Now that Colorado’s review board for ballot initiatives has approved the wording of the proposed personhood amendment, and the race is on to find enough signatures to put it on the November ballot, you wonder if more reporters will get around to asking the measure’s former supporters, like Rep. Mike Coffman, Rep. Cory Gardner, and Rep. Doug Lamborn, whether they will go for it again in 2012.

Given what happened to failed Colo Senate Candidate Ken Buck, who un-endorsed the personhood amendment shortly after he won the GOP Senate primary in 2010 and was attacked nonstop on abortion issues during his campaign, you’d think it would be a no brainer for reporters to address the serious politics of this issue, pick up the phone, and call those guys listed up there (Coffman, Gardner, and Lamborn).

But it looks as if only the Colorado Statesman has tried to reach them so far, and it did so back in November.

Coffman was out of town when the Statesman tried to reach him, Gardner did not return the Statesman’s call, and Lamborn said he’s a “supporter of personhood.”

A spokesman for Coffman told me Thursday that he’d check to find out what his boss’ current position on personhood is.

The Colorado Right to Life blog states that Coffman, during the 2010 election cycle, was “on record supporting Personhood and is on record as Pro-Life with no exceptions.”

I asked Colorado Right to Life Vice President Leslie Hanks how her organization knew that Coffman supported personhood two years ago.

“Our blog reports on our candidate survey results,” she emailed me. “Congressman Coffman answered all our questions correctly to reflect he is a no exceptions pro life elected official who supports the personhood of the baby in the womb.”

I asked what “no exceptions” means in the context of the survey, and she said, among other things, that abortion would not be allowed in the case of rape and incest.

“Babies are persons, not ‘exceptions,'” she emailed me. “No innocent baby should be punished for the crime of his or her father. If mom’s life is in danger, the doctor has two patients & he should make every effort to save both. BTW, five of the Republican prez candidates have signed the PH pledge, so Mike is in good company.”

I called Denver talk-show host anti-abortion activist Bob Enyart to find out if he’d spoken to Coffman about personhood.

“I’m not going to comment for him,” Enyart told me, adding that he had a conversation with Coffman at a convention, and it was “not a significant conversation.” He did not specify if they discussed personhood, but if you know Enyart, you have to think they did.

Gardner, whose office didn’t return my call, has been described by a leading personhood activist as a “main supporter,” and the Colorado Right to Life blog showers praise on him for being “100 percent pro-life.”

Colorado Right To Life describes Lamborn’s position this way: “Incumbent Republican Doug Lamborn has always been solid on life issues, and has co-sponsored Personhood legislation at the national level.”

Personhood USA Legal Analyst Gualberto Garcia Jones told me he has no reason to believe his initiative will receive less support this time around than in 2010.

“I think a majority them [major CO GOP candidates] supported us last time,” he said. “And most of them were elected. I think the highest profile ones, like Ken Buck, who did waver, were the ones that suffered because they still got punished by the Democrats, and they didn’t have the benefit of the support of the base.”

Garcia Jones told me he welcomes an expected lawsuit from Planned Parenthood, trying to disqualify the ballot measure, because it motivates his base of supporters. “The only real concern for us was the fatigue of the base, and we rely on the base to get signatures,” he said. “So a lawsuit actually helps us. We’re not upset at being sued.”

State Sen. Scott Renfroe, who’s sponsored personhood legislation at the Capitol during his political career, said he supports the efforts to pass the personhood amendment in 2012.

“It’s never wrong to support life,” he told me. “Science is showing more and more that life is present at the earliest stages. And we have to give it a chance to prosper in this country.”

Renfroe said he thinks a ballot initiative is the “proper place” to bring the issue up, as the state legislature should focus on “jobs and the economy.”

Asked whether he thought past personhood supporters, like Coffman and Gardner, would support the measure in 2012, Renfroe said, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

You wonder how anyone could read former Colorado Senator Hank Brown’s recent comments to Republicans, that a federal candidate’s position on abortion really doesn’t matter, and not think of failed Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck, Rep. Cory Gardner, and others who made similar statements, even though a quick Google search shows just how incredibly important abortion issues are in politics at the federal level.

Here’s what Brown said Thursday, as quoted by the Colorado Statesman:

Noting that he suspected most of the Republicans in the room disagreed with him about that — and adding that “Colorado, as you know, is the second-most pro-choice in the nation” — he argued that the [abortion] issue shouldn’t take center stage in elections because it’s out of the hands of politicians in Washington and just divides voters.

“The reality is, that’s a constitutional interpretation. The people you elect on that issue don’t have anything to do with that. You don’t vote on allowing or not allowing abortion in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. Congress. It’s never even an issue,” he said, adding that most Republicans agree the federal government shouldn’t subsidize abortions.

“So for Republican candidates, there isn’t any aspect of that pro-life, pro-choice issue that ever results in a vote in Congress,” he said, noting that in rare cases Senators can weigh in on the fitness of Supreme Court nominees and influence longer-term policy on abortion.

Thank goodness reporters in Colorado didn’t let Ken Buck get away with it when he said essentially the same thing last year.

Here’s a fine example of a reporter holding Buck’s feet to the fire in one televised debate, if you want to take a trip down memory lane. That’s just one case of Colorado journalists doing their jobs and mapping out the steps of the abortion buckpedal for citizens. The Ft. Collins Coloradoan didn’t let Gardner forget his stances on abortion either.

If you look at what happens in Congress, you can see that reporters are obviously right that these issues are not just abstract theoretical distractions, like Hank Brown would have you believe.

They make a big difference in politics as practiced in the Beltway, where you can’t predict what votes will be taken for what reason and when.

Remember that Obamacare almost fell apart over abortion wedge issues, with Democrats and Republicans falling on both sides.

And in March, abortion issues, including a dispute over funding for Planned Parenthood, nearly shut down the federal government, as negotiations stalled, with Gardner and Tipton among those digging in their feet on abortion. Also on the disputed chopping block were federal funds for international organizations that provide women’s health care in the world’s most impoverished countries, where the absence of these services translates into hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

Maybe some people don’t want to take it seriously that the national GOP platform calls not only for an anti-abortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but also for legislation changing the definition of a person under the 14th Amendment to include fertilized eggs, or zygotes. But how can you not take this seriously, given the strange unpredictability of abortion politics and that the GOP has a shot at controlling both houses of Congress and the White House in about a year?

Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Cory Gardner, Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn, Scott Tipton, or any other federal candidate, can’t say they favor personhood and then expect it to mean nothing to reporters. Sorry.

Reporters know that one of their most basic functions is to air out issues so citizens can understand where the candidates stand and what they’ll do if elected.

And so, Hank Brown, with due respect, journalists were right in 2010 not to accept the GOP post-primary cries that abortion issues mattered so little compared to jobs that they need not be discussed. And they should continue to matter a lot to journalists today and every day.

UPDATE: This blog post was corrected on 8-7-2-12. Scott Tipton did not support the personhood measure in 2010, as previously reported here.

———–

Another attempt at passing a personhood amendment, defining zygotes as people, would almost certainly fail if it makes the Colorado ballot next year, given that it’s gone down decisively twice in a row.

So journalists covering the announcement today by personhood backers that they are petitioning  to put the measure on the ballot shouldn’t get bogged down in the old questions of which forms of the Pill this amendment would ban. It’s well-known to Coloradans that common forms of birth control would be banned.

The focus for reporters should be the politics of having a personhood measure on the ballot in 2012, in a swing state like Colorado.

So I attended today’s news conference announcing the personhood petition drive to make sure these issues were raised by reporters, and since they were not, I filled in the journalistic gap.

I asked Kristi Brown, who’s changed her name from Kristi Burton since she sponsored the first personhood amendment with her father in 2008, if she expected to get the same support from major candidates that her measure had gotten previously.

Kristi Brown announces effort to put personhood on 2012 ballot

I mean, you can argue that without a Republican primary, GOP candidates like Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner might not endorse the 2012 measure, given its apparent unpopularity with voters, especially women.

“I haven’t personally talked to [Coffman and Gardner],” Brown told me.

“I know Cory Gardner is very conservative, has really good stands. I talked to him on the 2008 amendment. He was very, very supportive. He was one of our main supporters. So I would guess that he would.”

When she says a main supporter what does she mean?

“Very supportive,” she said. “He would come to events for us. He talked about it.”

Here’s Gardner at one personhood event.

Colorado Right to Life’s website lists Mike Coffman as a supporter of personhood 2010 as well, with the statement: “Incumbent Republican Mike Coffman is on record supporting Personhood and is on record as Pro-Life with no exceptions. However, he does not appear to have co-sponsored the Personhood legislation introduced in Congress. We hope that he would vote to support such legislation if he had the opportunity, as he has pledged.”

I asked Gualberto GarciaJones, who wrote this year’s amendment, which has more expansive and precise language than last year’s, if he thought presidential candidate Mitt Romney would support his amendment this time, given that he’s changed his position over the years. Garcia Jones said Romney is known as a flip flopper and that his group would persevere regardless of the positions of Democratic or Republican politicians. (No major Democrats support the effort, as far as I know, but Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich back personhood, and it’s endorsed in a plank of the national GOP platform.

Asked if he thought he’d get Gardner on board for personhood this time, former gubernatorial candidate and “Generations Radio” host Kevin Swanson, said, “I think so,” adding that he hopes to get Democrats as well. (In his prepared remarks, Swanson repeated his view that said Dr. Suess summed up the amendment best when he wrote, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”)

“I think it’s real possible we could get some strong Republican support,” but he said he hadn’t been in touch with Tipton or Gardner.

In response to the personhood petition drive, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ President Vicki Cowart said in a statement: “Colorado voters spoke loud and clear in the 2008 and 2010 elections when they voted down the so called “personhood” amendments by a 3-to-1 margin each time. No means no, yet Personhood USA and Personhood Colorado continue to ignore the wishes of Colorado voters. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will for the third time since 2008, work with our over 90 coalition partners to educate Colorado voters about this initiative which aims to ban abortion in all circumstances.”Historically, Colorado has been a state that votes in favor of trusting women and doctors. At the end of the day, Coloradans trust women to make personal, private decisions about their own body with their doctor, their family, their faith and without interference from the courts or lawyers.”

Talk radio serves an ever more useful role in being a venue where public officials comment on their votes and other activities, often for the first time.

I’m late in spotlighting it, but such was the case Sept. 22 on KFKA radio, when Rep. Cory Gardner explained, apparently for the first time, what he thought of  legislation passed by the U.S. Senate providing $7 billion in disaster-relief aid to ensure FEMA had enough money for victims of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

In response to a question on KFKA’ s morning radio show, AM Colorado, Gardner said the Senate’s bill was not fiscally responsible. 

AM Colorado: You guys are also looking at the disaster aide bill. It didn’t pass yesterday. Is there something in the works that you are going to be looking at the next couple of days on that?

Gardner: I think that will continue to be a focus of activity on the House floor. The Senate passed a stand-alone bill that would provide $7 billion in off-budget money for disaster aide- meaning that’s money that would…just additional $7 billion in spending. The House yesterday attempted to really change that narrative by providing responsible and needed emergency aid but doing so in a fiscally responsible manner as well. To meet the needs of the people who are suffering. I think that is the differences of opinion in the House and the Senate right now.

Egged on by radio-host Amy Oliver, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) revealed Friday that he favors plans that “would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states.”

Oliver, who hosts the “Amy Oliver Show” on KFKA 1310-AM in Greeley, told Gardner that Colorado should keep most of its federal gasoline tax, so “we don’t have to beg or anything like that.”

The sentiment apparently struck a nerve in Gardner, who ran with Oliver’s suggestion:

“Well, I think there are some great ideas that would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states, because why do we have this system that says, hey, we’re going to just have you collect money, and we’re going to scrape some off the top. I mean, it makes no sense to have this middleman treated the way it is.”

You’d expect Oliver, who works at the right-leaning Independence Institute, to favor dismantling the Department of Transportation.

But when a U.S. Congressman like Gardner jumps on board, you’d think even Oliver would recognize that she owes it to you, me, and her audience to extract more details from him. Instead, she went, as planned, to a commercial break, Gardner disappeared, and the topic was dropped.

So, what would turning over the Department of Transportation to the states mean?

I asked former Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena for a reaction to Gardner’s notion.

“At first blush it may seem to be an attractive idea to let the states control their own funding, but the reality is that there is a real need to have a national highway system that supports our economy and contributes to our national security,” Pena said, adding that a national entity is needed to provide oversight so that transportation systems from coast to coast run smoothly and support economic development.

“I guess one could say every state should fund its own airports, but we could not have built Denver International Airport without $500 million from FAA,” Pena said. [The FAA is part of the Dept. of Transportation.]

DIA was not built just to benefit Colorado, Pena said, but to help the nation’s airports run more smoothly. Backups at Denver’s old airport, Stapleton, were causing inefficiencies and backups at airports nationwide, Pena pointed out, and it was clear DIA would remedy these problems.

“There was a national need to build DIA,” Pena told me.

The Department of Transportation has played this role, identifying and addressing national transportation needs, including those of less populated regions, since its inception, Pena argued. This role extends beyond airports and highways to ensuring that pipelines and other transportation systems are efficient and meet national safety standards. (Here’s a summary of the Department of Transportation’s responsibilities.)

“I don’t think he’s [Rep. Gardner] done his homework or analyzed his position very closely, because it [dismantling DOT] would have terrible consequences for national security and for our economy,” said Pena, who also served as Secretary of Energy.

On the radio, Gardner didn’t seem to care about national concerns:

“But if you look at the broader picture of transportation in general, Colorado gets less than a dollar for every dollar of tax dollars it sends in for the package of highway systems. So we are a net loser when it comes to sending a dollar in and getting less than a dollar back.”

Neither Gardner’s Office nor Amy Oliver returned calls for comment.

Listen to Gardner’s views on the Department of Transportation 12 minutes into the Aug. 5 podcast here. A partial transcript follows:

Oliver: I want to ask you about this. It really gets to the philosophy of what the proper function of government should be. Why on Earth should someone from Mississippi, why should federal tax money from any other state, Mississippi, Main, Missouri, Ohio, anybody, have to pay for a runway here in northern Colorado?

Gardner: Well, it really goes to the heart of what’s happening now in the bigger discussion on whether or not we should be trying to do all things for all people. I mean, certain people in the aviation industry do pay user fees to land. They do pay av tax on their aviation fuel. And that comes back to the airport and helps fund projects like the runway extension. But if you look at the broader picture of transportation in general, Colorado gets less than a dollar for every dollar of tax dollars it sends in for the package of highway systems. So we are a net loser when it comes to sending a dollar in and getting less than a dollar back.

Oliver: Well, we actually get less than that because they have their overhead that they have to do.

Gardner: You’re right. The middleman. They just kind cut it off. There’s states like Wyoming that get more money. Alaska gets more money. So the question is, how does this continue and how can we continue it when people are struggling to make ends meat as it is, and we have a government that’s far beyond its means.

Oliver: Let me ask you something, and this might be getting back a little bit to your state capital days. Couldn’t we do something with our federal gasoline tax and just say, hey listen, you guys, what is the federal gasoline tax, I think it’s 18 cents a gallon, we’ll give you two cents. Let us just keep the rest. That way we don’t have to beg or anything like that. We just keep it here in Colorado.

Gardner: Well, I think there are some great ideas that would basically turn the Department of Transportation back to the states, because why do we have this system that says, hey, we’re going to just have you collect money, and we’re going to scrape some off the top. I mean, it makes no sense to have this middleman treated the way it is.

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog.

In an old column for the Rocky, I asked KOA radio-host Mike Rosen about his oft-repeated opinion that The Denver Post has a “liberal bias on its news page.”

Can Rosen cite a study to prove this?

“I’d love to see one,” he said at the time. “I’m never going to have a study because I don’t have the time.” But he had no doubt about the leftward tilt of The Post, he told me, because he’s “documented dozens and dozens of incidents over 25 years.”

That’s the kind of thing conservatives, who go on about “liberal media bias,” tell you when you ask for proof.

The media is biased because they say so.

Lefties make the same undocumented claims about “conservative bias” in the media, I know, but not quite so often or loudly, it seems.

But, to be fair, a lot of lefties and righties don’t seem to understand that sweeping allegations of media “bias” can only be proven with in-depth studies that show a pattern of lapses over time. Not to mention the fact that bias implies a conscious effort to skew you, the reader. So it’s a tall task to prove bias, unless you just assert it because you think highly of yourself.

Good media criticism, which contributes to meaningful public debate and doesn’t mindlessly tear down professional journalism, focuses on specific stories or instances of coverage that we can debate and get our arms around. It points out inaccuracies, omissions, sloppy sourcing, unfairness, and the like, found in actual coverage in an actual news outlet, not alleged stories out there in the “media.”

Statements like the media is biased against “people who believe in smaller government” don’t fall in the category of good media criticism, and are pretty dumb, destructive, useless, and otherwise not befitting of a member of the media or a public figure.

Enter Grassroots Radio Colorado host Jason Worley and Rep. Cory Gardner.

They had the following cozy exchange about the media Thursday on KLZ AM 560, which airs Worley’s (and Ed Clark’s) Tea Party radio show from 5 p.m. t0 7 p.m. weekdays.

Gardner: The press likes to blame the Tea Party for a lot of things, because there’s a bias in the media against people who believe in smaller government.

Worley: You mean people like us.

Gardner: People like us.

I called Gardner’s office to ask what he meant by this but did not get a response yet. Does he really think the media are biased against him?

But Worley quickly answered my request for proof of the bias he and Gardner were upset about:

Worley: I think it’s pretty obvious.  Cutting government can mean a lot of things, but why does the media always run to Social Security and Medicare.  Why not stop all foreign aid, especially to our enemies.  Why not tell the U.N. that instead of America funding 23% of its budget we are going to fund 2%.  The media never seems to mention that the Dept of Energy was created to get the US away from importing oil.  Why do they still exist? There is a ton of waste in Cabinet level depts, but that never is brought up. I will back off on the media bias when they take an honest look at what we are spending and lay off the scare tactics.

Salzman: There are huge generalizations about the news media. Can you cite a report or study to support your view that the media “always run to Social Security and Medicare?

Worley: Turn on ABC, CBS, NBC during the evening news and study.  Do you need a study to be intellectually honest?

If you’re going to throw around the word “bias,” you do. To criticize the media, you should use facts, evidence, proof, and examples of the kind of coverage you’re talking about.

These things allow people to communicate in a meaningful way.

I never heard Sen. Michael Bennet mention the directional purpose of the anus, like that grandma did at the state Capitol Mon., but that didn’t stop Ken Buck from telling Bennet last year to shut up about social issues, like abortion.

The GOP, and allied pundits, liked to say that the election wasn’t about abortion.

How could it be, they said, with a pro-choice president, two freshly appointed pro-choice judges on the Supreme Court, and Roe vs. Wade the law of the land.

The election was about jobs, they said, jobs, jobs, jobs. And to talk about abortion, or run advertisements on social issues, was a distraction from the real issues facing America, an insulting and cynical way to win the votes of unaffiliated voters.

Fast forward to Washington DC, March 9, 2011. Abortion issues, including the crusade to cut Planned Parenthood funds, are at the center of negotiations that could lead to a shutdown of the federal government.

And lives are at stake. House Republicans have cut funding not only for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion-related services, like cancer screenings, but also for international organizations, like the United Nations Population Fund, that provide women’s health services and family planning, excluding abortion, in the world’s most impoverished nations.

The Population Fund’s backers say the loss of funding would result in millions of unwanted pregnancies and tens of thousands of deaths of women and children.

So clearly abortion matters a lot, and it matters a lot to congressmen like Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who’s opposed to abortion even in the cases of rape and incest.

You recall Gardner also accused his pro-choice Democratic opponent, Betsy Markey, of distracting voters by discussing abortion issues during the last election.

Fortunately, the Ft. Collins Coloradoan pressed Gardner on the issues anyway, even though he didn’t want to talk about them.

And media outlets in Denver, despite Ken Buck’s wishes, did the same thing, and pressed Buck on them, particularly at the end of the campaign.

(I wrote a guest opinion in the Coloradoan today thanking the newspaper for asking Gardner about abortion anyway, and laying his views out there, even at a time when most people didn’t identify these issues as “top of mind” in polls.)

That’s what journalists are supposed to do, look at the big picture–because any person in his or her right mind, not to mention any professional reporter, knows that a U.S. Congressman will inevitably face votes on social issues, like abortion and gay marriage.

And that’s what’s come to pass today in the U.S. Congress.

The 10 Commandments always make for good conversations. For example, do you prefer the version that includes “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife?” Or the version that shortens this to “Thou shall not covet?”

Trouble is, most everyone I ask, except my mother-in-law, can’t recite the Commandments. Most people remember some of them, but the middle group trips them up. The ones like, “Remember thou keep holy the sabbath day.”

In any case, I was asking people about the Commandments last week because a U.S. Court of Appeals in Ohio ruled Wed. that a county judge violated the constitutional separation of church and state by hanging a  poster listing the 10 Commandments in his courtroom.

Not a huge story, of course, but one that’s been dragging on for a while and has developed a following.  And it’s a story with a Colorado angle that local reporters missed.

During the 2010 primary U.S. Sen. candidate Ken Buck, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner,  State Sen. Ken Lambert (SD 9), State Sen. Kevin Grantham (SD 2), Rep. Mark Barker (HD 17), Rep. Jon Becker (HD 63), Rep. Ray Scott (HD 54), and Rep. Libby Szabo (HD 27) apparently  filled out a survey indicating that they support “public posting of 10 Commandments.” It was the Christian Family Alliance Candidate Survey.

Buck’s back in Weld County, but the ones doing people’s work, do they still favor the public posting of the 10 Commandments, even though it looks even more definitively like the law does not?

Maybe you’re thinking this is a waste, and we should move on to a more timely topic.

But it’s obviously worth a reporter’s time to track back and find out what candidates are thinking about their election pledges, especially when the issues involved are in the news.

Much has been written about the trap Colorado Senate Ken Buck fell into when he positioned himself on the far right of the political spectrum, advocating, for example, a ban on common forms of birth control. These far-right positions helped Buck beat his opponent Jane Norton in the GOP primary, but they tied him in knots later, as he tried to say no one cared about the social-conservative issues that Buck had passionately endorsed in the primary.

Compared to a far-right pledge on abortion, a promise to support posting the 10 Commandments may sound like a throw away.

But just in case you’re like me, and you can’t seem to remember the Commandments, here’s one common version:

1. I am the lord your god.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the lord, thy god, in vain.
3. Remember thou keep holy the sabbath day.
4. Honor they mother and father.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultry.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

So, as can see, we’re not just talking about, Thou shalt not steal, here.  

My own atheism biases me, but can anyone explain how it possibly doesn’t mix church and state for the government to post this religious list. They best argument is, well, the government already allows public displays of religion on government property with government funds. But this is more extreme than, “Merry Christmas.”

Messages to Gardner, Szabo, and Becker were not returned on Friday.

One of the core functions of journalists, when you think about it, should be to track campaign pledges.  It helps people understand the election process, the dyanamics of a primary versus the general election, for example. It helps illuminate candidates’ commitments to doing what they say they’ll do, which is clearly a major concern of voters these days. Generally, reporting on campaign promises helps voters make informed decisions, which is, again, a big part of what journalism is about.

Regardless of where you come down on this, journalists should be in the business of tracking campaign pledges. And this is an interesting one.

“Right now the only person talking about social issues in this campaign is Betsy Markey.”

That’s what Cory Gardner told Al  Malmbert Oct. 5 on KCOL Fox News Radio AM 600 in Loveland.

You’d think Malmberg might have pointed out to Gardner that, hey, Malmberg himself had just asked Gardner about social issues, so it’s obvious that Markey is not the only person talking about them.

And Malmberg asked the question after having just read the Coloradoan, which reported Oct. 3, two days before the interview, that Gardner had dropped a previous campaign pledge to carry legislation outlawing abortion. But he was standing behind his endoresment of the Personhood Amendment.

So social issues are very much part of the CD4 campaign, as they should be, with Gardner changing his position and with Markey and Gardner holding such different views on these issues.

Also Gardner was anything but shy about talking about his support, for example, of Personhood Amendment during the primary. Colorado Right to Life lists Gardner as supporting Personhood with no exceptions, meaning he opposes abortion even in the case of rape and incest. Gardner was proud to talk about social issues primary candidate forums, when he obviously knew that a larger percentage of his target audience were social conservatives.

It’s likely that Gardner will repeat his line about Markey being the only one who’s talking about social issues, and reporters and talk-show hosts should interject and point out that this is false.

The BigMedia question of the week is, are any of the 33 candidates who endorsed the Personhood Initiative, other than Ken Buck, clued into the fact that the measure would ban stuff like the Pill and IUDs?

You recall last week Buck withdrew his endorsement of Personhood, Amendment 62, saying he didn’t “understand” that the measure would ban common forms of birth control (even though his campaign understood that the measure would ban IUDs and at least some forms of the Pill.)

Over the weekend, to fill in the journalistic gap, I asked a few of the other best-known Personhood endorsers (the Personhood 33) if they knew the Initiative would ban common forms of birth control, and if Buck’s decision changes anything for them.

Nate Strauch, spokesman for Personhood endorser Dan Maes, said of his boss, “He has not changed his opinion on the matter.”

Fellow gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo, also a Personhood endorser told me “nothing has changed there,” regarding his endorsement of Amendment 62.

Asked if this means he supports banning common forms of birth control like the Pill and IUDs, Tancredo said, “I must admit, on the rest of this stuff, I have to look into it.” (I’ll check back with him later and report back.)

Cory Gardner, running for CD 4, is another high-profile GOP candidate who’s thrown his backing behind Personhood. His campaign didn’t return my call over the weekend, but the Ft. Collins Coloradoan reported Sunday that Gardner supports Amendment 62.

Asked by the Coloradoan if he opposes abortion even in the case of rape and incest or if the mother’s life is in danger, Gardner replied: “I’m pro-life, and I believe abortion is wrong.”

I’ll try to find out if Gardner, unlike Buck, understands that Amendment 62 would ban common forms of birth control.

I’ll be calling other members of the Personhood 33 as well.