Congratulations to Jared August 15, 2008

August 12 has come and gone on the sun-burnt plains of Colorado CD-2.   Jared Polis pulled out a good win against Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth, keeping Will’s strengths in check while whittling down Joan to the very end.

Much can be said about this race and how it turned out, but the key was this: Jared had the right combination of the resources, the skills and the dedication to pull this off.  Much has been made (here as elsewhere) about Jared’s limitless funds but it should be obvious to anybody seriously considering the picture that money won’t buy you anything if you don’t have the awareness and the political skills to match.

Jared’s biggest strategic move was to have the foresight and the cajones to dump an unworkable campaign manager months ago when his campaign was bumbling along without a strong, seasoned leader.  Jared picked up Robert Becker and it was off to the races.  Becker had the flexibility to run circles around Joan’s campaign and Mary Alice just couldn’t keep pace.  Every JFG attack was old and tired, the same old soundbite about Jared’s cash that came across as a whine.  The Joan campaign didn’t have fresh material or a fresh attitude and it cost them.  When Jared produced solid dirt on Joan the answer was mismanaged.

Jared did well to pick up a campaign manager equal to the task, but clearly the bulk of the credit must go to the candidate himself.  He didn’t just rest on the laurels of his money, but wore out the shoe leather as well as Will or Joan (also see his comment here).  Only the candidates themselves know how much they are working door-to-door but there’s one bit of evidence I think says pretty clearly that Jared was working as hard as possible for this seat: he had a bigger margin over Joan in Adams and Broomfield Counties than in Boulder County.

Clearly I was supporting Will in this race but as I said previously, if it wasn’t Will it would be Jared for me.  I think both were good candidates but Will was stronger on my issues (longer track record and more dedication) and had some intangibles I liked.  Even so, I was very impressed with how quickly Jared picked up these issues, how prepared he was for them at the climate/energy debate, and especially by how willing he has been to engage and comment on this blog.  Thanks for that, Jared!

So here’s a congratulations to all for a race well played.  Jared comes out the big winner in all this, Will comes out as well with a new load of street cred for pulling a lot of weight when every observer thought the two biggies would bury him.  As for Joan?  I won’t be catty about it, but politically Joan comes out the big loser in this.  She started with all the weight and prestige behind her, started as the out-size runaway favorite.  And lost.  She didn’t lose because she got out-spent, she lost because she got out-campaigned, and that’s that.  Despite that, Joan is still to be thanked for putting in the extraordinary effort it takes to run for a seat like this.

Good luck Jared, and serve us well.

loves mining, drives a Prius, hates nuclear, loves mining August 7, 2008

We knew that the mining industry was an enthusiastic supporter of Joan Fitz-Gerald before the CD-2 primary race started.  And throughout the race she hasn’t even bothered trying to distance herself from those ties.  As the race has worn on more of Joan’s mining support has come out, become more clear, stood up, been counted, shown its face, and given her opponents juicy ammo.  All this exploded this week as Jared Polis’ campaign released a letter in which Joan tried to back Summit County away from banning cyanide heap leach gold mining (see previous post and ColoradoPols threads about this).

(Note that it didn’t take long for Jared to come out strongly against cyanide mining.  Great job, Jared!  I can tell you’ve been a passionate and dedicated opponent of this technique for years!  Way to stick your neck out and take the opportune obvious expedient right position! Way to be a real leader on this! Oh wait, I guess Jared’s not so clean after all.)

On one of the Pols stories I commented about Joan’s cameo appearances in two different Colorado Mining Association newsletters (one in 2003, the other in 2006), praising her for her support for the mining industry.

Is this a problem?  As some commenters in the Pols’ vigorous debate argue, we use the materials derived from mining constantly.  We rely on those materials, so what’s the problem?  Why is Joan’s defense of the mining industry a problem?

Mining itself is not the problem.  We do rely on minerals, and to get those minerals we must mine for them.  The problem is that the mining industry is comprised of private and publicly-held mining corporations and the only responsibility these companies have is to their owners or shareholders.  They (and rightfully so), strive for maximum profit, and therefore minimal expenses.  Mining cleanly?  Mining with the utmost care and attention to the environment?  An obvious expense.

Society has a different calculation to consider: minerals, yes, but not at the cost of a destroyed environment.  The People need to balance minerals extraction with environmental preservation.

So we have a natural and unavoidable tension: mining companies want to make money, society wants the products and a clean environment.  We create government regulations to try to ensure we get both, but it is clearly in the companies’ best interest to ensure the minimization of regulations.

So it is industry’s interest to not be regulated, it is in our interest that they are.  The relevant question to be asked here is: which side is Joan Fitz-Gerald on? After seeing her praised in print by the CMA twice, after seeing her letter to Summit County, after noting her PAC contributions from mining industry groups, it’s pretty damn clear which side Joan is on. If she is acting in the interest of Mining can she also be acting in the interest of stringent regulations of mining? Not bloody likely.  The relevant question for CD-2 voters is: does such a strong supporter of the mining industry warrant our vote?

Joan peppered the CD-2 energy and climate debate with platitudes about the environment, how she drives a Prius, how she’s against all things nuclear, etc.  But Joan is walking a razor’s edge espousing a Prius-driving lifestyle while pushing counties away from banning potentially destructive mining practices and taking oodles of mining PAC money.  This kind of hypocrisy may be present in most political officials, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it or accept it.  In Joan I don’t.

The infamous Joan Fitz-Gerald cyanide ban letter August 5, 2008

It’s something I have been hearing about for a while but the actual paper just came out today.  In 2004 Joan Fitz-Gerald, in her capacity as a State Senator, wrote a letter to Summit County telling them to drop their big ideas for a ban on cyanide heap leaching.

What is cyanide heap leaching?  It is a gold mining practice in which gold-bearing ore is piled up in a big heap over an impermeable liner.  A network of, well, essentially garden hose and lawn sprinklers is laid across the heap and a cyanide solution is liberally sprinkled over the ore (more info here).  It is a problem because quite often the “impermeable” layer goes all permeable on the miners and suddenly you have a heavy metals problem in your surface and ground water.

This has happened repeatedly and with such destruction in the state of Montana (as well as throughout the world) that the citizens of Montana voted to ban the practice in a statewide ballot initiative in 1994.  Canyon Resources of Golden didn’t like that ban so much and spent a good deal of money asking the citizens to overturn it in 2004.  They were roundly defeated.  Know this: if the citizens of a pro-mining state act to outlaw a certain mining practice, it must be bad.

Why didn’t Joan Fitz-Gerald know this?  Well, I’m sure she did, but it didn’t stop her from writing a letter (today released by David Thielen after somebody leaked it to him) to the Summit County Board of Commissioners asking them to not ban “lawfully regulated business practices.”  Joan’s letter starts by harshing on “anti-mining activists” for “banning the use of cyanide technologies” (oh the horror!!).  It then implies that Colorado’s mining laws are “good enough” (my quotes) to protect the environment without actually banning cyanide heap leaching.   Joan then goes on to tell Summit County to “get the fact” about discharge permits issued under the current mining laws.

A few points:

1- Joan was already having to live down her ties to mining (being identified as a “friend of the mining industry” by the Colorado Mining Association, for instance) and this pretty much cements that relationship.  If pro-environment CD-2 voters want to elect her anyway, well, it’s on them.

2- Joan telling Summit County that they shouldn’t worry about cyanide technologies because the state’s DPHE is going to regulate and permit discharges is utterly, completely, egregiously misguided. At best. At worst it’s a wilful ignorance of all the heavy metal releases that have occured by other leach operations that were also permitted.  What does permitting do to stop discharages?  Absolutely nothing physically.  It sets out a regulatory and penalty structure for non-compliance.  Does that scare the mining industry.  Uh, no.

3- The concident timing of this letter with Canyon Resources’s attempts to overturn Montana’s voter-passed ban is unsettling.

4- Some have commented on ColoradoPols that “All Senator Fitzgerald was advocating was a consistent statewide policy for regulating mining companies”  Bullshit.  Read the letter yourself and see if you can come to that conclusion.  I can’t.  Even so, who cares?  The state doesn’t need a consisent statewide policy.  If an individual county wants to regulate above and beyond what the state is doing they should be allowed to.

5- In the climate and energy debate that I live blogged a few months ago, Joan answered a question on nuclear power with a long answer on why she’s anti-nuclear, how it doesn’t fit with this district, how you have to know your district and we’ve had too many problems with nuclear here, etc.  So it doesn’t go for mining as well, Joan?  CD-2 has more than its share of abandoned mines and other mining-related environmental issues.  Why try to derail Summit County from heading off more on their own?

It remains to be seen whether the leak of this letter does damage to JFG’s campaign, but here’s hoping it does.  It matters not to me that Joan gets good marks for enviro votes when she’s pulling letters like this.

Shafroth picks up two major endorsements July 27, 2008

Two days ago the Denver Post announced its endorsement for Will Shafroth for CD-2, a major feather in Will’s cap.  This followed by a week the Rocky Mountain News’ own endorsement of Shafroth.  The only other newspaper endorsement that means much to this race, that of the Daily Camera, will be announced this week.

Grabbing the two Denver papers is a major coop for Shafroth and a major embarrassment for Joan Fitz-Gerald.   While nobody with any ounce of insight into this race would expect Jared Polis to pick up these endorsements, most probably guessed that Joan would have had the inside line.  Her years as a state politico and deal maker presumptively marked her as the “inevitable” choice, and she has certainly been positioned as that from the start of this race.  Whether coming from her own people or from detail-watchers like ColoradoPols, most have been touting Joan in much the same way that Mark Penn positioned Hillary in the beginning of her race.  We all know how that turned out and my guess is Joan goes down the same path.

So why didn’t Joan get the nod over Will?  Only the editors of the dailies know, but here’s my guess: personality.  Whisper it loudly: once people actually get to meet and talk to these candidates they have opposite reactions to Will and Joan.  Will they like more, Joan they like less.  Biased by my own experiences perhaps, but I have heard this from CD-2 voters time and again.  Joan comes off as something nearing bitter, Will comes off as affable.  Quite simply, Joan just turns people off.  We can talk about policy differences all day long, but in the end their policies are not far enough apart to matter much.  This is about personality.  As for Jared?  As nice a guy as Jared may be, he comes off as the over-eager new car salesman trying to get you to just jump in and take this thing for a ride.   That he is trying to buy this race is obvious, but what is dragging him down like a leaded sea anchor is that he doesn’t have the personality skills to make his purchase irrelevant.

In the end, these endorsements may matter not at all.  But they are a major boost of credibility to Shafroth’s candidacy and should give anybody who lays down on conventional wisdom a pause.

happy July 4th July 4, 2008

As indipol got very very busy in the past two months (having had yet another child and having seen work ramp up considerably) political writing plummeted.  But indipol is still thinking about and following politics and hopes to return to writing soon, especially on the Colorado CD-2 race between Will Shafroth, Jared Polis and Joan Fitz-Gerald.

In particular I’m jonesing to cover certain aspects of Jared’s talking points as he tries to play down the fact that he is unabashedly trying to buy a win in this race.  Now I’ve said before that I hold no grudges on Jared’s money (I’m an entrepreneur myself) or on how he spends it, but I do find Jared’s self-funding unsavory.  The reason I find it unsavory is a combination of two things:

1- Politics in America is usually and usually should be of the people, by the people, for the people.  Raising money for a campaign from lots of different people is one way that politics becomes of the people, by the people.  Going to the people for your money and your votes says to me that you are trying to buy the people’s attention.  Leaving the people to themselves and instead buying millions of dollars of mailings and airtime without making much of a dent in your piggybank is a blatant attempt to influence people without going to them.  It is an attempt to buy name recognition rather than earning it.  And while that is not illegal, nor should it be, it is distasteful to me.

2- Instead of just admitting to this and getting over it, Jared is spinning it and I find the spin to be bizarre and disingenuous.  The main spin from Jared’s supporters (both in his campaign staff quotes as well as in his planted comments on various blogs and newspapers — here for example) is that Jared is a special interest of one and therefore should be more trusted than Joan who is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from PACs and most likely will see serious 527 activity on her behalf (Will has taken very little from PACs — under $10K).  The notion that you are only an “independent” candidate if you self-finance means, taken to its logical conclusion, that only the ultra-wealthy should run.  This is almost Rovian in its spin and is a subject I will return to in a subsequent post.

Happy 4th and don’t forget to vote on August 12th!

Who’s the big bad progressive wolf in CD-2? May 12, 2008

Nobody closely following the Colorado CD-2 race would say this campaign hasn’t produced its share of laughs. (Ok, sure, they haven’t been as funny as watching Bob Schaffer implode right before our eyes.) Another laugh line cropped up in the Daily Camera on Friday.

The headline reads “Fitz-Gerald picks up PDA endorsement.”  Since you haven’t heard of them, the PDA is the Progressive Democrats of America (who?) and the endorser was the local CD-2 chapter (who? who?).  So whazzso funny?  This: as progressive as she may be, Ms. Fitz-Gerald is decidedly not the progressive candidate of this campaign. It is a campaign that pits three libs/progressives against one another, and their “progressive differences” might be measured in millimeters instead of kilometers, but if those differences matter to an organization that ostensibly cares about them, you wonder how they’d pick the least progressive of the three. The only answer I can come up with is that she got to them first and, probably, alone. Not being courted by Will Shafroth or Jared Polis, they endorsed Joan. Oh well, that’s politics. But don’t you think that if they were really after a “progressive” candidate (that is a major part of the organization’s name, after all) that they would at least do their homework first?

Joan drops a gotcha on Jared’s head April 24, 2008

In the biggest oops of the CD-2 campaign so far, the Denver Post today ran a placement story by the Fitz-Gerald campaign that has Polis looking like a big, fat environmental hypocrite.

Fitz-Gerald’s environmental liabilities in this race were already known by insiders (not by voters, yet) and Polis has been trying to hammer her from a dual angle: taking special interest money from anti-environmental sources.  Polis has also been playing himself as the green candidate, giving his website an eco-feelgood look and putting up significant verbiage on his enviro positions.  But today the Fitz-Gerald campaign got the story they wanted in the Post when it ran a Karen Crummy investigative article on Polis’ investment history.  Unfortunately for Polis he detailed in a self-disclosure form past holdings in multiple oil/gas and mining companies.

Polis listed income from 20 or more oil and gas companies, such as the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., ConocoPhillips and LUKOIL, the largest oil company in Russia. He also was invested with pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithCline, Sanofi Aventis and Novartis, and he had stock in mining companies such as Southern Copper Corp., which operates open pit mines in Peru and Mexico.

He also was invested in companies that routinely draw fire from liberal groups, such as Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart of Mexico, Altria Group (previously known as Philip Morris) and Imperial Chemical Industries.

Even so, from January through April, his campaign has continually slammed Fitz-Gerald for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from political action committees and special interests, specifically the oil, gas, mining and pharmaceutical industries.

The article was clearly researched, promoted and pushed by the JFG campaign:

seriously impressive CD-2 numbers April 15, 2008

PolitickerCO ran an early story this evening on today’s campaign finance reports released by the Shafroth, Polis and Fitz-Gerald campaigns and while there are a few conclusions to be drawn, the main one is obvious: Will Shafroth is hammering Joan Fitz-Gerald.  “Hammering” may seem a dubious choice of words since they raised about equally in Q1 ($280K for Will, $260K for Joan; only $160K for Jared) and their cash on hand is about equal (far less for Polis), but then that would be ignoring context.

The context is that Shafroth outraised JFG and now has more cash on hand than JFG while having started this race with roughly zero name recognition and little chance in anybody’s handicapping books of pulling near Ms. Fitz-Gerald.  Joan was the prohibitive favorite in this race and popular perception was that Polis was her only competition and only then because of his deep pockets.  Common wisdom was that Joan had oodles of chits to call in from her days handing out favors as state senate prez.  But the fact that Shafroth outraised JFG and JP in Q1, did it almost entirely on individual donors, and now sits with a roughly $100K lead in the bank says four things: 1- Shafroth is a serious contender and is here to stay; 2- he’ll have plenty of money to buy more name recognition, especially closer to August 12; 3- he’s out-hustling the other two candidates; 4- his campaign is handling its money better than the other two and is therefore probably being better managed.

As far as Polis, his numbers look bad by comparison.  He did raise $160K but that’s roughly half of what Will raised and in lieu of an actual election, the ability to pull in money from many corners has to be seen as the best indicator of a candidate’s support.  Most observers think Jared will dump loads of his own money in at the last second, but cash without deeper roots will only go so far in a summertime primary where only the really committed bother to vote.

More on the details later as they get parsed.  The finance reports are hundreds of pages so it takes a week or so for details to drip out.

the perception/reality problem for Jared Polis April 14, 2008

Jared Polis now has a big perception problem and things have worked out exactly as Joan Fitz-Gerald must have hoped before she started the tax release game in CD-2. A few days ago Polis and Shafroth followed Fitz-G and released their tax returns. The Daily Camera ran a story, because, of course, how much the candidates make is exceedingly important to who should get the job (read: sarcasm….and ok, it’s really because we’re a bunch of peeping toms and any time we can find out how much our neighbor makes or what their medical records say we just have to know).

The story carried a sidebar with six or seven years of income and tax history for the three candidates. The problem for Jared was obvious at first glance: for five of the seven years of his tax history, he didn’t pay any taxes. In two other years he made a combined hundred and twenty mil. In a nutshell, that’s the perception problem: you made millions but didn’t pay taxes. So typical of you filthy millionaires.

While Jared did pay taxes in his two money-making years, he didn’t pay taxes in the others, so looked at a certain way he made somewhere near $110M in seven years but only paid taxes in two of those years.

Now, the reality is that

tax return politics in CD-2 April 9, 2008

A story out of the Rocky Mountain News this morning has Joan Fitz-Gerald playing the tax return card in the 3-way. The upshot:

Congressional candidate Joan Fitz-Gerald intends to release her income tax returns for the past five years today and call on her opponents to do the same.

By which Ms. Fitz-Gerald intends to somehow make income an issue. It was met by a big yawn from the Shafroth and Polis campaigns.

Rivals Jared Polis and Will Shafroth said that wouldn’t be a problem.

Of course it won’t. This is a continuation of JFG trying to make JP’s millions the issue in this campaign. Let’s hope the JFG campaign is actually planning on, well, you know, campaigning for the seat. Negative campaigning is effective (no matter how often people say the voters hate it), but this just isn’t an issue that’s going to continue to track. Everybody already knows about Polis’ money. If this is the only contrast JFG can continue to raise against JP she’s in trouble.

As a commenter on the RMN story notes, JFG has mining industry and O/G ties. Now that’s an issue that has loads of potential traction. If JP and WS can paint JFG as the anti-environmental candidate, my guess is that it will become a much more effective issue than constantly harping on Polis for self-funding. There is a lot of room to play “Joan as a special interest hack vs. Jared as a special interest of one.” The question is how effectively the campaigns can plays those lines against each other and how effectively WS can stay out of the direct fray while profiting from it.

OK, I’m supporting Will Shafroth for CD-2 April 4, 2008

Up until very recently I was still agnostic on the Colorado CD-2 race. Now, after many months of keeping a half-eye on this race, and a few weeks of keeping a very close eye on it, Will Shafroth has won my support. It’s hard for me to give up what was a neutral vantage point, but I have come to appreciate Will’s candidacy over Polis’ and Fitz-Gerald’s.

I came to this decision in both examining the candidates’ positions on my voting issues, and considering the intangibles of each. Will stands out to me in a few ways:

some april 1st CD-2 news April 1, 2008

No jokes here.  First, Jared Polis is pouring yet another ewer of his own wine into his campaign operation. The more Polis pours from his own wallet, the more his opponents’ best talking point against him — that he’s trying to buy the race — sticks.  Polis needs to figure out a way to raise a lot of money from a lot of people not named Polis or he’s going to find out how closely the primary voters in CD-2 read the news.  Maybe many districts couldn’t care less where a candidate’s money is coming from, but this isn’t one of those districts.  Compare to Shafroth, who apparently has raised close to $800K (old report….new report coming April 15) almost entirely on individual donors, or Joan Fitz-Gerald who, while raising significantly from non-individual sources, is still going to lots of different places for her money.  Polis’ strategy seems to be that self-funding while running on an anti-special interest platform that targets Fitz-Gerald’s contributions is going to work.  It’s not.

Second, Shafroth opened his campaign quest to petition onto the August 12 ballot yesterday. Conventional wisdom seems to be that Shafroth’s problem in this race is a lack of name recognition and that Joan Fitz-Gerald is therefore the favorite by default if nothing else.  That actually doesn’t bode well for Fitz-Gerald, because if Shafroth can make inroads by wearing out a bunch of shoe leather, he will out-show Ms. Fitz-Gerald.  He is far more personable than she, and to date her real base of support seems to be handing a lot of votes to a lot of constituencies while in the state senate.  On the face of it that may seem a good place to stand, but from my vantage point that kind of support seems shallow.  Shafroth’s strategy is to meet as many people as possible, and he can probably meet enough people to make a difference.  If Ms. Fitz-Gerald does the same, will it have the same effect?  I doubt it.  I’ve seen both of them speak publicly a few times now and the clear edge goes to Shafroth.

CD-2 energy/climate wrap-up March 31, 2008

I never got around to wrapping up the Colorado CD-2 energy and climate debate from last Tuesday so here goes.

I’ll start with this: I agree with Will Shafroth’s opening premise that climate and energy are the defining issues of our time.

Health care, education, war, crime, poverty, taxes. These and a host of others are all issues we deal with in every election, issues we’ve been writing legislation on for decades and centuries, and therefore issues on which we will only ever see incremental change. Climate change is new, unplowed ground. Further, climate change, and the energy challenges wrapped around it, has popped upon us as the one issue that — if we do not solve it — makes all the other issues irrelevant.

Not only is dealing with climate change the biggest challenge we face as a nation, it is also the one that a CD-2 rep can have the most impact on. In the 111th Congressional session, only one issue is going to see massive, ground-breaking movement and it is climate change and the energy legislation that goes with it. Any movement that health care, education or foreign policy do see in the next session will be incremental at most. There will be no major changes to the status quo on those issues and thus little for a CD-2 rep to have influence on. Climate change is a different story. An economy-wide climate change bill is going to be written while one of these three is in Congress, and this bill is going to have long-ranging impacts.

Live blogging the CD-2 energy/climate debate March 18, 2008

[Note: the following was an unedited (i.e. sorry for the typos) stream of furious typing from tonight's CD-2 debate on energy and climates issues, held at CU's law school. The most recent update is on top, the first entry just before the debate's start at 6pm is at the bottom of the post. A more considered summation will follow in a separate post.]

7:50 PM: Overall thoughts: hard to say who won. On the issues, Will won, Jared was second and Joan third. It follows the pattern of observation that I made in my original post on this. Will knows the most but Jared is a quick study and sounded very good in certain areas, although he had to fall back on the special interests angle and other tangents (like the copyright/IP angle) too often. Will never had to fall back on stock talking points. Joan brought up Iraq and the Bush Administration and name dropped far too often for me to take her performance seriously here.

However, even though I called her “dour” in an early entry, on crowd appeal Joan held her own and probably came across as the most seasoned of the three. All three candidates drew laughter once or twice, but Joan’s moments seemed the most, well, poignant. She got amped up at the end of her closing statement and I think it played well, but the effect of it was tempered by her going second and being followed by Will, so the last thing the crowd heard was Will’s closing. Even so, Joan got the most applause two or three times by raising Iraq. I really mean no harm or insult by using the term “dour.” Her “dourness” probably played to many as seriousness and I imagine that many in the audience gave her highest aspect marks, coming across as the most serious candidate and probably the most electable because of it. That said, Jared came out as quite personable and articulate, probably the most articulate and even self-confident of the three. When it comes to the psychology of politics and elections, I am a big self-confidence guy. I think it is the single biggest factor that voters respond to. If any of the three won on this, it was Jared.

From the way the crowd reacted to comments, lines, ideas, etc., I get a sense that what I was listening for was something fairly different than what the crowd was listening for. I was listening for wonky substance, maybe many were listening for general personality and/or electability. Perhaps the applause for Joan’s Iraq lines was only felt by a small minority and so wasn’t representative of how the balance of the crowd perceived the debate, but those lines definitely played and Joan was the only of the three raising them. The point is, I don’t have a strong sense of who won the debate in the crowd’s eyes (and there were no applause clues to help me). My guess is that it was very nearly a draw and didn’t leave many with a clear line to pick a certain candidate.

Again, on the issues alone, Will Shafroth won. On everything else considered, I would guess that everybody in the room found something to like in each candidate and who wins in individual eyes comes down to some deeply intuitive reaction to candidate personalities. More follow-up in a subsequent post.

7:37 PM: It’s over now. My wrap up in a few minutes.

7:36 PM: Will goes last: I have 3 kids and I feel a deep sense of responsibility on this and it drives me to run for Congress. Gets laughs. There’s nobody up here that’s bad on these issues. It’s not how we’re going to vote, it’s how we’re going to lead. If there is one thing I’m going to do it’s energy and climate change. My commitment to you is that I will work everyday on climate and energy issues. I too am going to go to Congress unencumbered. I’ve raised a lot of money and it’s 99.7% from individuals.

CD-2 debate Tuesday night 6p-7:30p, CU campus March 17, 2008

Don’t forget that the three candidates for CO CD-2 will debate climate and energy issues tomorrow night from 6p-7:30p in Wittemyer Courtroom at the CU Law School (map). Should be a fun time.

One free tip to the candidates: Jerry Peterson will definitely be in the room. You better have full command over your knowledge and stances on nuclear power. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

CD-2 energy/climate follow-up March 14, 2008

Monday I posted on the 3 candidates for CO’s CD-2 seat and how they look on energy and climate. (For those who have come in through syndicators, tag searches, pols, etc. and so don’t know me, energy and climate policy is what I do for a living. I co-founded this consulting group and have been doing either climate science, science policy or both for the past ten years.)

One of the candidates (Polis) commented on the post and ColoradoPols picked it up bringing in a few comments there. The conversation that has ensued is worth examining a bit.

Jared Polis’ one comment on my original post was to highlight his support for a national ‘feebate.’ Basically the idea is that energy-intensive consumer products get hit with a fee that is paid back (rebated) to those who purchase energy efficient products.