opinion
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Colorado, like America, past due for generational change in politics | Miller Hudson
I was 27 before I ever voted for president. At 19, in 1964, the Constitution had not yet been amended establishing 18-year-old voting eligibility. In 1968, I was serving overseas with the U.S. Navy at a time when there was little effort to assist sailors or soldiers in obtaining an absentee ballot. Fortunately, that’s changed…
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Farmers and ranchers win on NIETC cancellation | Rachel Gabel
The Department of Energy rolled into Lamar last week and Office of Electricity Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza stood in her neat, green suit in front of a room filled with farmers, ranchers and landowners. The crowd was filled with straw cowboy hats, sweat-stained ball caps, tee shirts and button-down chambray shirts that had seen more…
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Going after the wrong butts | Jon Caldara
Mayor Mike Johnston proclaimed, “It is past time Big Tobacco cleaned up the big mess it’s created.” Yep. Denver is suing tobacco companies for the cigarette butts littering the city. Because Denver’s Big Mess couldn’t possibly be the fault of the mayor, the city council or the people actually dropping garbage on the ground. It…
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Three districts that will answer key Colorado political questions | Paula Noonan
Colorado’s legislature used to be a place where neither party was dominant. Dozens of seats were competitive and House and Senate majorities switched regularly. From 2010 to 2020, the House was predominantly Democratic with one two-year assembly under Republicans. The Senate had two assemblies from 2015 to 2018 under Republicans. John Hickenlooper was governor and…
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Hunting is a privilege, not a constitutional right | PODIUM
By Roland Halpern Colorado voters may soon be asked to place hunting and fishing in the state constitution. Proposition 302 would establish the right to hunt, fish and take wildlife using “traditional methods,” while declaring hunting and fishing are the state’s preferred means of managing wildlife. But though hunting and fishing are an important management…
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DEA’s Miguel Chino describes Colorado’s place on the ‘fentanyl pill superhighway’ | The OpEdge Podcast
Miguel Chino, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Field Division, joins The OpEdge to paint the picture of Colorado’s place on America’s “fentanyl pill superhighways.” Chino updates Gazette and Colorado Politics Deputy Opinion Editor Antonio Olivero on the latest in the DEA’s fight in the Rocky Mountain region against…
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A right to buy a product? | Hal Bidlack
A recent story in Colorado Politics caught my eye, as I learned of a “citizen initiative” that has qualified for the November ballot. It seems supporters of Initiative 177 have collected enough signatures, 146,165 legitimate ones out of a total of 189,508 collected, to clear the hurdle needed for a proposal to appear on the…
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Fourteen years after Aurora — we can’t afford to go backward | GUEST COLUMN
By John Hickenlooper and Gabby Giffords Two Saturdays ago, a gunman shot and killed three people and wounded several others in Twin Falls, Idaho. This latest deadly shooting comes only days after we remembered the lives we lost 14 years ago in Colorado. On July 20, 2012, Colorado faced one of the worst nights in…
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A daring and fearless rescuer — is afraid of a debate | Dick Wadhams
Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor who says he can exorcize demons and who claimed he has fearlessly rescued 45,000 women and children during 150 “high-risk” missions around the world, appears to be intimidated by the notion of debating his Democratic opponent. Colorado has a long history of major-party candidates engaging in general election…
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Colorado’s ballot-initiative process again a battleground for deep pockets, special interests — not the people | Miller Hudson
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a constitution as, “The set of fundamental principles according to which a state is constituted and governed, a body of rules prescribing the major elements of the structure and activities of any organization.” Somewhere in Colorado’s governing history this notion of confining a constitution to basic precepts and then leaving…