Free Republic

Jared Polis really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. If you saw the Colorado congressman speaking on the House floor last month wearing a clip-on bowtie with a polo shirt under his blazer, you know what I’m talking about. He’s been this way since he first emerged on the scene. About 10 years ago, when he was just 28, Polis was one of four wealthy Colorado Democrats who pooled their considerable personal resources to create a state-of-the-art political machine that was ruthlessly effective in turning this once-red heartland state a stunning shade of blue. But Polis wouldn’t run with that...

After Americans for Prosperity unveiled a large media placement hitting liberal U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s Obamacare record, liberals everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the left-leaning Senate Majority PAC (SMP) revealed a $500,000 media buy against U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, who is running against Udall in the 2014 election. Not so fast, Udallites. There’s just one problem. The SMP, backing Udall, is funded by none other than Colorado’s best liberal funder, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ... What’s interesting is that Bloomberg has given $2.5 million to the Super PAC and its most recent ad buy is...

Democratic control of the U.S. Senate – already tenuous as a result of retirements and stiff Republican challenges – has become even more perilous as a result of recent events in Colorado. In what amounts to a game of trading places, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, a Republican who intended to challenge incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) in the November election, dropped out of the race to run for the congressional seat currently held by Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Gardner, in turn, jumped into the Senate race, providing Colorado Republicans with a significantly better chance of capturing Udall’s seat....

The first Rasmussen Reports look at Colorado’s likely 2014 U.S. Senate race finds that it's a dead heat. A statewide telephone survey of Likely Colorado Voters shows incumbent Democrat Mark Udall with 42% of the vote, while his leading Republican challenger Cory Gardner earns 41%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and 13% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) (Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook. The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Colorado was...

A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley. The subtle reference in a Tuesday letter from Senator Mark Udall to Obama, seeking to enlist the president’s help in declassifying a 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into torture carried out by CIA interrogators after 9/11, threatens to plunge the White House into a battle between the agency and its Senate overseers.

The familiar Washington narrative on the scrum for the U.S. Senate has been rinsed, recycled and delivered once again: Republicans are primed to pick up the six seats necessary to capture control of the upper chamber. The midterm atmosphere sure looks ripe, the polling appears favorable but, as it did in 2010 and 2012, the most competitive batch of races will likely come down to candidate quality. It’s the key component that stifled GOP chances before, and could very well again. .... .... A closer look at the most competitive contests demonstrates why a Senate majority in 2014 is again...

News broke this afternoon of a rumor that Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District would not seek reelection for his House seat and would instead enter the U.S. Senate race to challenge Mark Udall in November. We won’t bury the lede on this, this isn’t just a rumor. It’s a fact. Additionally, Ken Buck will exit the Senate race, endorse Gardner, and then run for the 4th Congressional District himself. This is good news all around for a state party that has been woefully incapable of finding a path to victory in big federal races for the last...

Republican Congressman Cory Gardner is planning to drop his re-election bid and run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Mark Udall...

**SNIP** Midterm elections are often a reflection of the approval rating of the incumbent president and now President Obama stands at 42.8%. And elections in the 6th year of a PresidentÂ’s term are usually not good for the incumbentÂ’s party. To make things even worse for Democrats, the issues of a weak economy and Obamacare make November look bleak for Harry Reid and his Senate Democratic cohorts. â—¾Alaska, Mark Begich â—¾Arkansas, Mark Pryor â—¾Louisiana, Mary Landrieu â—¾Michigan, Open Seat (liberal Democrat Carl Levin retiring) â—¾Montana, John Walsh â—¾North Carolina, Kay Hagan â—¾South Dakota, being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson...

Not all Coloradans were impressed by Sen. Mark Udall’s invitation to liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s exclusive Democratic Party fund-raiser. Mr. Udall’s critics turned up the heat after it came to light that the Democrat was among those invited to hobnob Wednesday with the billionaire at his home in San Francisco for a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) fundraiser. A former hedge-fund manager, Mr. Steyer made a political splash earlier this week by announcing plans to spend $100 million on promoting candidates in the upcoming 2014 midterm elections who will promise to combat climate change. ... “It just reaffirms that the...

(Boulder, CO) The son of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall has been charged with breaking into a home and four cars after allegedly using heroin. Twenty-six-year-old Jedediah Lee Fox-Udall was advised of the charges during a brief court hearing in Boulder Thursday. He faces charges of trespassing, burglary, theft and possession of drug paraphernalia. Deputies say after they arrested Fox-Udall on Jan. 30, he told them he had recently used heroin, but prosecutors say no heroin was found and he wasn't charged with drug possession. His lawyer, Alex Garlin, says Fox-Udall is in an addiction treatment program and "is dedicated to...

Posted on January 28, 2014 Dem Senator Dodges Questions About Campaigning With Obama DANA BASH, CNN: Is he a liability for you, the president back home? SEN. MARK UDALL (D-CO): When the president comes to Colorado and talks about our all-the-above energy approach -- we've got lots of natural gas and solar power -- that resonates with Coloradoans. When he talks about making sure our veterans are treated properly that resonates with Coloradoans. BASH: Does that mean you're going to campaign with him? Or you're going to have him campaign with you side-by-side? UDALL: We're going to be running a...

CompleteColorado.com reports that emails show U.S. Senator Mark Udall's (D-CO) office pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to downplay the number of insurance cancellations caused by the rollout of ObamaCare. A full 249,199 Colorado citizens were victimized by ObamaCare's cancellations. According to the emails, Udall's office hoped to change the definition of a "cancellation" as a way to lower the number. All of this occurred late last year as the storm around cancellations was (engulfing Democrats and the president.) From an email inside the Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI), Director of External Affairs Jo Donlin bluntly stated to her colleagues:...

Desperate people do desperate things. In this case, Senator Mark Udall asked the state's insurance commission to downplay the number of policy cancellations by changing the definition of "cancelled." Breitbart: CompleteColorado.com reports that emails show U.S. Senator Mark Udall's (D-CO) office pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to downplay the number of insurance cancellations caused by the rollout of ObamaCare. A full 249,199 Colorado citizens were victimized by ObamaCare's cancellations. According to the emails, Udall's office hoped to change the definition of a "cancellation" as a way to lower the number. All of this occurred late last year as the...

As first reported by Todd Shepherd at Complete Colorado, liberal U.S. Senator Mark Udall and his staff pressured the Colorado Division of Insurance to revise the number of Coloradans whose insurance policies were canceled as a result of Obamacare. From Shepherd’s report: “At the height of controversy surrounding President Obama’s promises on the federal health care overhaul, U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s office worked assiduously to revise press accounts that 249,000 Coloradans received health care cancellation notices. Because the 249,000 figure was produced inside the Colorado Division of Insurance, Udall’s office lobbied that agency to revise the figure, or revise their...

Al “Show me more of them petrodollars” Gore has decided to dump his head of total climate alarmism, issuing a treacly statement dismissing Maggie Fox as the president and CEO of CRaP. In a wholly unsurprising development, Gore announced he was giving Fox, aka, Mrs. Sen. Mark Udall, the old heave-ho, citing the need to “combat the climate denial cottage-industry and to foster a true social movement for climate action.” Ironically, Big Al made his pronouncement just as the polar vortex bore down on the Midwest and eastern United States, making Chicago colder than the South Pole. And the South...

Ladies and gentlemen, expect a war in the Colorado Senate race. Senator Udall, don’t you DARE tell more lies about this healthcare mess. YOU’RE the one who took away our doctors. YOU’RE the one who cancelled our plans. You looked us in the eye, Senator Udall, and you lied. That is coming out of IACE Action, which is connected to I Am Created Equal, which is a group that featured heavily in John Morse’s recent abrupt transition from Colorado state Senate President to private citizen. …And they ain’t shy, huh? Moe Lane (crosspost) PS: Mark Udall really did lie about...

DENVER — Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado may not cruise to re-election next year, according to a poll released Tuesday that suggested a clear undercurrent of dissatisfaction among Colorado voters. The Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday put Udall ahead of all GOP challengers. But only 41 percent said Udall deserves to be re-elected. Udall’s lead was nearly within the margin of error against Republican Ken Buck, leading 45 percent to 42 percent. Buck was the GOP nominee three years ago against Colorado’s other senator, Democrat Michael Bennet. Udall performed more strongly against lesser-known hypothetical Republican opponents, including three members...

As Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly angry with the White House over problems with Obamacare — and increasingly uneasy about their individual fortunes heading into 2014 — Colorado Sen. Mark Udall Wednesday became the latest Democratic lawmaker to introduce legislation to change the beleaguered Affordable Care Act... With support building for a plan introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, that would allow people mislead by the president”s promise to keep their plans to actually do so indefinitely, Udall has come up with a scaled down version that would allow policyholders to keep their current plans, being cancelled under...

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) Alaska Senator Mark Begich (D) Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss (R) Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran (R) Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) Massachusetts Senator William "Mo" Cowan (D) Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (D) Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (R) Minnesota Senator Al Franken (DFL) South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham (R) North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan (D) Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (D) Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe (R) Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns (R) South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson (D) Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) Kentucky...