By Debi Brazzale, Colorado News Agency

After lively debate on the House floor Tuesday, lawmakers soundly rejected a measure that would have placed limits on campaign contributions for elected school board and RTD board positions

Sponsored by Democrat Beth McCann of Denver, House Bill 1272 would have established contribution limits of $2,500 for individuals and political action commitees, and $5,000 for small donor committees. Current law does not limit contributions for school board and RTD races as it does for other elected offices per Amendment 27, passed by the voters in 2002. McCann thinks the limitations should apply across the board.

“We ought to honor the voice and the view of our citizens by making it consistent that those who are running for public office are subject to campaign contribution limits,” said McCann.

McCann began house floor discussion by offering an amendment to her bill increasing the small donor limit to $10,000, a gesture that McCann said would move closer to reflecting the limits imposed on other races. Those limits for the Colorado statehouse and executive branch are $200 for individuals and PACS and $2,000 for small donor groups, and $400 and $4,000 respectively.

Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, took issue with McCann’s amendment by offering his own, which was ultimately rejected. Waller’s amendment would have created equal limits for individuals and small donor committees. Waller said that small donor committees in school board races are essentially an arm of unions that represent schools, and that parents especially would have their voices muted.

“We’re saying a school union has more of a voice than an individual does in the United States of America and that’s wrong,” said Waller.

McCann defended the discrepancy between individuals and small donor groups, citing Amendment 27.

“It takes away the whole point of small donor committees. Our citizens have spoken and they want to give people the right to pool money into small donor committees,” McCann said in response to Waller’s amendment.

Rep Amy Stephens, R-Monument, agreed with Waller’s amendment to level the playing field between individuals and small donor groups, rejecting McCann’s higher limits for small donor groups.

“Frankly I think it’s terrible to limit [speech] in any way shape or form but if you’re going to do thisĐthis is a fair way to do it. The previous way gives much more advantage to the unions who don’t need that advantage,” said Stephens.

Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, upped the ante with yet another unsuccessful amendment that would have raised the small donor committee limit to equal 10 times the individual limit, as is the case under Amendment 27. Court, a firm supporter of campaign limits said that school board and RTD board races should be limitedĐbut she recognized that those races have a much harder time raising money.

“So we clearly have a philosophical divide here and that’s quite obvious. I firmly believe in campaign finance limits,” said Court. I believe in the constitutional amendment that the people of Colorado passed saying that we spend too darn much money on campaigns and it’s obscene.”

Waller put the philosophical divide into sharper focus.

“Now the school unions will be given 10 times more of a voice than an individual in a school board election,” said Waller. “The school union small donor committees can now give and control and effect the outcome of a school board election and get their candidate elected.

McCann countered that the small donor committees empower individuals that might not otherwise have as much of a voice on their own.

“We are not changing what the citizens have told us they would like us to do. Small donor committees are made up of individuals who may not be able to give $1000 but who want to have a say in the election.“ said McCann. “It actually gives more power to the individual who can give a smaller amount and have more impact on an election.”

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Just a day after the state Supreme Court allowed corporations and unions more leeway in political giving, lawmakers were looking to add greater disclosure and possibly new limitations for those entities in state campaign-finance laws.

Monday’s state court decision follows the U.S. Supreme Court decision in January allowing corporations and unions to spend money directly advocating for or against candidates and to buy advertisements in the run-up to primary and general elections.

State Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, wants to close reporting loopholes she said already exist and ensure that any new forms of spending are properly disclosed ahead of an important election, The Denver Post reports.

In other coverage:

The Durango Herald: Corporations that want to spend money on Colorado elections might soon face tighter requirements for telling the public about their campaign activities. Gov. Bill Ritter and Secretary of State Bernie Buescher are backing the effort, which they said would be introduced in the Legislature this year. It’s a response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in January that said corporations have the First Amendment right to spend freely on elections.

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Lisa Grace Kellogg

STATE BILL COLORADO
A state House candidate in southern Colorado has sold The Huerfano World, a newspaper in Walsenburg, and it has since been resold to area publishers Brian and Gretchen Orr, who have combined the newspaper with their Huerfano Journal, now called The Huerfano World Journal.
Lisa Grace Kellogg, who’s running for the GOP nomination for the Colorado House seat now held by rancher Wes McKinley, a Democrat, sold the paper seven weeks ago to Dale Bean.
Bean, in turn, sold the World to the Orrs last week.
Before starting her American Print Media company, Kellogg served as general counsel to a news media company owned by her parents, The Colorado Statesman has reported. Her husband, Michael Kellogg, who played for the Denver Broncos in the 1960s, is a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court and resides at the couple’s ranch in Malibu.

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Source: Politico

President Barack Obama blew through Denver during a snowstorm Thursday afternoon to boost Sen. Michael Bennet’s re-election campaign, part of a skip across the West to help vulnerable candidates, The Denver Post reports. The president stumped for the rookie Democratic senator in front of about 2,700 people packed into Fillmore Auditorium, then cruised through town in his motorcade to a cocktail fundraiser at the downtown Sheraton.

In other coverage:

Mike Littwin, The Denver Post: If you want an idea just how toxic things are in Washington these days, all you had to do was take a trip to Denver. As you’ve probably seen, Jane Norton welcomed Barack Obama to town by cutting her first TV ad, calling on Obama — who may not have seen the ad — to balance the budget or not run for re-election in 2012.

The Denver Daily News: President Barack Obama’s fundraising visit to Denver yesterday in support of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet came with its fair share of controversy and protest. From medical marijuana advocates who want to stop raids on growers, to conservatives who questioned the cost of Obama’s visit to Denver, the picket lines were colorful yesterday afternoon outside the Fillmore Auditorium where Obama spoke.

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama is emphasizing his administration’s actions on the economy during a two-state Western state swing that comes as he’s trying to bolster the chances of Democrats in November’s elections. The president plans to announce today in Las Vegas $1.5 billion in funding for housing finance agencies in states where the average prices for homes have fallen more than 20 percent from their peak, according to an administration fact sheet.

Politico: President Obama did his best to present Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet as a Washington outsider who’s only in the nation’s capital to change it. Obama pointed out that this is the first election for Bennet, who was named as Colorado senator just over a year ago. He told a story of how Bennet recently stood up in a Democratic caucus meeting and challenged his colleagues on the ways of Washington. Obama talked about how the two of them have no time for politics. Bennet, he said, is so new to political scene he’s “still kind of puzzled” by it all.

San Francisco Examiner: Complaining that America has grown “numb” from “slash and burn politics,” President Obama urged Democrats here to keep faith with the party and ignore the noise from Washington. Back in full-throated campaign mode, Obama is on a two-day swing through the West trying to shore up a pair of his party’s embattled Senate incumbents.

Los Angeles Times: Looking to galvanize Democrats, President Barack Obama cast himself Thursday as a truth-teller in the Harry S. Truman mold, mocking Republicans who opposed his $787-billion economic stimulus package while claiming credit for delivering projects back home. Speaking to about 2,400 people at a fundraising reception in Denver, the president invoked a famous phrase from Truman’s come-from-behind bid to stay in the White House in 1948.

The Denver Post: Text of Obama’s Denver remarks.

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Gov. Bill Ritter has asked the Colorado Supreme Court to weigh in on a campaign-finance dispute over contribution limits, The Denver Post reports. Ritter wants clarification in the aftermath of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows businesses and unions to directly spend unlimited amounts of money to produce and run their own campaign ads.
Law Week Colorado, a sister publication of State Bill Colorado, originally reported this story last week. That story featured video of Secretary of State Bernie Buescher.

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House Bill 10-1272 would set contribution limits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for small donor committees to any candidates for school board seats and the RTD board of directors. The measure comes on the heels of extremely high spending school board races last year in Denver and Douglas County. Rep. Beth McCann and Sen. Pat Steadman, both Denver Democrats, are the sponsors.

– Todd Engdahl, EDUCATION NEWS COLORADO

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Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buescher on Interrogatories to the Supreme Court and Other Issues re: Citizens United from Colorado Bar Association CLE on Vimeo.

By Matt Masich, STATE BILL COLORADO
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission last month dramatically changed the rules for campaign finance by lifting restrictions on corporations’ independent campaign spending. The Colorado Bar Association-CLE in Colorado held a program 10-days after the landmark decision to help lawyers understand the impact on the state’s laws.
Secretary of State Bernie Buescher made an appearance at the event, joining the all-star panel of election lawyers Ed Ramey of Isaacson Rosenbaum, Martha Tierney of Kelly Garnsey Hubbell & Lass, Richard Westfall of Hale Friesen and Maurie Knaizer of the attorney general’s office.
Buescher said Gov. Bill Ritter and the legislature will likely ask the state Supreme Court to issue a ruling to clarify what Citizens United will mean for Colorado election law.
“We’ve crafted a series of interrogatories which now have been approved by the governor, “ Buescher said. “We hope they are the subject of a joint resolution and are submitted in the next week to the Supreme Court. They deal with Article 28 Section 6.2 of the Colorado Constitution. The specific problem we’ve got is that our campaign finance [laws are] embedded in the constitution.”
The legislature must uphold the state constitution — even if it is contradicted by Citizens United — until the state Supreme Court tells it otherwise.

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State candidates, stealth political groups and special-interest political committees in Colorado have amassed millions of dollars in campaign donations to kick off the 2010 elections, The Denver Post reports. At stake are the governorship, control of the state legislature, and the redistricting of state and federal legislative districts.

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By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

In a bid they say would loosen the grip of special interests on the State Capitol, some Democratic lawmakers are proposing to let qualifying legislative candidates tap public funds to help pay for their races.

The proposal by Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, would be paid for voluntarily by those who choose to check a box on their state income-tax returns, and it would help finance state House and Senate candidates who also demonstrate they can raise individual contributions of their own through their campaigns.

“Most people are concerned about the role of money in elections and we want to start the conversation,” said Sen. Morgan Carroll, an Aurora Democrat who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate. “If we don’t like the role of money and special interests, then let’s do something about it.”

Its backers say House Bill 1156 takes a shot at leveling the playing field for candidates who voluntarily decide to forego special-interest, corporate and union money in favor of  individual, grassroots contributions, which then would be matched 2-1 with public money under the proposal.

“Public financing is the only way to keep our republic intact,” says newcomer Rep. Max Tyler, D-Golden, who was appointed to his seat after former representative Gwyn Green resigned and has not yet had to campaign for his seat.

Tyler, who has signed onto the bill as a co-sponsor, thinks that the bill is even more important in light of this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision relaxing restraints on corporate and union campaign giving in federal elections. The decision says that corporations will be treated the same as individuals in their campaign donations.

“Public financing might be a way to make sure that people are in charge of our government instead of big corporations with lots of money,” said Tyler.

Court, the House sponsor, now wonders what if any effect the new court decision might have on her bill since the decision has sparked a lawsuit over voluntary contributions.

“If we pass it and find that it is just a moot point, then it doesn’t make sense to do it,” said Court, who will be talking to the drafter of the bill to determine how to proceed from here.

Proposals to open the door to publicly financed campaigns long have divided the two major parties. Capitol Republicans say that, rather than clean up campaigns, publicly financed candidacies actually would distort elections. Campaign contributions reflect real-world support for a candidate rather; subsidies, they say, mask it–or the lack of it.

“Candidates should garner their own support and not depend on a public lottery system,” said one GOP lawmaker, Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R—Broomfield. He also said public funding forces taxpayers to fund candidates they don’t believe in.

“People shouldn’t have to pay for political contests that support messages that they don’t agree with,” Mitchell said.

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This week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on political spending has left the state’s campaign finance law vulnerable to a legal challenge, but the top elections officer is hoping to avoid that by asking the Colorado Supreme Court for advice. Secretary of State Bernie Buescher reached out Friday to Republican and Democratic legislative leaders, Gov. Bill Ritter and election lawyers, urging them to try to work together to figure out the fate of Amendment 27 rather than file a lawsuit, the Associated Press reports.

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