Just recently, the friendly swotters down the street at ColoradoPols.com surmised in their usual mischievous fashion that Douglas County DA George Brauchler has been forever and irrepa-rably damaged – no, not by sending Tweets from the courtroom and ? uster-ing a blustering judge – but because he sought from a jury the death penalty for an evil, lunatic mass murderer and “lost.” He didn’t lose the case, mind you. James Holmes will be locked in a windowless micro-apartment for the rest of his life – where he belongs. But, it’s true that he won’t be getting a lethal injection of liquid justice 20 or 30 years from now either.

The ColoradoPols poindexters’ premise is that Brauchler should have never sought the death penalty in the ?rst place. Well, tell that to the victims’ families. Not such an easy sell to those that supported death in their search for justice, to be sure.

So what about Brauchler? Will he run? His odds? Certainly, a bit more movement has been seen the past few days regarding this race as a whole. Of course, most of this increased chatter has no doubt been nothing more than the GOP kinfolk sending the canary down the mine-shaft (too soon? Nah, Hick drank the water, its ?ne.)

Just days ago, one of the candidates running against Sen. Michael Bennet, Charles Ehler (yeah, we’ve never heard of him either) posted results of a “positively unscienti?c poll” via Poll-Maker online. Yep, we agree, Charles, pretty darned unscienti?c. The “poll” shows a whop-ping 146 people voting, with 62 casting their support to candidate and El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, 42 to Ehler, 27 to Greg Lopez and 14 to Michael Bennet. Apparently the incumbent Senator had something better to do than follow suit with others by in?ating the poll. Again, just a canary down the shaft to remind us that there are, in fact, other people “running” for this U.S. Senate seat besides Bennet in 2016.

Floyd Ciruli posted his own analysis – yes, much more scienti?c than the ?y-by-night Poll-Maker – that shows, compared to former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall’s approval/disapproval numbers from August 2013, Bennet is – very theoretically – not in good shape. Ciruli shows us that Bennet’s approval rating is 41 percent compared to Udall’s 47 percent, and his disapproval is 34 percent tied to Udall’s 34 percent. Perhaps more importantly, is the answer received to the question: Should Sen. Bennet be re-elected? Only 32 percent of people polled say yes compared to 44 percent for Udall.

This brings us back to George Brauchler. A Republican with veri?able credentials and far more name ID than say, Charles Ehler. Do these numbers present an opening for Brauchler? We don’t know. The business community in Denver does love them some Michael Bennet, so there’s that hurdle. But are folks frustrated enough with Washington and will they remain disenfranchised long enough by the Clinton skeptability factor and tarnished coattails to want a real alternative in this particular senate election? Again, your call. But we can say this, it’s a long stretch to say that Brauchler is somehow damaged goods. We agree with the veiled premise of that question first asked by former Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels in her tweet: “.@ColoradoPols: if the sentence had been death, would u have written ‘Huge victory for politically minded @GeorgeBrauchler?’ #copolitics”

More recently, we found we have some agreement with conservative activist Laura Carno’s Aug. 10 blog post. With several of the victim’s families supportive of the death penalty, and with such a horrendous crime, how could Brauchler possibly not have sought the death penalty?

So, does Brauchler’s speculative future political ambition deserve the death penalty like some want you to believe? Now, we think that’s some gelastic wonky-taffy right there – wildly bizarre.

Beyond Brauchler, still another would-be rumored candidate is per-haps fanning the wonky winds of conjecture, Ryan Frazier. You may remember him, he ran – briefly – for US Senate in 2009, dropping out to run against Rep. Ed Perlmutter in CD-7 that same election. After losing to Perlmutter, he ran for mayor of Aurora and lost that race as well. There’s always the Abe Lincoln phenomenon, we suppose…

Still, perhaps none of this matters. We at this venerable institution that is The Statesman learned Monday that U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was in Denver for a meeting with high-powered Colorado business leaders at The Palm restaurant. What was being discussed there? Was it a desire to maintain the status-quo for Colorado’s senior US Senate seat and its holder because of his general friendliness to business? We can only postulate, and well… be genuinely wonky enough to care like our friends over at ColoradoPols.

– info@coloradostatesman.com