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Columbia City Blog /Free Photos

DENVER, CO—With less than eight months remaining until the November 2012 election, the latest voter registration numbers for Colorado show a strong increase in the number of registered active unaffiliated voters.

Following a 2011 off-year election that featured the defeat of Proposition 103 along with many other proposed local tax measures, the readjusted numbers from the Colorado Secretary of State’s office show a remarkable increase in the number of unaffiliated voters in the period from November 2011 to February 2012. In that time, the number of active unaffiliated voters has risen from just over 615,000 to nearly 650,000, an increase of more than 33,000 voters.

Unaffiliated voters now account for 30.3 percent of the state’s active voters, out of a total of 2,143,196. Read more »

Madelaine Rohan, outgoing chair of Colorado Hispanic Republicans

DENVER, CO—It was standing room only at El Senor Sol, as the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, a handful of state legislators, and grassroots activists gathered to celebrate the organization’s one-year anniversary and discuss outreach strategies ahead of the 2012 election.

And it all comes down to one simple equation.

“Messaging plus education equals the Hispanic vote,” said outgoing CHR chairwoman Madelaine Rohan. The group has been promoting the get-out-the-message to related Republican groups and especially incumbent elected officials and declared candidates for the past several months.

State Republican Chairman Ryan Call offered his thoughts on the GOP’s organizational message and engagements plans for one of Colorado’s most important voter demographics on both state and national levels, arguing that a failure in Democratic governance has affected Latinos and other minorities particularly hard. Read more »

joemurphy /Free Photos

LAKEWOOD, CO—More than a dozen media experts, news reporters, political observers, and bloggers debated the role of media in the upcoming 2012 election on the campus of Colorado Christian University in a conference conducted by the Centennial Institute last week.

The conference’s ambitious title, “Media Fairness and the 2012 Campaign,” hoped to explore the multifaceted and changing industry from the perspective of voters’ ability to wade through information overload, how the media addresses thorny and often difficult economic issues, and acknowledge the expansion and contraction in media due to changing technology. Read more »

DENVER, CO – Colorado’s transparency push took one more step toward inclusion as Rep. B.J. Nikkel (R-Loveland), steered HB 1252’s call for creating an online database for financial information at the state’s higher education institutions past Democratic concerns about cost and inclusivity.

The bill passed in bipartisan fashion 10-3, as three Democrats joined their Republican committee counterparts. The House Education Committee referred the measure to the Committee on Appropriations. Nikkel accepted a friendly amendment that expanded the scope of the measure to include all state institutions that take public funding in the form of College Opportunity Fund (COF) benefits. Read more »

Eifion /Free Photos

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – If the United States expects to provide affordable, reliable, and economy-driving power to its residents in the foreseeable future, the answer will not be found in renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar panels.  That was the conclusion offered by Robert Bryce, senior fellow with the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment at the Manhattan Institute, at the 2012 Leadership Program of the Rockies retreat in Colorado Springs.

Bryce pointed to the hype surrounding fossil fuel production that has held up projects in the United States and in Canada like the Keystone XL pipeline. Bryce cited recent research by University of Victoria climate scientists that shows the fears of climate affects as a result of extraction of the oil sands from Alberta are unfounded, having a negligible effect on global temperatures. Read more »

DENVER, CO – The crowd at the Independence Institute’s 27^th Annual Founders’ Night mixed cocktails and rubbed ideological elbows Thursday evening as syndicated columnist and author Ann Coulter and Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie offered their assessment of the long-standing question on the Right: Can fiscal and social conservatives get along?

In addition, Coulter and Gillespie propoounded on a wide variety of topics presented by the moderator, Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute. Drawing both admiration and occasionally scorn from the diverse audience due to their widely varying opinions, both could agree on the most important issue in the 2012 election cycle.

“I object to having this discussion at all when we’re facing financial Armageddon,” said Coulter in her opening remarks. “It’s silly to even talk about these things, whether it’s gay marriage or contraception.” Read more »