STATE BILL COLORADO

Here are headlines from this week’s Colorado Statesman, the state’s political weekly newspaper.

Clear the Bench benched over campaign violations
Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer has ruled in favor of Colorado Ethics Watch (CEW) regarding campaign finance violations committed by Clear the Bench Colorado (CTBC). Spencer’s ruling requires Clear the Bench to file as a political committee within 20 days of his Sept 22 ruling.

Buescher a target of complaints
Bernie Buescher’s calendar is getting a lot of attention these days.

InnerView with Pat Schroeder
Pat Schroeder — a Denver Democrat who served 12 terms in Congress and was briefly a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary in 1988 — was in town last week for the annual conference of the English-Speaking Union of the United States, an organization she chairs. Schroeder also was the keynote speaker last week at a luncheon celebrating the 40th anniversary of Colorado Common Cause.

Conservative ‘architect’ Rove predicts Buck beats Bennet
Republican political “architect” Karl Rove sounded a call to action — elect conservatives to office — to stem the tide of red-inked federal budgets during a speech before 350 folks attending a Heritage Foundation fundraiser at the Denver Marriott Tech Center on Wednesday.

A Dog of a day for Tancredo
More than a thousand cheering fans packed a country western dance hall Sunday afternoon during a Broncos game to hear a controversial Arizona sheriff and the country’s best-known bounty hunter endorse third-party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo.

Tax amendment foes foresee economic nightmare
Imagine Invesco Field at Mile High filled nearly to capacity with newly unemployed Coloradans. That’s the image that opponents of Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101 want voters to have in their minds as they cast their votes this fall on the three anti-tax amendments.

Coalition raises big bucks in fight against ‘ugly 3’
This year’s battle over three anti-tax initiatives has pitted Republicans, Democrats and business leaders with lots of money to spend against a small issues committee with very little in the bank. The Goliath in the battle over Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101 is Coloradans for Responsible Reform, which is bankrolling the opposition. CFRR, the issues committee put together by the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the business community, has been around off and on since 1994. Its most notable campaign prior to this year was to support Referendum C in 2005.