernatorial primary.
On Monday, the Denver Post reported that a campaign finance watchdog group discovered that the RGA, which Christie chairs, funneled money to help Beauprez through the Republican Attorney Generals Association despite its public pledge not to attempt to influence GOP primaries.
In June, Beauprez’s 31-27 percent victory over Tancredo came as a huge relief to establishment Republicans who worried about Tancredo’s nomination giving rise to higher voter turnout from Hispanics this fall and, as a result, hurting the GOP ticket.
On Tuesday, Tancredo, who has pledged to help Beauprez however he can, took aim at Christie, who was just stumping with Beauprez in Colorado last week.
“Now that we know who was behind many of the false and slanderous ads that were purchased in Colorado in the final days of our primary season, there are many questions that Colorado Republicans deserve to have answered,” Tancredo said. “Voters deserve transparency and they deserve to have a full accounting as to why the RGA would secretly funnel money into our Colorado Republican primary.” - KDVR, 7/29/14
Here's some more info:
http://www.denverpost.com/...
The left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said the RGA contributed money to the Republican Attorneys General Association just a few days after the AG group donated to a third party that helped fund attacks against former Congressman Tom Tancredo.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics said in a report it shared with The Post that the Republican Attorneys General Association on June 17 contributed $155,000 to the Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, a super PAC based in Massachusetts with ties to former presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign.
CJO contributed to Colorado Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, which was behind automated calls attacking Tancredo and a radio ad that accused him of being a former "fiscal hawk" who became a "big-spending Republican" after serving in Washington. Tancredo decried the ad, saying it was filled with "extreme, dishonest exaggerations."
In addition, Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity contributed $75,000 to Republicans Who Want To Win. The weekend before the primary, Republicans Who Want to Win spent the $75,000 airing an ad in Mesa and El Paso counties favorable to Beauprez at Tancredo's expense. Beauprez's margin of victory in those two counties is credited with helping him win the primary.
CREW said that between June 20 and June 27, the GOP governor's group made three contributions totaling $175,000 to the GOP attorneys general group.
"It is unclear why, other than shielding the RGA's involvement, the RAGA would want to contribute so heavily to a political committee that spent all of its money in a gubernatorial primary," CREW said in its findings.
Colorado's attorney general, John Suthers, who is a member of RAGA and a Beauprez supporter, said through his spokeswoman he had no knowledge of the group's involvement in Colorado's gubernatorial primary. - Denver Post, 7/28/14
We'll have to see where this goes. Meanwhile, Beauprez is trying to be the "coal candidate":
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/...
Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Congressman Bob Beauprez joined a rally of more than 100 coal industry advocates and employees before the state capital today to protest the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed cuts to emissions from coal-burning power plants. As those hearings ran in downtown Denver, Beauprez stood with the sign-bearing children of coal miners to say that he was grateful for coal and that the regulations unfairly punish the largely working class families and communities who are sustained by that industry.
“It’s jobs, it’s real people. This is their livelihood at risk here,” Beauprez told The Colorado Independent. “These rules would turn a town like Craig, a town like Delta into ghost towns.”
The Colorado Mining Association reported that Colorado coal mines employed just over 2,000 people in 2013. But Beauprez emphasized that it’s not just those who are directly employed by the industry who will be impacted by a decrease in coal production and use as a result of the EPA’s new rules. He recalled the dwindling of the oil and gas industry in Mesa County and a guitar teacher he met there who was nearly out of business after losing 30 students when their parents, out of work, could no longer afford lessons.
“We’ve have never used coal cleaner, safer and more efficiently than we do right now,” said Beauprez to loud cheers from the crowd. - The Colorado Independent, 7/29/14
And not too far away:
http://kdvr.com/...
As two days of hearings on the Obama administration’s proposal to curb carbon emissions by 30 percent by the year 2030, environmentalists and industry groups made their cases — in the hearing room and all across town.
While clean energy companies and mothers standing alongside firefighters pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt the strongest rule possible to address climate change and improve air quality, Republicans stood with representatives of Colorado’s coal industry in the shadows of the state Capitol at a rally organized by Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity and called for the administration to drop a proposal they believe will cost jobs.
Meanwhile, inside a hearing room on the second floor of the gleaming new EPA headquarters at 16th and Wynkoop in Lower Downtown, hundreds of people, each allowed just five minutes, put their feelings on the record.
The heart of the matter: weighing the potential short-term economic costs with the likely long-term costs of inaction.
“It is far cheaper to act strongly now,” said state Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, one of the first people to testify in support of the proposal Tuesday morning.
The proposal is an existential threat to the more than 600 coal power plants across the country.
Under the proposed rule, states will be given flexibility about how to achieve the pollution cuts. Instead of immediately shutting down coal plants, states could choose to reduce emissions by installing new wind and solar generation or energy-efficiency technology, and by starting or joining state and regional “cap and trade” programs, in which states agree to cap carbon pollution and buy and sell permits to pollute. - KDVR, 7/29/13
We're looking at an interesting race and it's one we can't afford to lose. Click here to donate and get involved with Governor John Hickenlooper's (D. CO) re-election campaign:
http://www.hickenlooperforcolorado.com/...