Last week, Denver Post reporter John Frank wrote that 9News’ “announcement of the first televised debate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate is sure to create controversy: With more than a dozen candidates in the race, who will make the debate stage?”

9News stated it will include any “viable” candidate in its April 5 debate, as determined by a 5-member panel of political analysts.

“The panel may also draw scrutiny,” Frank suggested, “as the members represent establishment politics in a field with a number of outsider candidates.”

Frank swiftly outlined how each member of the panel is connected with establishment politics.

Along these lines, one detail I stumbled on is that fact that one panel member, Kelly Mahar, has close ties to former Rep. Jon Keyser, having joined with him to form “iGOP,” a “slate of young, tech savvy Republicans” who ran for Republican National Convention (RNC) delegate slots in 2012. Mahar is also a 9News commentator.

In any event, I asked Rittiman to respond to the criticism that in deciding between a grassroots and a more establishment GOP candidate, 9News’ establishment-oriented panel might be biased toward the establishment candidate. He said:

Rittiman: “We selected people [for the panel] who know what it takes to mount a successful Senate campaign and see if a candidate has anything to show besides filing an FEC form. We want people on stage who have a shot of gaining access to the primary ballot, which takes some level of organized support by this point in the process.

By now, when we’re this close to the state convention, the candidates should be able to point to something. Grassroots support is great. Show us the grassroots support you have. That’s fair game.

Just because we have some folks who have been closer to politics and know what it takes to run a campaign involved in the selection process doesn’t mean that those people wouldn’t take it very seriously if any of the candidates were to show us some metric or measure of grassroots support. We can all recognize that when we see it.

I’d again stress that we will allow any ballot-qualified candidates who haven’t dropped out to participate in our June 7 primary debate—and that we are allowing all candidates to submit up to two minutes of video to be published on 9NEWS.com and mentioned during the debate.

Yesterday, 9News announced that the panel chose eight candidates to participate in the debate. Wouldn’t voters want all of them to go at each other?

Ideally yes, but there are limits. What would all those Republican presidential candidates have looked like on the same stage, with no B-Team debate to siphon some of them off? Pretty bad. A over-crowded debate doesn’t serve the public interest. Colorado faces a similar situation.

So 9News did the right thing to limit the number of candidates, and a “viability” standard, in the absence of polling, makes sense.

You can argue that television station should have put some non-establisment folks on the selection panel — like former Rep. Tom Tancredo, former GOP Chair and KLZ talk-show host Steve Curtis, or Tea Party leader and lawyer Randy Corporon. Some people like that, with political experience.

But I don’t think it mattered. Judging from the candidates selected (see below) yesterday, 9News struck  a balance between the voters’ need to hear from 1) candidates who have a demonstrable hope of winning and 2) from the underdog candidates who deserve to be heard. It’s a tough call when you have so many odd candidates vying against each other.

9News’ announcement yester of the debate lineup seemed to reflect a fair process:

“The lineup for the debate is not yet final. Campaigns who were not invited have been given a deadline of March 31 to provide any additional evidence of viability for the panel to consider.

The panel unanimously decided that the campaigns of Charlie Ehler, Jerry Eller, Michael Kinlaw, and Donald Rosier did not demonstrate a viable path to accessing the June primary ballot.

Ehler and Rosier did not provide materials for the panel to review by the Monday deadline.

Greg Lopez, who had announced a run, told 9NEWS he’s dropped out and is endorsing Natividad in the race.”

In a radio interview this afternoon, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner denied that he traveled to a meeting at a swanky Georgia resort over the weekend in a last ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from becoming the GOP presidential nominee.

“These conspiracy theories about what took place there are way over the top, spurred by a Huffington Post liberal outlet that thinks people are going to be gullible enough to believe it was something that clearly it wasn’t,” said Gardner of the meeting, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

The “main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab” was how to stop “Republican front-runner Donald Trump,” according to the Huffington Post article, by Ryan Grim, Nick Bauman, and Mark Fuller.

“This is absolutely nuts that the liberal Huffington Post has conservatives questioning what’s happening,” said Gardner on air. “I mean, this is an organization that ends every story with, ‘Editor’s note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist.’ This is from the Huffington Post, so it’s pretty crazy what people are saying right now.”

Gardner, who supports Sen. Marco Rubio, described the event as an annual meeting, and he said he was on panels addressing China and the freshman class in the U.S. Senate.

“To think that anything else was discussed by me is absolutely untrue,” Gardner said on KNUS 710-AM’s Kelley & Kafer Show March 9, referring to the Trump discussion (at 4 min below).

“That’s unfortunately, probably the best way to describe it, as a wonky, nerd forum,” said Gardner. “I know they’ve talked about the tech CEOs. And yes, Tim Cook was there talking about the encryption issue in front of Congress right now, and the very real challenge of balancing privacy with security. And again, this is an annual conference that’s been going on since 1982. To think that there was some other kind of purpose for it is simply not true and a flat-out lie.”

Correction: an early version of this post incorrectly stated that Karl Rove presided over a discussion of how to stop Trump.

Republicans have been blaming Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, for Colorado’s budget woes—even though the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid didn’t cost Colorado anything.

State Sen. Tim Neville, who’s leading a pack of Republicans vying for the chance to unseat Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, jumped on the baseless Medicaid-bashing bandwagon in a Jan. 4 interview with the “Americhicks,” Molly Vogt and Kim Munson, on KLZ 560-AM.

Neville: I believe it’s time for the government to re-prioritize, and of course the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the Medicaid expansion, which the governor did several years ago, eating every single dollar that we have in increased expense.

Not only is this false, but it’s really mean, as it pits everything else the government is struggling to pay for (roads, schools, etc.) against funds for the (mostly) working poor, especially those undeserving old and disabled people.

Maybe Neville really meant that he thinks Medicaid is costing the state too much—which, again, would have nothing to do with Obamacare. The program’s costs are increasing, but less than in previous years, due to the growing numbers of elderly and disabled people who are enrolled.

If he’s worried about Medicaid costs, Neville should explain how he wants to “re-prioritize” government, as he put it, and specifically how he’d cut Medicaid or alter it. Neville is known to be unafraid of expressing his Tea Party views, but I can’t find any explanation from him on this one.

I don’t think Neville would follow the lead of GOP Sen. President Bill Cadman, who declined to explain how he’d change Medicaid but, instead, he actually told a reporter to put the question to Democratic Speaker of the state House, Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, even though she’s never suggested cutting Medicaid, as Cadman essentially did last month.

Maybe the Americhicks, who take personal responsibility seriously, will have Neville back on their show—or even land Cadman—and extract some specifics about their Medicaid plans. And, while they’re at it, everyone would love to hear a detail or two on how they’d like to shore up Colorado’s budget.

Charles Ehler, who’s one of the dozen or so Republicans vying for Democrat Michael Bennet’s U.S. Senate seat, shared this image on his Facebook page, with no explanation:

I called Ehler,  who is an Air Force Veteran, to find out how close he thinks our government is to rounding us up in boxcars–or if this was a joke. I mean, banning assault rifles leads to this?

Ehler: “It’s funny, and it’s not funny,” he told me, “because we could appear to be a beneveolent society, and as soon as the guns are gone, overnight, we could have a society like that. The force of government can turn on citizens almost at the blink of an eye. It’s called human nature. I have the force and you don’t.

Are we there? I don’t know that we’re there, but boy it could turn quickly. I really don’t think Americans need to find that out. We don’t need to create the conditions for it.”

“I’m collecting a pay check, and the person ordered me to shoot,” he said, pointing to government massacres at Wounded Knee, Ludlow, and Sand Creek.

“I’m also concerned about people getting trigger happy with the guns,” said Ehler, who’s retired from General Dynamics and has run motorcycle-restoration and bicycle-repair businesses. “And we see that happening with the police.

“We saw it with the fellow killed in Oregon the other day. They never saw a gun, but they shot him anyway. The excuse was, he was reaching for a gun.”

Ehler’s comments are in line with his website, which states, “A man with a gun needs little help from government to secure his freedom.”

Just as Colorado’s GOP State Chair Steve House is telling his fellow Republicans to talk more about education, GOP Senate candidate Peggy Littleton is saying that one of her top priorities if elected would be to abolish the Department of Education.

Asked by KCOL morning host Jimmy Lakey what she’d do if she were the “queen for a day” in the U.S. Senate, Littleton said:

Littleton: I would love to see the Department of Education go away. I don’t want those bureaucrats in Washington to deermine what our kids are going to learn and be able to do and have taken education away from the parents, which is where it originally belongs.” Listen to Littleton on KCOL’s Jimmy Lakey Show 1.26.16

“Education belongs in the hands of the parents, teachers and local school boards, not with unelected bureaucrats in DC,” Littleton tweeted in response to this post.

Littleton is following in the footsteps of a list of (mostly) failed Republicans who’ve called for the elimination of the Department of Education. (Usually they don’t talk about the the Department’s job training, grant making, and research functions.)

Rick Perry remembered it during his Ooops Mooment, when he forgot one of the three federal departments he’d shutter.

During his failed U.S. Senate run, Ken Buck called for its closure. So did loser U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton. Failed Scott McInnis suggested axing it in 2010.

Does Littleton want to be part of that group?

UPDATE: I updated this post with Littleton’s tweet at 3 p.m. Feb. 2.

It what appears to be the first radio interview of his U.S. Senate run, state Rep. Jon Keyser dodged questions on whether he’d like to change TABOR and abolish a state program offering in-state tuition for undocumented college students.

On KNUS 710-AM Saturday morning, Craig Silverman asked Keyser, “Are you a high tax or a low tax kind of guy? And how do you feel about changing TABOR – the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Colorado?”

Keyser (@8:35 below): Well, certainly, that’s a state issue, and I’m running for United States Senate, but I am a low tax guy.  I think that the free market economy is something that is always going to work best and the more government, the more regulation that you pile on, the less the business owner – the small business owner, the families – have the ability to be free and make the judgment of how to spend their money the way they want to spend it.

Keyser’s refusal to answer questions on state issues came just five days after he resigned from the state house.

Keyser (@7:30 below): You know what?  I don’t think we need to – that’s something that the Colorado voters, I think, have already discussed. But where my focus will be is National security. And Michael Bennet has been terrible on that.  You know, he wants open borders.  I mean, he just recently opposed some very commo- sense legislation to reform our immigration system and that would prevent radical Islamist terrorists from posing and masquerading as refugees coming to our country.

Keyser aligned himself with U.S. Senate Republicans when he told Silverman that Syrians should not be allowed in the U.S. for now because he doesn’t think they can be screened well enough at the present time.

Keyser expressed his opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by Obama, which lifted economic sanctions while aiming to stop Iran from developing nuclear bombs.

Keyser said Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet’s vote in favor of the pact shows he “cares more about the Iranian economy than he does about the Colorado economy.” Ouchy.

In response to a question about global warming, Keyser said he thinks “the climate is changin, but the question is, how much, and to what extent human factors are contributing to that.”

Keyser, who also indicated he is for the death penalty but against most abortions, is part of a crowded field of about a dozen Republicans vying to take on Bennet.

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner spent a good chunk of his election campaign telling us that the Life at Conception Act was really nothing more than a symbolic statement, when, in fact, it is federal personhood legislation that would ban all abortion, even for rape.

Gardner infamously described the Life at Conception Act, which he co-sponsored, this way, despite widespread objections by reporters:

Gardner: “The federal act that you are referring to is simply a statement that I believe in life.”

So you’d expect him to co-sponsor the U.S. Senate version of the bill, as he did in the House.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has just given him the chance, having introduced the Life at Conception Act just this week, as announced in a news release that described the legislation this way:

Paul: “The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most Americans believe and what science has long known – that human life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore, is entitled to legal protection from that point forward. Only when America chooses, remembers, and restores her respect for life will we rediscover our moral bearings and truly find our way.”

But Gardner isn’t a co-sponsor yet.

Nate Marshall, a former Republican state house candidate who was found to have ties to white-supremacy groups, has acccepted an offer from Colorado Springs County Commissioner Peggy Littleton to back her possible U.S. Senate run against Democrat Michael Bennet.

In response to Littleton’s Jan. 3 Facebook comment about an article on a “24-Year-Old RINO Hunter on a Mission to Purge the GOP of Moderates,” Marshall wrote to Littleton, “Now run against Bennet!”

Littleton replied with, “Join my team and make a pledge.”

“I’m in!” Marshall responded.

Marshall, an outspoken right-wing conservative, recently referred to the Planned Parenthood terrorist, who killed three people last year, as a “hero.”

Before his aborted 2014 run for Colorado House District 23, Marshall reportedly founded a white supremecist group on the web called “The Aryan Storm.”

Rep. Jon Keyser, the latest Republican considering a run for U.S. Senate, is drawing fire from fellow Republicans, as they jockey to replace top GOP candidates who’ve dropped out of consideration for the Senate race.

In a Facebook post yesterday, Rep. Justin Everett wrote that Keyser is backed by the “usual spinmeisters who tend to lose elections here in Colorado.”

Everett said of Keyser: “He won’t listen, arrogance is a word that comes to mind. We don’t need another arrogant politician in Washington…

Also on Facebook, Everett has been an outspoken supporter of U.S. Senate candidate Tim Neville, whom Everett claims cannot be beaten in Colorado’s GOP primary.

Everett has written that Neville will use the “Ken Buck Model of 2010 when [Buck] beat Jane Norton.”

The jostling is sure to intensify due to, if nothing else, the size of the field.

Already in the race for the GOP nomination to take on Democrat Michael Bennet are: Neville, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, former Aurora city counilman Ryan Frazier, former Parker mayor Greg Lopez, El Paso County conservative Charles Ehler, and Jefferson Country Commissioner Donald Rosier.

Three Republicans, including businessman Robert Blaha, Rep. Peggy Littleton, and talk-radio host Dan Caplis are considering the race. (Caplis says he’s “very serious” about a run.) Blaha has promised to get into the race and expects attacks from the “permanent political class.”

State Sen. Ray Scott is rumored to be considering the race.

Arapahoe County DA Charles Brauchler, Rep. Mike Coffman, and State Sen. EllenRoberts all considered running for the GOP nomination, but have withdrawn, at least for now. So did Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith and State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg.

Last week’s terrorism at a Planned Parenthood center won’t stop Colorado state Sen. Kevin Lundberg from conducting hearings on the women’s health organization and pushing for a state investigation.

In a Facebook post three days after the shooting, Lundberg wrote he took advantage of a budget hearing to ask Larry Wolk, Colorado’s chief medical officer, why he hasn’t launched an investigation into whether the organization violated state laws relating to fetal-tissue research.

The Durango Herald’s Peter Marcus reported on the incident Tuesday:

Despite the tragedy still fresh for the public and victims’ families, Republicans on Tuesday wasted no time, getting right back to the fetal body parts issue. Remarks came during a budget hearing with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“Will the department be taking some action to deal with this inadequacy?” asked Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, pointing out that the state health department has taken no action against Planned Parenthood on the fetal body parts issue.

Later, Lundberg wrote on his Facebook page that he has “specific questions” that he intends to ask Wolk during the legislative session, and Wolk ageed to testify.

“I finally had a brief opportunity to question the Colorado Health Department director, Dr. Wolk, concerning his department’s failure to thoroughly investigate possible violations of Colorado law concerning fetal tissue trafficking,” Lundberg wrote on Facebook.

Wolk’s told Lundberg at the hearing that he did not see “any connection to Colorado” in heavily-edited undercover videos, some of which featured Colorado Planned Parenthood officials. And he said he’s always available to answer questions from Lundberg.

“This despite his refusal to come or send anyone from his department to the RSCC Fetal Tissue Trafficking Hearing held on November 9,” Lundberg wrote on Facebook.

Colorado pro-choice activists on Tuesday pointed to the rhetoric at the November 9 hearing, which repeatedly spotlighted the discredited videos, as contributing to the November 27 murders in Colorado Springs. If Wolk refused to testify at the legislature, an angry Lunberg said in a radio interview about the Nov. 9 hearing, he’d consider requesting subpeona power to force him to do so.

As I wrote for RH Reality Check Friday, Lundberg wasn’t named by the activists Tuesday, but they cited his fellow Colorado legislators, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, state Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R-Colorado Springs), and state Sen. Tim Neville (R-Littleton) for using language that incited violence directed at Planned Parenthood.

The health department has declinedColorado Statesman to investigate Planned Parenthood in Colorado.