Author: Ernest Luning
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Democrats Michael Bennet, Phil Weiser and their backers bank $9 million for Colorado gubernatorial race
Democratic gubernatorial candidates U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, and the campaign committees that support them, entered the election year with almost $9 million on hand, as the race to succeed term-limited Colorado Gov. Jared Polis heats up. Although Weiser started the year with more than twice as much campaign cash in…
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U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser clash at Democratic gubernatorial forum
Things got a little chippy Saturday at a union hall north of Denver, as Democratic gubernatorial candidates U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser sparred over the effectiveness of their respective responses to President Donald Trump’s second administration in their first joint campaign appearance ahead of this year’s primary. The two leading…
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Colorado Republican Mark Baisley exits gubernatorial race, launches US Senate campaign
Republican state Sen. Mark Baisley withdrew from the Colorado gubernatorial race last week and announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat John Hickenlooper. His departure leaves 20 Republicans running for the office held by term-limited Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. “Colorado needs a U.S. Senator who will fight relentlessly for our Constitution,…
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Former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez leaves GOP, will run for governor in Colorado as an independent
Former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez, a candidate for governor of Colorado, has left the Republican Party and plans to run as an unaffiliated candidate for the office held by term-limited Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. Lopez, who served six months in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024 after winning a special vacancy election, announced Saturday…
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Independent Crank challenger Matt Cavanaugh joins Democratic primary in Colorado’s 5th CD
Matt Cavanaugh, the Army combat veteran and author who has been running an independent campaign to unseat first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, registered this week as a Democrat and will seek the party’s nomination for the seat. Cavanaugh told Colorado Politics that his principles haven’t changed, but the former…
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Ben Campbell, former US senator from Colorado and advocate for Native American rights, dies at age 92
Former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who represented Colorado for two terms beginning in 1993 and was the first Native American elected to the chamber since the 1920s, died Tuesday, his family and close associates confirmed. He was 92. Campbell, a former Democratic state lawmaker from Ignacio, represented the 3rd Congressional District for two terms…
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Colorado podcaster who has called for political foes to be executed joins GOP primary for governor
Joe Oltmann, the conservative Colorado podcaster who has repeatedly called for Colorado’s top elected officials to be executed and whose uncorroborated claims that the 2020 election was rigged spawned multiple defamation lawsuits, declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor last week. Oltmann joins a crowded field of Republicans seeking to take over from…
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2025 Unfiltered: Moments that marked Colorado’s decidedly off-kilter political year
From the flurry of executive orders that ushered in President Donald Trump’s second term to a blizzard of lawsuits filed by the state’s Democratic officials, the state’s political year was marked by near-constant conflict between the GOP-controlled federal government and the Democrats who run Colorado. The year saw the Trump administration step up immigration enforcement…
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Trump administration moves to shutter national climate lab in Colorado
Democrats slam decision as ‘deeply dangerous’ as White House calls facility a source of ‘climate alarmism’ The Trump administration is moving to dismantle one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, citing what a White House official termed the Colorado-based facility’s “climate alarmism” in a decision state Democratic elected officials denounced as “deeply…
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Trump pardons Tina Peters, but Colorado officials say he can’t reverse state convictions | TRAIL MIX
President Donald Trump said late on Dec. 11 that he had issued a pardon for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk convicted of orchestrating a scheme to breach secure election equipment, though Colorado officials and legal experts immediately countered that the president’s broad pardon powers don’t extend to state-level crimes like those committed by…