ernest luning

Public officials urged eligible Colorado residents to make sure they were registered to vote and that their registration information was current on Tuesday as part of National Voter Registration Day. It was the strongest push yet for the occasion, which launched in 2012, said Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who started a day full of…

Twenty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … President Bill Clinton made a campaign stop in Denver and was greeted at his visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor healthcare facility by Gov. Roy Romer, Archbishop J. Francis Stafford and hundreds of supporters anxious to hear the president’s speech about Medicaid and…

Calling the proposed Denver college-affordability ballot measure “unequivocally an economic imperative” for the city, Mayor Michael Hancock on Thursday joined business and education leaders to launch a campaign aimed at persuading voters to approve a sales-tax increase to help residents pay for higher education. “This is an opportunity for us as a city to say…

Thirty-five Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan kept a Bo Callaway button tucked into her dress on primary election night, prepared to clip it on as a gesture of party unity if Callaway had won the Republican nod to challenge U.S. Sen. Gary Hart. But after…

Twenty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Denver Public Schools Superintendent Irv Moskowitz unveiled several dozen proposals to improve the city’s schools, rewriting former Mayor Federico Peña’s “Imagine a Great City” slogan to read “Imagine a Great School System.” The reforms were part of a pitch to voters to approve a $30…

The effort to urge Denver voters to extend a tourism tax to pay for an overhaul of the National Western Complex is heading to victory, backers said at a fundraiser for the “Smart Deal for Denver” campaign on Tuesday at a River North nightclub. “I believe we are in the midst of a transformative moment…

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, an Aurora Republican, previewed his campaign against Democratic challenger state Sen. Morgan Carroll on Sunday at the sixth annual summer barbecue fundraiser thrown by Jim and Joy Hoffman at their Greenwood Village home. “The challenges going forward, it’s going to be tough,” Coffman told the crowd of some 250 supporters. “But…

Thirty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … As a service to the proliferating field of candidates weighing runs for governor — incumbent Dick Lamm was stepping down in 1986 after serving three terms — the newspaper produced a Generic Gubernatorial Campaign Speech, “[s]uitable for everyday campaign use and moth swatting.” Based on…

With a yee-haw and a giddy-up, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock on Wednesday kicked off a campaign to persuade Denver voters to approve extending a tourism tax to fund part of a $865 million renovation and expansion of the decrepit National Western Center, home for more than a century to the National Western Stock Show. “This…