Week in Review July 2 to July 6, 2007

Democrats In Congress Keeping Their Promises to Colorado Voters

This year's Fourth of July recess marks six months of strong leadership from Colorado's Democrats. In the last six months, Democrats Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, John Salazar and Mark Udall have done more to the advance the agenda of America's working families than the Bush Republicans did in the last six years.

Despite constant obstructionism from Republicans, Democrats have worked hard to keep their promises to the American people. Both houses of Congress have passed energy legislation that strengthens our economy and national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Democrats have made our communities safer by passing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, and provided the American people with honest leadership and accountability by passing the toughest, most sweeping ethics reform in a generation.

We also raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, passed a balanced budget that includes tax cuts for the middle class, and kept our promises to the brave men and women who have served our country by passing the largest increase in veteran's health care in more than 80 years. U.S. Representatives Reps. Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, John Salazar and Mark Udall have also fought for a new direction in Iraq, fought to increase access to health care by reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and kept their promise to promote the promise of science over partisanship by voting to expand funding for life-saving stem cell research.

"Democrats have accomplished more in the last six months than Republicans did in six years," said Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak. "Democrats like Reps. Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter, John Salazar and Mark Udall are keeping their promises to Colorado's working families, and making our communities safer and stronger in the process. While Republican Doug Lamborn, Marilyn Musgrave and Tom Tancredo continue to stand in the way, our Democrats are working to make America safer and stronger, expand access to health care, fight for a new direction in Iraq, and end the culture of corruption that Republicans brought to Washington. This Independence Day recess, Colorado's working families can be proud that they finally have a Democratic Congress that is independent of the Bush Republicans and their special interest friends."

Sen. Salazar, Gov. Ritter Tour Roan Plateau

Colorado leaders renew push for additional time to review Roan drilling plan

After a 2½-hour aerial tour of the Roan Plateau and northwest Colorado, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and Gov. Bill Ritter renewed their request for the federal government to grant the Ritter administration 120 days to review the Roan management plan for future oil-and-gas drilling.

"Today's tour was a great opportunity to see all of the areas where energy development is occurring, to see what the impacts are and to get a sense for what the future impacts might be," Gov. Ritter said. "There is so much development happening now, and much more that is planned, that 120 days is a reasonable request. There's no reason to rush the leasing or drilling of the Roan."

Currently, 4,000 to 5,000 drills are extracting oil and gas from northwest Colorado. Over the next 15 years, federal leases already have been sold that will expand the number of drills to 60,000.

"Securing America's energy independence is critical for our Nation, and I support efforts to develop Colorado's energy resources. But the top of Roan Plateau is a special place that should be protected," Sen. Salazar said. "It's important for Coloradans to be asking what they want western Colorado to look like in 15 or 20 years, or beyond. We need a clear understanding of the impacts of 60,000 wells before the BLM proceeds further with any plans for the Plateau. Taking 120 days to review the management plan is responsible and will allow us to move forward in a thoughtful, balanced way, and I plan to use the Senate rules to send a strong and clear message to the BLM that their decision and action to ignore the requests of the Governor of Colorado and myself are unacceptable."

Joining Gov. Ritter and Sen. Salazar on the helicopter tour was Harris Sherman, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and Kimberly Kaal, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's energy liaison. In addition to the Roan, they flew over the Vermillion Basin, Parachute Creek, Piceance Creek, Little Snake Basin and several oil shale demonstration projects. They also stopped on the Vermillion Basin. Gov. Ritter and Sen. Salazar described it as "pristine, uninhabited and a very special place."

Gov. Ritter asked the federal Bureau of Land Management in March for 120 days to review the Roan resources management plan, which was crafted under the Owens administration. The BLM and Department of Interior denied the request in June. Sen. Salazar is scheduled to meet with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne later this month and will ask the Secretary to reconsider Gov. Ritter's request.

Rocky Mountain Right Reels As Public Rejects GOP's Outdated & Elitist Rhetoric

By David Sirota

Is the much-touted conservative economic revolt over in the Intermountain West? That's a question that undoubtedly has people like Republican presidential operatives and national anti-tax activist Grover Norquist worried - especially with a spate of evidence that suggests a whole new politics is emerging out here, and I'm not just talking about the region being dominated by Democratic governors (that is at least as much a symptom of the underlying phenomenon as it is the phenomenon itself).

Matt Singer over at Left in the West has a telling post up about new public opinion data from Montana, one of the central fronts in the conservative economic revolt for the last two decades. Some history before we get to the numbers: Montana was once a longtime and reliable Democratic state, but became a Republican stronghold thanks to the Reagan-inspired economic revolt which brought to prominence people like governor-turned-RNC-chair-turned-Enron-lobbyist Marc Racicot, since-unelected-and-humiliated Sen. Conrad Burns (R), and Burns' political guru/Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams.

http://www.leftinthewest.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=687

Now, however, a new poll from Lee Newspapers suggests that revolt - and the political potency of right-wing economic rhetoric - is over in Big Sky country. Wide majorities in Montana approve of Gov. Brian Schweitzer's (D) progressive tax rebate and spending plans, just passed by Democrats in the legislature. Even more tellingly, a plurality of Republicans in the state approve of what happened as well.

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/07/01/news/state/20-voters.txt

Something similar seems to be happening here in Colorado, the home of TABOR, that icon of the right's economic revolt. Voters, as we all know, voted to temporarily suspend TABOR in 2005, and now even one of the state's most conservative voices - the editorial page of the Rocky Mountain News - seems to be grasping that massive budget cuts to state services are destructive. In a strong editorial today that is reprinted in the Sunday Denver Post as well, the paper applauds Gov. Bill Ritter's efforts to better fund the state's motor vehicle division, citing long lines and wait times for the most basic of state services. Meanwhile, when a right-wing city councilor in Aurora announced plans to push the right's tired "right to work" initiative aimed at destroying organized labor, a statewide poll quickly showed that beyond liking the happy sounding misnomer "right to work," Colorado is actually quite hostile to what this conservative ploy actually does. "Opposition to the initiative is strong among Democrats," note the pollsters. "However, even a majority of unaffiliated voters oppose the measure."

http://www.environmentcolorado.org/blog/home/archives/000071.html
http://ridder-braden.com/content/42/rbi-poll-shows-proposed-so-called-right -to-work-proposal-faces-uphill-battle

Clearly, the public's rejection of the right's economic class warfare on behalf of the wealthy and subsequent waning of the conservative economic revolt as an effective political weapon has had major consequences for both political parties, and has created opportunities for a whole new kind of progressive politics.

As mentioned, the West is now dominated by Democratic governors. And in many places, state Republican parties are decimated.

In Montana, for example, the state's largest newspaper has declared the GOP is "reeling" and in need of a "repair job." One of the party's own senior state legislators told the paper his party "need[s] to move toward the middle - in the mainstream" - an admission that the GOP has been taken over by its fringe.

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/06/17/news/state/20-repairjob.txt

In Wyoming, a populist Democratic candidate came within a few hundred votes of knocking off the state's longtime archconservative congresswoman and now, with Republicans bickering over primaries, that same Democrat is now firing up the populist themes again in potential preparation for another run.

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/05/trauner_how_free_is_free_trade.html

And, in Colorado, Wadhams - the self-trumpeted political guru - is actually conceding that there's probably no chance for him to actually succeed in the 2008 legislative elections. (In some ways, Wadhams admission of ineptitude shouldn't be surprising: Though the media in Colorado continues to fawn all over Wadhams as some sort of genius, we should remember that it was Wadhams who not only comandeered Sen. George Allen's transformation from leading presidential candidate into political cautionary tale, but it was also Wadhams who engineered Burns' pathetic 2000 reelection showing, - a Wadhams special where he guided a two-term Republican senator in what was then a staunchly Republican state into a near-loss to Schweitzer - an unknown farmer who had never run for political office before).

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6221081
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/index.senate.html

The new progressive politics that is changing the West's political direction is being fueled by outside pressure groups, which are using national issues to further expose the right's economic revolt for the fraud that it is, and to use economic outrage for the progressive cause. Take Progress Now's new "Iraq Tax" campaign, that shows how the Iraq War is actually a massive tax on Colorado residents. This campaign was originally aided by the Progressive States Network's Anti-Iraq Escalation Campaign, which engineered the introduction of anti-escalation state resolutions in 29 states, and generated significant local media both in Colorado and in other states about the real cost of the war. This theme was recently echoed in a speech on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol by Michael Moore, who essentially said the Iraq Tax proves that this country can, in fact, afford basic necessities like universal health care, and proves that the right's claim that every basic government service is unaffordable is a lie.

http://media.progressnowaction.org/iraqtax/
http://www.progressivestates.org/stoptheescalation
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5346769
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVKYAf-HCzg

Obviously, the West is a region in flux, and it is going to take a sustained effort to continue beating back the right's tactics. The conservative elites in this region's Republican Party hierarchies, corporate boardrooms and think tanks aren't done waging their class war by a long shot. Additionally, there are no silver bullets in this battle, as there are a whole host of reasons as to why the right's economic rhetoric has become so politically impotent in the last few years. Some of it is regional population changes. Some of it is the Republican Party's advocacy for its wealthy private landowner donors in their fights against public lands and against sportsmen and anglers. And some of it, undoubtedly, is overall Bush fatigue.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0412.sirota.html

But it is clear that above all else, in this region - as in many other regions in this country - the public is starting to see the conservative movement for what it is: A failed experiment whose K Street-cloistered elites and whose top-down models have championed policy prescriptions that are wholly out of touch with ordinary folks daily lives. And the more these elites and their Wadhams-style yes-men keep digging in, the more opportunities there will be for progressive victories.

Outrage Over Libby's Commuted Jail Time

Across the country outrage from citizens over Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail sentence was echoed in Colorado. The Denver Post article quoted a number of Democrats, including the CDP chair. "I don't think that justice is very well served when the president just commutes the sentence of his friends," Colorado Democratic Party chair Pat Waak said. "I think this is a pattern of malfeasance on the part of this White House, and I think the whole pattern will have an effect" in the 2008 elections.

For more on the story, go to:

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6286681

Matt Sugar Joins Colorado Democratic Party

Matt Sugar is the new communications director for the Colorado Democratic Party. After an extensive search, Sugar, who has years of experience in the public relations field, will be implementing a communications strategy that encompasses the upcoming Congressional campaigns and the Democratic Convention.

"We are excited to have Matt Sugar on board," said Pat Waak, Chair of the Colorado Democratic Party. "The State Party has major outreach initiatives that will be strengthened by Matt's experience and expertise."

Sugar, a Colorado native most recently served as Director of Communications for Intrawest Colorado, Winter Park and Copper Mountain resorts. He also served as Director of Communications for the building of Invesco Field at Mile High and as Press Secretary to former Colorado Governor Roy Romer. "Colorado will be the focus of national attention over the coming year," said Sugar. "I look forward to highlighting Colorado's abundance of outstanding Democratic leaders such as U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall, Governor Bill Ritter and others."

Senator Salazar's Newsletter

If you'd like to receive regular email updates from Senator Ken Salazar, please sign up here:

https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/EmailSignup.aspx?X=1Y7DpkGxw9o=

Live Earth Watch Party

Live Earth, "The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis," will take place this Saturday, July 7.

If you'd like to join a watch party, beginning at 2pm, at the Colorado Democratic Party headquarters (777 Santa Fe Drive in Denver), please RSVP to Lloyd Covens at DenverDBS@msn.com or 720-333-9414.