Author Archives: ColoradoPeakPolitics

More Republicans than Democrats turned in ballots during the first week of primary voting.

That includes the ballots returned from independents, who appear to be more interested in determining who the Democratic nominee will be in state races this year.

Of those returns, 5,328 came from independents voting Democrat, while 3,493 came from the unaffiliated voters participating in the GOP race.

This week’s totals are 97,506 voting Republican and 95,719 voting Democrat.

Even before the independents were added into the mix, Republicans still had a bigger turnout than Democrats, which shows they are more excited and clearly motivated to vote early in this year’s election.

We can only hope this trend continues.

It’s been nearly a decade since we’ve actually seen a tax return from U.S. Rep. Jared Polis.

Now that he’s running for governor at the same time he’s pushing a bill through Congress to kill Trump’s tax cut, now is a good time for the millionaire to come clean.

After all, how many millionaires want to kill tax cuts because they claim it only helps the wealthy? Especially after they’ve been caught hiding their money from Uncle Sam before in Cayman Island accounts.

Todd Shepherd reminds us in a Washington Free Beacon article of that time period between 2001 and 2005 that Polis paid zero taxes

Presently, it remains unclear if the 2001-2005 years were the only returns in which Polis paid no income tax. The campaign did not respond to an opportunity for comment requesting more specifics of his tax circumstances since he has been a congressman beginning in 2009.

Now is the time for Polis to come clean and reveal his tax returns, before the Democratic primary. Perhaps Kennedy already has a commercial in the works?

With just under two weeks to go until Colorado’s primary election, we have to wonder whether exceptionally well-funded Phil Weiser can oust Rep. Joe Salazar (D-Foot in Mouth) in the Democratic Attorney General primary.

While much noise was made about the Democratic gubernatorial results from the Magellan poll last week, the real shocker was how poorly Weiser was doing. Despite his serious lack of cash, Joe Salazar is up 19 points on the former Obama Department of Justice official. To put a finer tip on this, Salazar is at 27% and Weiser is at 8%.

Two months ago, a similar Magellan poll had the race at 34% to 5%. Of the $1.4 million Weiser’s raised he only has $122,794.22 left. Weiser has blown over $1.2 million and it has barely moved the needle – three points. That’s pretty close to the margin of error.

Either Democrats will send a candidate far out of step with the average Coloradan in Salazar, or Weiser will limp into the general with no cash and a lot of baggage. Either way, Democrats are in a terrible position for this race.

Democrat Jason Crow says he’s raised another $370,000 in the last quarter in his bid to take on U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, but how much of that came from corporate PACs we don’t yet know.

As PeakNation™ will recall, we reported a few weeks ago that despite Crow’s pledge not to accept any corporate money, he’s been hauling in loads of bucks from so-called leadership PACs that are literally packed with corporate donations from across the country.

Corporations like Samsung, Walmart, Microsoft, General Electric, Pepsi, AT&T, General Motors, Ford, Home Depot, and Comcast, just to name a very few.

Not exactly the grassroots support Crow brags about in his latest statement crowing about his fundraising prowess.

We expect it will be that corporate leadership PAC money that gives him bragging rights this quarter for out raising Coffman and his Democratic opponent Levi Tillemann.

However, Coffman still has more money than Crow heading into the June 26 election. Tillemann has yet to disclose his latest filings.

Democrats are doubling down on breaking their word in the governor primary race.

They promised to run a clean campaign, but now that their pledge has been broken into shreds of paper and set aflame, they are dancing around the bonfire of shame without a care in the world, except for getting elected.

The promise-breaking started with an ad from Cary Kennedy attacking Jared Polis, then both lodged complaints against each other with the state party claiming dirty politics.

Kennedy trumped Polis again by using his complaint as a campaign fundraiser, now the Polis camp is running negative ads against Kennedy, complaining about her negative tactics.




It’s a beautiful thing when Democrats show their true colors.

Brandon Rittiman with 9News has the truth test breakdown on the campaign smears here.

Rittiman also reveals the irony in Kennedy’s attack ad against Polis for supporting vouchers, when Kennedy herself did lobbying work “for a group that supported the same voucher pilot program he did.”

Levi Tillemann (Dick), now YouTube famous for his Pepper Spray Challenge for some sort of anti-gun ad, is slated to appear on one of America’s most-listened to podcasts.  This American Life is broadcasted to nearly five million listeners through its syndication on 500 radio stations as well as though its podcasts, which are downloaded 2.5 million times per week.

Never heard of it?  Those 500 stations are all public radio stations.  So, go enlighten yourself.  Just kidding.  We never heard of it either, but it sounds like something that’s kind of a big deal in the Democrat primary voter demographic.  And we are simultaneously scratching our heads over the concept of 500 public radio stations in America.

During the show, which we expect to be released this Friday, Tillemann (Dick) is going to complain how Democrat party insiders have stacked the deck against supposed “outsider” candidates (him) to the benefit of DC-selected establishment candidates (Jason Crow) to push through the primary.

Tillemann (Dick) is a self-proclaimed outsider.  Please keep in mind that he also happens to be the grandson of Tom Lantos, who served nearly 30 years in the U.S. Congress until his passing about ten years ago, as well as the grandson of Nancy Dick, who served eight years as Lieutenant Governor of Colorado.

But that doesn’t matter.  He’s an outsider. He has a good number of his supporters so ginned up that we doubt they can even think of supporting Jason Crow in the general.  Which should add Crow to the list of Coffman’s vanquished opponents in about five months.

While we can safely say that Tillemann (Dick) will not be representing the 6th Congressional District at this time next year, we are grateful for the entertainment value that he has brought to the race.  Between his secret recording of Steny Hoyer, the pepper spray commercial, and this national podcast, Colorado political pundits haven’t had this much fun since Dan Maes.

For the third year in a row, swamp monsters in the U.S. Senate are playing games with national security bills to the detriment of a Colorado company – United Launch Alliance.

The U.S. Senate is about to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, the foundation for our military that pays our troops, sets Pentagon policy and priorities, and funds major weapons systems.

Yesterday, news reports uncovered a single line inserted by a single Senate Armed Services Committee staffer to Senator McCain that would block the Pentagon’s chief space technician from participating in DOD space policy:

“One provision tucked deep in a committee draft of the bill would prohibit Mike Griffin, the Pentagon’s chief space technician, from having a say in Department of Defense space policy.”

And this isn’t the first time:

“Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is a long-time SpaceX supporter, has previously attempted to insert language favoring Elon Musk’s company over ULA.”

Ahhh, we get it now. This Senate staffer is dazzled by Elon Musk’s BS – actually there’s more to this story.  This bill, unbelievably, is written to give a critic of ULA greater authority. Why? Apparently, this Senate staffer blamed the demise of his former company (Xcor) on ULA.

Despite President Trump’s emphasis on winning in space, Senate staffers aren’t above petty inside baseball tactics to set themselves up once they leave government. The big question is whether Musk’s companies will be around when this staffer is ready to jump ship or whether his government gravy trail will derail.

A new poll commissioned by the SEIU purports to show both Jared Polis and Cary Kennedy can beat Walker Stapleton in the general election.

The problem is, we don’t have a clue how many, or whether any Republicans were actually included in the union’s poll.

According to the poll briefing by Strategies 360, they included 387 Democrats for the Democratic primary survey plus an unknown number of independents. For the general election numbers, they polled 500 “likely voters” in the general election.

There’s no way to tell in the briefing whether they used the same Democrats and independents, or if they threw in a few Republicans for good measure.

But wait, it gets better.

The margin of error in the head-to-head poll is 4.4 percent.

Among “economically struggling” Coloradans — poor people — Stapleton is within the margin of error to beat both candidates with a split difference of only two percent.

Among rich folks, Polis leads with 43 percent to Stapleton’s 36 percent, while Kennedy leads with 45 percent to Stapleton’s 37 percent.

Polis is losing among his own wealthy peers to Kennedy!

The push poll is aimed at convincing candidates that voters want to hear more about how they will help the workers — that’s code for unions, not us regular folks with jobs.

For example, the poll asked if voters were more likely to support a candidate who supported state worker unions and stronger laws protecting unions. The majority said they were more likely, but a much smaller percentage of both poor and well-off said they would be more likely.

So that backfired.

Their spin?

“Yet, there is no evidence that embracing a pro-worker agenda, including pro-union positions, will harm their standing in November.”

So supporting unions won’t actually help much, but it won’t hurt either.

Meanwhile, we are heartened to see Stapleton doing so well among poor, Democratic and independent voters.

We’re not the only ones who thought Democratic challenger Levi Tillemann’s mace-in-the-face commercial was a crazy campaign stunt and a weak idea for school safety.

Gun control enthusiasts with “Safe Campus Colorado” aren’t event taking it seriously. Their co-founder called it “a mad-cap stunt.”

The Colorado Education Association says it’s a waste of money. Instead, the teacher’s union wants mental health support in schools. In a broad sense, that’s a better idea.

Tillemann, who is challenging Jason Crow in the Democratic primary to face U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, is standing by his mace can and says he and his “team” considered dogs in school to sniff out gunpowder and stop shooters.

“This was the best solution that we could come up with.”

Click here to see our report of Tillemann’s desperate ploy for voter attention.

These political stunts seem to run in Democratic Circles. The Denver Post reminds us that Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a gubernatorial candidate, turned her latest tattoo parlor experience into an ad for governor during this silly season.

And, Hick once jumped out of an airplane in an effort to raise taxes.

All solid examples of how candidates behave when they are out of ideas on how to govern.

This is the first Colorado primary where unaffiliated voters were given the opportunity to participate, and the Secretary of State’s office made some reporting changes to better reflect the accurate count of unaffiliated voters who choose to partake in the primary election.

In future reports, the Republican count will consist of the number of Republican ballots received from Republican voters and Unaffiliated voters who specifically asked for a Republican ballot. The same thing goes for Democrat ballots.  Remember that Unaffiliated voters were given the option to pre-select which ballot they receive, or to receive two ballots.

The people who elected to receive two ballots will be sequestered in a different stack, since it is not clear by looking at the envelope which ballot they returned.  These ballots will be counted as “in process” and the contents of each envelope will reported on once elections officials see what ballot was returned.

Additionally, there won’t be daily reporting right now. We will see ballot counts this Thursday, next Tuesday, and then every weekday up to and including the primary election day on Tuesday June 26.

But there were some actually numbers that came in today, and those are below:

134,038 voters submitted their ballots
55,584 Republican ballots
52,952 Democrat ballots
25,502 “in process” envelopes

We will be back on Thursday with more numbers and a county by county breakdown.