Colorado Politics

Colorado’s pot purveyors will sit in the cheap seats for AG hearing

As Colorado’s billion-dollar marijuana industry nervously awaits the confirmation hearings for pot-hating Alabama Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III-you can call him Jeff-who is Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, they must be hoping that in his case, money doesn’t equal influence.

Not surprisingly the industry hasn’t donated to campaigns to elect the former Reagan-appointed federal prosecutor who once said “good people don’t smoke marijuana.” But neither has almost anyone else in Colorado over Sessions’ 20-year Senate career.

In fact, he’s gotten just two checks from the Centennial State, and they were from sources that toss out campaign donations like Mardi Gras candy. (Mardi Gras was born in Sessions’ hometown of Mobile, Ala.; laissez le bon temps rouler.)

Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck gave Sessions $2,000 for his 2014 re-election race, for which the candidate raised nearly $1.4 million.

The Denver-based mega-lobbying and law firm gives a lot to candidates-$1.77 million over the last 20 years, according to the website FollowtheMoney.org. The firm’s political money is divided almost evenly among Republicans and Democrats, but with a slight tilt to the right.

This year, BHF&S was generous to Colorado incumbents in federal races: $5,000 to Republican Rep. Michael Coffman of Aurora, and  $4,500 each to Sen. Michael Bennet of Denver and Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Arvada, both Democrats. Republican Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez received $3,000, and Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, also a member of the GOP, got $2,000. Denver Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette received $1,000.

The other Colorado donor to Sessions was Westminster-based satellite technology company Digital Globe, which gave him $1,000 in 2014, as well. That was the same year the Colorado company gave Alabama’s other Republican senator, Richard Shelby, $4,500 and Colorado’s then-Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, $10,000.

And if you think there’s an individual Coloradans who is a Sessions booster out there, there’s not. Of the $286,374 from individual donors he received in his last race, not a penny came from Colorado, according to the Federal Elections Commission.

That leaves Trump’s vow to respect state’s rights as the speed bump, if not the stop sign, to keep Session’s out of the fast lane of Colorado’s weed revenue.

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