Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Brophy took a playful swipe at Denver Post reporters Lynn Bartels and Kurtis Lee yesterday, saying on a Denver radio station that if Scott Gessler and Tom Tancredo “can’t take on Lynn Bartels and Kurtis Lee right now, how on Earth are [Gessler and Tancredo] gong to take on John Hickenlooper in September?”

On KHOW’s Mandy Connell show, Brophy was making the point that Gessler and Tancredo, who say they won’t participate in primary debates, including a Feb. 18 debate sponsored by The Denver Post, should subject themselves to tough questions now, to prepare themselves for battle with Hick, if one of them wins the primary and faces Hick.

Brophy, for example, referred to questions about Tancredo’s broken term-limits pledge and his support for gun control, and Gessler’s eithics troubles and problems with his office budget.

I’d rather have trained journalists (Bartels, Lee) asking Tancredo questions about term limits, for example, than a geologist (Hick), who’s known to be too nice. That’s why debates are moderated by journalists! They’re the smart ones in the room.

Brophy: I brought up Tom Tancredo’s past support of gun control. He needs to be able to talk about that in a way that settles the voters down now, not late September. Secretary Gessler a problem with his office budget. He’s upside down by about $4.1 million that no one can explain.  And he needs to make is case to the people of Colorado. He needs to make it in February, not in September.”

“I mean, come on guys,” Brophy said later in the KHOW interview, “if you can’t take on Lynn Bartels and Kurtis Lee right now, how on Earth are you gong to take on John Hickenlooper in September? Just come to the debate.”

On KNUS’ Kelley and Company Feb. 6, Brophy made the same point.

Kelley: Who do you want to challenge most of those five other guys out there?

Brophy: I think we need to ask and have the hard questions answered by Tom Tancredo. Why did you vote for gun control back in 1999. Why did you break your term-limits pledge. What makes us think we can trust you now? Why do you think you can win a general election in Colorado? Secretary Gessler, explain to us why you have to have your budget bailed out by the State of Colorado when every other secretary of state in the history of Colorado has balanced their budget successfully as secretary of state. Explain to us how improper use of office resources for personal political gain was ok back in 2012 when the Ethics Commission found 5-0 against you and ultimately you paid the money back.”

Kelley: Folks, we are having a one-way debate right here?

Brophy: You are going to have to answer these questions sometime.

I hope the questions come from Bartels, Lee,  and other journalists, not from a geologist-turned-bartender-turned-politician.

Reporters don’t always offer differing views in trivial news stories about a speech or a minor partisan event. It’s nice, but you don’t expect it, like you would in more significant stories.

Such was the case in yesterday’s one-sided Denver Post article about a speech by Republican operatives saying the next two elections will be good for Republicans like them. A surprising claim coming from Republican operatives, but not surprising in a story headlined, “Republican analysts optimistic about future of party.”

Nancy Dwight, former executive director of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, was quoted thusly:

“There has been a maturation in the Republican party since 2012, that we need to win,” Dwight argued, but said to win races going forward the party needed “to represent the 50 plus percent of the country who are concerned about growth in the private sector and agree that there should be limited centralized government.”

I read this, and I thought about an interview I’d just heard on KNUS radio with Dudley Brown, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. He might not be the most powerful Republican in Colorado, but he’s probably up there. I offer this quote to you for perspective on the news of GOP maturity alleged in The Post piece:

“The Republican Party itself has largely been castrated,” Brown told Peter Boyles, echoing cruder GOP castration comments made by rocker Ted Nugent recently on Boyles’ show.

“And they really can’t do much in the line of elections or politics anymore. And they generally don’t help anytime there’s a conservative involved either… Peter, I’ve never been surprised by the lack of principles from the Republican Party or the leadership of the Republican Party… Whenever they stick the mic in the face of a Republican official, it’s always Ryan Call and some of his predecessors, Dick Wadhams, and none of those people have been conservative allies.  I’ve been doing battle with them ever since I’ve been involved in politics and see no reason that’s ever going to change.”

Listen to Dudley Brown on KNUS Boyles 2-7-14

Despite this, Brown told Boyles he’s ready to fight Democrats during the upcoming election.

“I guess you could say it’s hunting season,” Brown said on air, getting high marks for maturity from Boyles, who said earlier, “in my world” Dudley Brown is a “winner” and “one of our favorites.”

Reporter Michael Booth left The Denver Post this month after a 24-year run at the newspaper, starting in 1989 as a maternity fill-in for reporter Ann Schrader. He did many things there, covering the Senate race in 2010, the 2008 Democratic Convention, Denver City Hall, films, and much more. Most recently, he was on the health-care beat. His departure is more bad news for Colorado journalism.

Booth wrote The Denver Post Guide to Family Films, and he’ll be signing his new book, written with Jennifer Brown and titled Eating Dangerously: Why the Government Can’t Keep Your Food Safe . . . and How You Can,  at the Tattered Cover East Colfax, 7:30 p.m. March 14.

Booth answered a few questions via e-mail today:

Why are you leaving journalism?

I’m shifting from one form of journalism to a form of advocacy journalism. I’ll be writing, editing and consulting for The Colorado Health Foundation, as we develop better methods to provide interesting and useful information to policymakers and decision-makers on some of the most important issues of the era. Health care, health coverage and healthier living are enormous fields, but also based on some fundamental needs and principles that all of us could do a better job explaining and reducing to a level we can grasp.

What are some of your favorite memories at The Post?

Covering the Amendment 2 gay rights debate all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court fulfilled my ideal of what journalists could and should do, from the time I was a middle-schooler reading the Minneapolis Tribune as I walked every afternoon from the school bus down to my parents’ lake in northern Minnesota.

The chance to discuss capital punishment and challenge the status quo with Gov. John Hickenlooper after his “temporary” reprieve for Nathan Dunlap was another highlight. What could be more useful than that, to be an engaged messenger for the people on a life or death issue — at least, that’s how it felt. But the Post gave me so much freedom and opportunity to tell all kinds of stories, I’ll share some of what I told colleagues when I left:

“My favorite romantic was Tim Linhart. Tim built himself an igloo at 11,000 feet, in the woods above Beaver Creek. Every morning at 10 below zero, he’d crawl out of the igloo, build a fire to melt snow, and resume building an orchestra of instruments made from ice. He shaped handfuls of slush into ridiculously elegant S-curves and sounding boards, rubbing and shaving and rebuilding until he’d made an 8-foot-tall standup bass, a cello and the rest of a string quartet. Then he hired players from the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to ride the ski lift and tramp through the snow to his clearing in the woods, and they played Mozart and Bach and Beethoven on his ice quartet while this big bear of a man closed his eyes and smiled and listened to the notes float up through the snow-covered spruce and on up into the bluebird Colorado sky. Then his instruments started to melt, and Tim still had his smile.

Tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, all the romantics in news journalism will get up and start building something, shaping all the right words, and then it will melt away and you’ll have to start all over again. The right people might hear the notes and then do something good with them. It’s a great job, and it’s a wonderful thing to do.”

What are your biggest concerns about Colorado journalism today?

That journalists find a way to get paid for the hard work they are doing every day, every hour. All the journalists I know are agnostic about the way their work gets seen, so old criticisms are irrelevant — we’re happy to write and talk for print, for web pages, for blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, in professional and amateur video. We’ll Snapchat the news and happily disappear a few seconds later if that’s what you want, but you need to pay us something for it. The world needs professional fact-finders, who will always be imperfect but who will always try harder the next time.

So, to the public, I want people to be willing to pay something for that, and recognize that it doesn’t flow out of the ether of somebody’s vague and misinterpreted Facebook post; and to the leaders in journalism, I’d want them to put a value on what they do and make sure that everyone using the work is helping to pay for it. Journalists respect other peoples’ copyrights, and they should respect ours.

Would you discourage a young person from going into journalism?

Never — it’s a great thing to do, the rare combination of useful and fascinating. Come on in, find us some great stories, and while you’re at it, whiz kids, help us find some revenue.

Any other thoughts as you head out the door?

One of the rules in life is Always Bring Something to Read. For me, I hope that can be a folded-up newspaper for many decades to come. Also, you could do worse than to bring a book my colleague Jennifer Brown and I have coming out in mid-March, Why the Government Can’t Keep Your Food Safe . . . and How You Can, from Rowman & Littlefield. It’s an investigation of what’s wrong with our food safety system in America, and how consumers can arm themselves to eat safely; it tells the story of Colorado’s cantaloupe listeria deaths and all kids of other outrageous food safety violations across the nation.

In a good article Monday, Denver Post reporters Joey Bunch and Carlos Illescas preview the upcoming battle between Rep. Mike Coffman and his Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff.

A  chunk of the article was dedicated to comparing the candidates’ history and positions on immigration reform, which is certain to come up during the campaign, and a couple points deserve clarification

The article omits a comparison of the most important immigration issue of our time: the effort in Washington to pass comprehensive immigration reform. It’s also the most relevant for two candidates running for Congress.

Romanoff supports a comprehensive-immigration-reform bill, passed with bipartisan support by the U.S. Senate and backed by President Obama. Romanoff is circulating a petition calling on the CO congressional delegation, including Coffman, to “endorse” the Senate bill.

Coffman, on the other hand, refuses to support this measure, and what’s more, he refuses to specify the amendments he’d add to the Senate bill to enable him to support it. He’s said he’s not happy with the bill’s plans for border enforcement, but he’s never explained what he wants.

This hasn’t stopped Coffman from saying he supports “comprehensive immigration reform,” like Romanoff does, but unlike Romanoff, Coffman has no actual factual comprehensive-immigration reform plan. He just talks about it.

Bottom line: Reporters shouldn’t compare the immigration positions of these two candidates without highlighting their differing positions on the historic immigration reform bill that’s currently stalled in Congress.

Much of the media coverage of the Colorado Attorney General’s decision not to prosecute Jon Caldara, President of the libertarian/conservative Independence Institute, for voter fraud featured a quote from Caldara that the Attorney General’s decision proved his innocence.

For example, there’s this memorable Caldara quote from The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels’ story: “I told you what I did was legal,” Caldara said Thursday, adding “neener-neener-neener.”

Bartels and others reported that the AG’s letter did not “condone” Caldara’s stunt, but no journalist corrected Caldara’s mistaken belief that AG letter is proof of his innocence.

While the letter did say there is “arguable ambiguity within some of the new legislation,” and Caldara should not be brought to trial, it certainly did not say Caldara’s actions were legal, and reporters should have said so categorically.

I asked Luis Toro, Director of Colorado Ethics Watch, for his comments on whether the Colorado Attorney General’s letter was proof of Caldara’s innocence.

Toro: The AG’s office did not declare Caldara innocent. The prosecutor correctly noted the ethical obligations of a prosecutor when making a charging decision.  These include an obligation not to file charges without sufficient evidence to support a conviction.  Evidence that could raise reasonable doubt included signing a lease at an address in the district, changing his driver’s license to the Colorado Springs address, and actually staying at the address where he claimed to reside when he voted through Election Day. Caldara’s lawyering up and extensive preparation to raise reasonable doubt only proves that gaming the system is not as easy as he pretends. His attempt to prove that anyone in Colorado can show up anywhere on Election Day, claim to reside in a district, and legally vote ended up proving the opposite…”

The real reason not to charge is, in the prosecutor’s words, Caldara’s “choreographed actions that were designed by him to create a record that he used to support his stated intention that at least on September 7, 2013 through September 10, 2013 he was an El Paso County resident and thus was permitted to be a registered elector.” Caldara only proved that without elaborate “choreographed actions” and top-notch legal representation, someone who shows up on Election Day and falsely claims residence in a given district will be charged and convicted.

I asked Caldara if he thought that he inadvertently proved the opposite of what he intended, that, in fact, you can’t just show up on election day and vote.

Caldara: “You can read that into it, if you like, but you would be reading in your own wishes,” he told me. “It doesn’t say that at all. It says that for what I did, prosecution would be unwarranted and not viable. That’s all it says. Now, the AG’s office can opine about anything they wish, and that doesn’t change the fact that the conclusion is, that prosecution is unwarranted and not viable. And I knew I would be under extra scrutiny, so I took the extra step of simply signing a simple little lease and changing my driver’s license address online. It doesn’t take a lawyer to do any of that. And I know that there are those who say this can only be done with top legal work, I think the AG’s work has given us a very tight blueprint of what becomes unwarranted and not viable to prosecute. It doesn’t take a lawyer to do any of that.”

Toro had this to say about the Attorney General’s reference to “arguable ambiguity within some of the new legislation”:

Toro: The “arguable ambiguity” line doesn’t mean much. If something is “arguably ambiguous” it is also arguably not ambiguous. Defendants often argue that a criminal law is ambiguous, with mixed results.

The AG’s letter in its entirety:

Wm. David Byassee, Esq.
Jackson Kelly PLLC
1099 18th Street, Suite 2150
Denver, CO 80202
RE: Caldara Election Complaint
Dear Mr. Byassee:

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my decision regarding a complaint that was made in September 2013 against your client, Jon Caldara. Following my office’s three-month investigation into the allegations that Mr. Caldara violated one or more statutes, I have determined that no criminal charges will be filed against him at this time. This decision is being made after a comprehensive review of the currently known facts and after an examination of the applicable state statutes. It is important to note that this decision is being made based on the specific known facts in this matter when compared to the applicable state law. Furthermore this decision, which follows the above referenced factual and legal review, is being made in accordance with the ethical standards required of prosecutors who administer the prosecutorial function.

As you might be aware on or about September 9-10, 2013 the Office of the Attorney General and two separate District Attorney offices received a citizen complaint. The citizen’s complaint alleged that Mr. Caldara, a long time Boulder County resident and elector, violated one or more Colorado statutes when he participated as a newly registered elector in an El Paso County recall election on Saturday, September 7, 2013, during an early voting period. The day of the actual election was Tuesday, September 10, 2013. Based on the fact that the complaint named Mark Barker, a current Deputy District Attorney in the El Paso County DA’s Office, as being an individual who was supposedly involved with Mr. Caldara and his alleged behavior, the District Attorney for the 4th Judicial District (El Paso and Teller Counties) requested that the Attorney General’s Office investigate the complainant’s allegations.
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Regarding the events surrounding this particular election the investigation most clearly demonstrates that Mr. Caldara had multiple goals leading up to and through the election on September 10, 2013. One of Mr. Caldara’s key goals was his intent to make a public statement about one or more issues that he perceived to exist regarding new election related legislation which resulted from the passage of HB 13-1303.

Mr. Caldara’s stated focus on HB 13-1303 and its potential impact on the election process in Colorado was well documented in the public record during the months leading up to the election in El Paso County in September 2013. It appears that Mr. Caldara’s assertion was, that as of May 10, 2013, the Colorado Revised Statutes (most notably § 1-2-217.7, C.R.S.) permitted him, as a registered Colorado voter, to move from one jurisdiction in Colorado to another jurisdiction in this state and then either update his address or register to vote. Additional relevant statutes at issue that must be read in concert include, but are not limited to, §§1-2-101,
1-2-102(1)(f), 1-2-201(3)(a)(V), 1-2-204, 1-2-205 and 1-2-216(4)(a)(I), C.R.S.. As a result, a reading of these various statutes demonstrates an arguable ambiguity within some of the new legislation. This arguable ambiguity was clearly examined in your client’s specific investigation. In Mr. Caldara’s specific case, which is limited by its unique facts and the applicable statutes, a key issue is present. The issue is what does it mean for a resident of Colorado to demonstrate or assert that his or her intention, as a supposed prospective elector, is to make a new county or precinct a permanent residence at the time that he or she is either updating their address or registering to vote?

With Mr. Caldara voicing his opinions about HB 13-1303 and the laws which arose from the bill, it appears that Mr. Caldara then interpreted the new legislation and began to choreograph a series of calculated actions in preparation of the approaching September 10, 2013 recall election in El Paso County. The evidence acquired by the Attorney General’s investigation includes information that prior to Mr. Caldara actually appearing at the El Paso County Citizens Service Center on the morning of Saturday, September 7, 2013, that he had already taken various actions in an attempt to demonstrate his stated intention of becoming a qualified elector in State Senate District 11 (Colorado Springs, El Paso County), including the following:
– On September 6, 2013 Mr. Caldara entered into a residential lease agreement with Deputy District Attorney Mark Barker to rent a bedroom with access to a bathroom and with kitchen privileges at Mr. Barker’s home, which is located at 2045 Broman Ct., Colorado Springs, CO 80906;
and
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– He had changed his home address for his State of Colorado issued Driver’s License from a Boulder County residential address to 2045 Broman Ct., Colorado Springs, CO 80906.

With Mr. Caldara having created a record of his supposed intention to make El Paso County his sole legal place of residence, he went to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Citizens Service Center September 7, 2013 while accompanied by members of the media. The evidence then shows that Mr. Caldara apparently was given a registration form that he filled out and self-affirmed by signing. It should be noted that Mr. Caldara failed to fully complete this registration form when he did not list the date that he had supposedly moved to 2045 Broman Ct., Colorado Springs, CO 80906. This particular field on the form was a required field and at the top of the form it stated that if the registrant did not provide all of the required information, the application to register to vote would not be complete. Nonetheless Mr. Caldara was in fact registered to vote by the election staff. After Mr. Caldara provided the election staff with a Driver’s License he was given a Paper Ballot (Ballot #01343) for the Senate District 11 Recall Election. The evidence then shows that while Mr. Caldara did submit a ballot on September 7, 2013 he apparently did not cast an actual vote in the particular election. Furthermore, the acquired evidence shows that Mr. Caldara apparently stayed/resided at 2045 Broman Ct., Colorado Springs, CO 80906 on Election Day, September 10, 2013.

On Wednesday, September 11, 2013, the day after the recall election Mr. Caldara left the Broman Ct. address in Colorado Springs and went to his work in Denver. It should be noted that September 11, 2013 was the beginning of the multi-day series of rains that caused the unprecedented flooding that devastated parts of the Front Range, including in Mr. Caldara’s long time hometown of Boulder. In the subsequent weeks after the floods had occurred Mr. Caldara made a public statement that he was reclaiming Boulder County as his home of record. The additional issues created by Mr. Caldara’s post flood statement about Boulder County again being his home is another obstacle in confirming or disproving the veracity of Mr. Caldara’s self-affirmation that, at least on September 7, 2013, his intention was to use the leased residence on Broman Ct. as his sole legal residence. It should be noted that Mr. Caldara then changed his county of residence for voting purposes back to Boulder County in November 2013.

It is imperative to note that the Office of the Attorney General does not condone Mr. Caldara’s choreographed actions that were designed by him to create a record that he used to support his stated intention that at least on September 7, 2013 through September 10, 2013 he was an El Paso County resident and thus was permitted to be a registered elector. Various factors cause me to hesitate when examining the veracity of Mr. Caldara’s intention of being an El Paso County resident on September 7, 2013. In particular I noted Mr. Caldara’s use of a lease agreement with Deputy District Attorney Mark Barker and the circumstances
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surrounding this lease as being questionable. While the legitimacy of Caldara/Barker lease arrangement is suspicious, when the available evidence and the applicable law, including arguable ambiguities, are reviewed and compared to the ethical standards for commencing a prosecution, I have determined that a criminal prosecution is not warranted or viable at this time.

Sincerely,

FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
______________________________
Robert S. Shapiro
First Assistant Attorney General
cc: Dan May, Esq.
District Attorney
Office of the District Attorney
105 E. Vermijo Ave.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

When the campaign to recall State Sen. Evie Hudak was ramping up in October, Denver Post reporter Kurtis Lee interviewed John Golay, owner of Cuporado Coffee, which is located next door to the now-empty offices of the recall organizers.

Golay told Lee the recall activists had been kind to him and boosted his business.

“But I’m not signing the petition,” Golay told Lee. “The issue of guns is a polarizing issue that blows partisanship up even more, and I hear where they’re coming from. But massacres like Aurora hit a little too close to home. Something had to change.”

Lee’s article amassed over 350 comments, but this one by cowboyxjon caught my eye:

“Now that we know that the owner of Cuporado Coffee supports gun control, we will no longer patronize his business. I encourage the Recall Hudak crew to do the same.”

Last week, I drove out to Cuporado Coffee, located in a strip mall on Simms and 64th Ave. in the Denver suburb of Arvada, to find out if the recall activists had boycotted Golay’s business after Lee’s article appeared.

Golay told me some anti-Hudak folks came by and told him they’d stop patronizing his business because of what he’d said in the newspaper. And some anti-Hudak regulars from the recall office next door stopped buying coffee, he said.

At the same time, his business didn’t see any upsurge in business from pro-Hudak, gun-safety activists, or progressives who might have appreciated his comments, he told me.

Golay explained to the anti-Hudak people that he’d mostly wanted to tell The Denver Post about how he wished schools had more money to help kids who need it, like his own three autistic children. He hadn’t intended to take sides, and he regrets talking to Lee, he told them.

His recall neighbors accepted this, and after an initial tense period of time, business pretty much returned to normal, he said. Per an agreement with the landlord, the people in the Hudak-Recall office used the bathroom in his coffee shop. And they bought coffee.

They also continued to push Golay to sign their recall petition, but he never did.

I told Golay I admired him for that and for his courage in talking to Kurtis Lee in the first place.

He seemed to appreciate my support, but he told me he’d rather The Denver Post had quoted him as saying this:

“Why can’t we take the money on both sides–recalling or not recalling Hudak–and just put it into the local issues that need money–schools and roads. We could make our community better. I see struggling families. I see struggling businesspeople like me who want to make money to feed their families. Just a drop in the bucket would go a long way.”

Golay hasn’t seen anyone from the Recall-Hudak office since it closed.

“They weren’t locals,” he says. “A lot of them were from the mountains. Or Aurora. Most of them didn’t live here. They were hired guns.”

Golay told me he’s not sure his business will survive, and he may be forced to go back to bartending and waiting tables.

He’s not blaming the recall organizers or The Denver Post, but he says having them next door and being quoted in newspaper didn’t make running his business any easier.

John Golay behind the Counter at Cuporado Coffee

Do you remember this headline from The Denver Post Spot blog back in September?

“Upset Republicans propose chicken protest at Colorado GOP meeting Saturday”

It referred to an idea hatched by a group of Republicans to bring boxed chicken to a GOP gathering as a protest against State GOP Chair Ryan Call, who joined Democrats in criticizing a Republican legislator for talking about the “chicken” eating habits of the “black race.”

The protest never happened, but Ryan Call was so upset that the idea for such a protest would land in the hands of The Denver Post that he angrily passed out copies of The Post story at the Sept. meeting of the Republican Party’s Executive Committee and announced that he never wanted to see another article like it again.

During an hour-and-24-minute discussion about the chicken protest, Call angrily reprimanded CO GOP Secretary Lana Fore-Warkocz, who was accused, over her objections, of leaking the chicken-protest story to The Post. Never undermine the Republican Party again, she was told.

That is, according to the unedited, unofficial meeting minutes, written by Fore-Warkocz in her capacity as party secretary, and given to me by credible sources.

But the  Colorado Republican Party’s official minutes of the meeting, which are an edited version of Fore Warkocz’s notes and were also given to me by credible sources, tell a different story:

Official Republican Meeting Notes: “Certain matters concerning recent disclosures in the press, and the airing of disagreements between certain officers and members of the Executive Committee were candidly discussed. Officers and members of the Executive Committee were reminded of the importance of trust, unity, confidentiality and our role as leaders and members of the Executive Committee, and of our duties with respect to the Republican Party, but no formal action was taken.”

The unofficial meeting notes paint a different picture.

State GOP Secretary Fore-Warkocz’ Meeting Notes: “Chairman Call made it clear that I signed up to defend ALL Republicans, including McCain and Boehner, and if I didn’t like that, to check my bags at the door. Chairman Call said that folks like Jason Worley, Ken Clark, the Brattens, Debbie Healy and the Arnol’s are no friends of this party. Again, I was instructed to never undermine the family or the Republican Party again.”

Fore-Warkocz explained in her minutes that she had actually argued against the chicken protest.

But this didn’t stop Ryan Call from telling Fore-Warkocz that “trust and honesty” had been broken and from ordering Fore-Warkocz to notify him “immediately” if she’s invited to another meeting involving dissent (gasp) within the GOP.

“Senator Bill Cadman reiterated Chairman Call’s comments, and I was reprimanded for another 20 minutes,” according to Fore-Warkocz’ version of the meeting.

Fore-Warkocz’ notes state:

“[Committee member] Ellyn Hilliard explained that Ken [Clark] and Jason[Worley] are in it for the ratings and to not speak to them. I explained that I hadn’t.”

(Side note: As a media critic I was floored that anyone would think KLZ talk-radio hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley are in it for the ratings! No one defends Sen. Vicki Marble for the ratings! You can defend Mylie Cyrus for the ratings. But talking on the radio about chicken or Marble or barbeque doesn’t do much for you. Unless you’re gunning for Tea-Party ratings, which still don’t do much for you.)

At the end of the executive committee meeting, Ryan Call presented a new branding campaign for the Republican Party.

The bold initiative replaces “Grand Old Party” with the smooth-and-easy phrase “Great Opportunity Party.”

“New brochures were presented, and all were very impressed with the new marketing materials,” according to the official minutes.

I get it. Dumping the word “old” will make the Republican Party young!

Just like whitewashing the notes from a contentious GOP meeting will make the Party get along?

I reported last week that Rep. Mike Coffman said on a radio show that America is in a “Constitutional crisis,” because of Obama’s “abusive interpretation of the Constitution.”

Sounds bad, even in the paranoid and crisis-filled world you find on conservative talk radio.

When asked for a solution by KHOW host Mandy Connell, Coffman talked about filing a lawsuit, maybe a personal one, against Obama!

Yesterday, The Denver Post’s Allison Sherry reported that Coffman’s spokesman “tried to soften the congressman’s assertion last week that he is looking into whether to sue President Barack Obama on abuse of power, saying, ‘litigation, legislation — all of it is on the table.'”

Coffman is becoming known for walking back statements made in front of friendly microphones, most memorably his repeated sort-of apology for his assertion that Obama isn’t an American “in his heart” and his statement that he didn’t know whether “Obama was born in the United States  of America.” (He later said his birther moment was overblown.)

In this week’s case, I appreciated that Sherry noted not only that Coffman’s backpedal was made by a spokesman, not Coffman himself, but also through a statement by the spokesman, not the spokesman himself.

What’s more, Sherry did the right thing by informing us that the Coffman spokesman “wouldn’t elaborate beyond the statement.”

Sherry’s reporting allows us to understand the different ways Coffman deals with these situations.

After news broke Tuesday that the mass murderer at Sandy Hook used a 30-round magazine manufactured by Magpul, a (still) Colorado company, local reporters naturally tried to reach Magpul executives for a reaction.

But Magpul didn’t return calls yesterday from the Boulder Daily Camera, Fox 31 Denver, or The Denver Post.

Rather than simply report Magpul’s silence, reporters should have informed us of previous comments by Magpul executives about the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Asked in March, during an appearance on KOA radio, how he’d feel if one of his company’s 30-round magazines was used by the killer at Sandy Hook, Magpul Industries executive Duane Liptak said:

Liptak: “Address the individual behavior and the criminal, not the instrument.”

In a m4carbine.net online discussion forum about Newtown in March, Liptak wrote: “It’s unfortunate that the 363 days last year that did not include a high-profile mass shooting by an insane individual received less attention than the 2 days that did.”

In another m4carbine.net online discussion in March about whether video games are the cause of violence, Liptak wrote:

Liptak: “That’s the issue.  Instill a moral code, responsibility, and respect for others…and viola…your young man doesn’t grow up to be a doucherocket.”

Liptak promised readers of the online forum in Jan. that he (presumably through Magpul)would take action in the 2014 election in response to the Colorado Legislature’s gun-safety legislation, which was arguably at least partially a response to Sandy Hook:  “We’re working on our ‘Free Colorado’ campaign right now, but we may not have it launched in time to stop this [gun legislation].  At the very least, we’ll continue to push it through the 2014 elections. :-)”

Liptak’s comments about Sandy Hook on the radio and in the online forums contrasted with a more empathetic statement issued by Magpul Dec. 18, 2012 shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting:

We at Magpul are deeply saddened by the acts of violence in our nation, and our hearts and condolences go out to the families who have suffered such tragic losses. These acts of pure evil, committed by deranged individuals with no morals, nor respect for life, are enough to shake one’s faith in human nature. Still, amidst these criminal atrocities, things are brought back into perspective by the actions of those like the teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook, who, unarmed and untrained, put themselves in the path of this violence in courageous attempts to protect those in their charge. Actions like this, those by the passengers of United Flight 93 on 9/11, and the daily sacrifices of our service members and their families bolster our belief in the power of personal responsibility and humble us in our gratitude that such courageous and unselfish individuals vastly outnumber the villains in our midst.

After a six-year run at The Denver Post, as a reporter and editorial writer, Tim Hoover left the newspaper Friday to be Communications Director for the Fiscal Policy Institute. It’s a certainty that Hoover’s fair-and-accurate writing will be missed by reasonable progressives and conservatives alike.

This week, Hoover answered a few questions via email.

How long were you at The Post? And at previous journo jobs? How long were you in journalism?

Hoover: “I was at the Post just short of six years, having started in January of 2008. I worked at The Kansas City Star for seven years as a statehouse reporter. Before that, I worked at the Tulsa World and The McAllen (Texas) Monitor. All told, I was a professional journalist for 20 years. My experience does go back further, though. I was an intern at The Albuquerque Tribune (which is how I know Lynn Bartels from 20-something years ago), an intern at The Daily Oklahoman and an intern for the Oklahoma Capitol News Bureau. I was also once a stringer [freelance writer] for The New York Times. And, of course, I worked at my beloved school paper, The Oklahoma Daily, at the University of Oklahoma, where I was a reporter and eventually the editor.”

Why would you leave such a prestigious position at The Post? Were you worried about the future at the newspaper?

Hoover: “I left the Post because I had to think about the future. I will have to work for at least another 20 years before I can retire. It was time to start thinking long-term about the path forward. I enjoyed being on the editorial board. It is a position of great responsibility, and you get to rub elbows with U.S. senators and occasionally foreign dignitaries and all manner of world-class minds. I was also treated well on the board and have great respect for my colleagues. My decision to leave transcended all that.”

What are a couple of your favorite memories of news reporting or opinion writing at The Post?

Hoover: “As with a magician’s code, we don’t reveal publicly who wrote which specific editorials. It’s supposed to be a consensus process and involves collaborative writing at times. I will say, however, how amusing it is when people think certain writers pen specific editorials because of their supposed political leanings and it happens that the piece was completely conceived and written by another writer with diametrically opposite political views. Editorial writers, like all people, are three-dimensional.

“I can say, however, that I especially enjoyed writing one blog piece with my byline about a very overwrought TV report on a state-owned airplane. It was fun to dissect the TV story, and it got a big reaction in the world of state government and politics.

“As for stories as a reporter, I think my best work was done scrutinizing claims made about the state budget, whether it was asserting that Gov. Bill Ritter had hired thousands of government employees when he hadn’t or claiming that certain businesses would be harmed by the removal of special tax breaks when in fact they admitted either they weren’t hurt at all or weren’t even affected by the changes. I enjoyed writing stories about a candidate for governor who embellished his past career as a small-town police officer and then backpedaled when put under the spotlight. I had a lot of fun reporting at the Post, and I’d just note that it followed stints at several other newspapers where I worked on lots of great stories. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to cover state politics and government at two major American newspapers, though my career covering many beats spanned two decades at multiple newspapers, small and large.”

What’s your response to conservatives who are saying that your move to PR proves you’ve been biased all along?

Hoover: “I didn’t really give it much thought. I am on good terms with many conservatives, and a number of them were very congratulatory about my move. It all comes down to the individual class a person has. You make some people angry as a reporter if you are doing your job correctly. It’s all part of the package.”

What advice would you give to a young person who wants to be a journalist?

Hoover: “That is a tough question. I don’t know if I could honestly encourage someone to go into the industry if they are not already pursuing journalism. I think I would tell them that they should only pursue journalism if they are so passionate about it they don’t think they want to do anything else. And if they do go into the business, do not do it in a half-assed way. We live in a time when anyone can be published, and so it has given rise to ‘pseudo-journalists,’ wannabe bloggers’ and hacks who work, if they get paid at all, for partisan operations or stealthy partisan donors. Many of these people couldn’t find a courthouse a block away with a map, couldn’t cover a fire, flood or shooting, have never had to write a story about a zoning hearing, school board or city council meeting or sit through hours of legislative committee hearings and floor work. They have not ever had to be real reporters. They don’t do quality research nor is their work scrutinized heavily by editors above them. They are lazy and sloppy and biased, and it is all the more reason why there need to be actual, trained journalists to go out and gather the news. If a young person still wants to be a real reporter despite all of the hardships they will face, then I would encourage them.”

Who will win: Romanoff or Coffman?

Hoover: “I would say Coffman is very vulnerable because of his newly drawn district and the fact that he has had to do a tightrope act on so many issues that has not pleased either side of the political spectrum. But so much of this could depend on what happens nationally. The Democratic brand has suffered greatly in the last several months because of the Obamacare rollout fiasco. It’s hard to say how that translates here in Colorado, and it is a long way to November.”

Any other thoughts?

Hoover: “My former colleagues still in the newspaper industry work far harder and under far more stressful conditions than most people realize. I would ask that readers and the public at large give them some well-deserved recognition at times. It’s almost Thanksgiving. Let’s be thankful we still have newspapers covering public affairs. And remember, some poor group of reporters and editors has to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The news doesn’t stop for the holidays.”

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog