Rush Limbaugh’s 1950’s-era comments last week, calling a woman a “slut” for believing that her health insurance should cover birth control, came from the mouth of…Rush Limbaugh, an unelected publicity hound/entertainer of the first order.

And Limbaugh’s extremism got all kinds of coverage, locally and nationally.

Then ColoradoPols broke a story yesterday about extreme comments at home in Colorado, by elected Republican legislators at a rally on the west steps of the Capitol.

Pols posted videotape of GOP speakers, including Sen. Tim Neville comparing Nazi Germany to the Obama Administration. Other video clips consisted of, as described by Pols:

“Sen. Harvey declaring that a program of mandating contraceptive coverage is “not a slippery slope, but a cliff” to “genocide somewhere down the road.” Sen. Lambert called the policy “mind control,” and read from a right-wing column warning that the same authority could be used to force the purchase of “euthanasia pills.” Not to be outdone, Sen. Renfroe said that it could to a situation “where England was when their king decided he needed to rule the church.”

Reporters who didn’t make it to the rally should go back and cover these comments, handily posted on Pols, to air them out. That’s what journalism is about.

It’s obvious to me that the statements by elected GOP  officials deserved more attention from the local media than Limbaugh’s comments, weird as they were.  They’re elected officials. Maybe they’re publicity hounds too, but still.

Candidates like Joe Coors who make extreme comments in secondary media outlets, like talk radio, also deserve media scrutiny when they go off. There’s not much public-interest value in reporting that KNUS talk-show host Steve Kelly thinks Obamacare is leading to a government takeover of the individual, but when Joe Coors, who’s running against Rep. Ed Perlmutter, says it, it’s news.

Here’s what Coors said on KNUS’ Kelley and Company yesterday:

Kelley: How big an issue is [Obamacare] in this race?

Coors: It’s huge…. Governments that have controlled health care in their countries basically own the individual. And we cannot let Obamacare legislation dictate our lives in any matter shape or form, and I’m very much opposed to it and would certainly vote to repeal it or defund it or whatever I could do when I get back there. [BigMedia emphasis]

Kelley: You make a great point. Yeah. Think about that. If someone could make a decision on your health and decisions on your health, they have total control over you.

Coors: Yes, sir.

Listen here to Joe Coors on KNUS 3-13-2012 say Obamacare leads to total control of the individual.

A reporter might ask a veteran getting VA coverage if he or she feels the government owns him.  Or a Brit, or to a lesser degree a Canadian or someone on Medicare, for that matter. And what does government control over healthcare have to do with mild-mannered Obamacare anyway?

With depleted staff, reporters at legacy news outlets can’t be everywhere and do everything like they could before, or at least try to. They should throw out any hesitancy to use material from places like Pols or talk radio, if the material is verifiable and newsworthy.

For example, I was just listening to a podcast of Grassroots Radio Colorado from Monday, in which  Sen. Neville describes how he prepared his comments about Nazi’s and the Obama Administration for the rally.

He said:

I was doing some research last night, and I was putting my notes together [for his speech at the rally] and of course you pull things apart. You don’t like this. You don’t like that. And you know I was looking at the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany and the parallels I was seeing were pretty scary.

What’s scary to me is how many of us, including smart reporters, are ignoring this stuff.

Two days after Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” Colorado Springs talk-radio host Jimmy Lakey asked his listeners if they thought Fluke spent her “birth control” money on “cigarettes afterwards,” “booze,” and a “hotel room.”

Lakey, who ran for Congress in the 2010 Republican primary for Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s seat, said he couldn’t believe that Fluke spends $3,000 per year on birth control. He did the math and calculated her monthly birth-control expenditure to be $249.

From there, Lakey went into a jag March 4 on his 740 KVOR talk show about how in the world Fluke’s birth control could cost so much?

Lakey:  Two hundred and forty nine dollars a month.  That’s … Does that include the booze?  Does that include the cigarettes afterwards?  I mean, what does that include?

Guest Nathan Fisk:  It’s gotta include something other than prophylactics, I’m sorry…

Lakey:  Does that include the hotel room?  Does that include….  I… I..

Fisk:  [inaudible]. I don’t know.

Actually, Fluke testified that “contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” which would make the annual spending closer to $1,000. But it’s hard to imagine that this would make any difference to Lakey. In fact, initially Lakey thought the figure was $1,000 per year.

But, to be fair, Lakey told his audience he was joking, straight up, during his show. “We make fun of Ms. Fluke,” he said. Limbaugh explained later that he was joking, and he apologized.

Here’s more of Lakey’s “fun” with Fuke’s congressional testimony:

Lakey: You know, her parents, her grandparents, all of her family has just got to be really proud.  (laughter in background)   They’ve got to be really proud about right now… (Impersonating Sandra Fluke’s grandfather)… “Oh, Sandra!  Oh, Sandra!  Oh, we’re so proud of you.  We’re so proud of that Congressional testimony you had.  So happy!  Oh, Granpa’s happy.  Come give Granpa… a little hug!…

Lakey also said on the air that he thought the congressional hearing at which Fluke testified was a waste of time, a distraction from the core job of fixing the economy.  He called the hearing an “embarrassment” and he scolded House Republicans for allowing the hearing to occur at all.

“And the House committees are all chaired by Republicans,” he said. “And they said we’re gonna have a hearing about this?”

Lakey said:

Lakey: Now, I don’t know what kind of birth control the girl is using.  I don’t understand… Can you imagine, in these serious times that we live in, our Congress is having hearings with a young lady who has very frequent sexual encounters in college, and this is the Congressional testimony they get.  Amazing!  But birth control – I thought if you’re taking the birth control pill you go like monthly, and they give you the little spindle of the pills, and you time them out and take them daily, and you’re done.

Lakey apparently thought Obama’s call to Fluke was dumb, unless he was joking.

Lakey: This girl who in Congressional testimony, saying that she is having relations of a Bill Clinton proportion on a regular basis.  [Impersonating Clinton]:  “I did not have sexual relations….”  But she says, [still as Clinton] I did have a thousand dollars of sexual relations this year…”  And she’s doing that this year.  And Obama calls her to congratulate her and thank her for telling us. “Thanks for speaking out.”…Ms. Fluke gets a high five from President Obama.  “Thatta girl!”  It’s like a fraternity house around there.

As I write this, Lakey’s radio station, owned by Cumulus Media, prominently features Rush Limbaugh’s apology on its home page.

But there’s no apology from Lakey, who describes himself on his Facebook page as an “entrepreneur,” “humanitarian,” “former candidate for U.S. Congress in Colorado’s CD7, ” and “a frequent guest host for radio talk shows across the USA.”

Lakey did not respond to an email Monday asking if he’d apologized for his comments or if he thinks an apology is warranted.

Fisk told me in a telephone interview that Lakey is currently in Africa doing charity work, which could explain his not responding to me.

But Lakey also did not respond to my past requests for comments for blog posts about his comparing Michele Obama to Chewbacca and his laughing wildly when a caller compared Michele Obama to a character in The Planet of the Apes (though KVOR management did comment).

Fisk is not a regular co-host of Lakey’s show. He was a guest. He told me both he and Lakey thought Limbaugh’s apology was appropriate, and said so on the air. The banter about Fluke was intended to be like a “Saturday Night Live” skit, he said, pointing out that it has been over a week since the show aired and he doesn’t remember every minute of it.

“I think it was a discussion on the radio intended to actually look at what was said and to condemn words like whore and some of the other words that were used, and to make light of parts of it the same way a Saturday Night Live sketch would, but to clearly draw a line and say there were clearly some inappropriate things that were said on national radio,” Fisk told me.

Fisk has joined the show for its “Scotch and cigar segments in the past,” Lakey said on air, but I’ve never listened.

Listen here to excerpts, spliced together, of KVOR’s Lakey joking about Sandra Fluke 3-4-12

Jimmy Lakey Show (with guest Nathan Fisk), Excerpts of Commentary about Sandra Flukes testimony, March 4, 2012

JIMMY LAKEY:  The girl we’re talking about, obviously, is trying desperately to create a family, but not have any result… I …She’s uh…. A thousand dollars a year.  A thousand bucks a year on birth control.  Right?

NATHAN FISK:  Wow

JL:  Did I get this story right?

NF:   You did.  I don’t have a good answer for you, Jimmy.

JL:   Now, I don’t know what kind of birth control the girl is using.  I don’t understand… I didn’t ask.  They should have asked… Can you imagine, in these serious times that we live in, our Congress is having hearings with a young lady who has very frequent sexual encounters in college, and this is the Congressional testimony they get.  Amazing!  But birth control – I thought if you’re taking the birth control pill you go like monthly, and they give you the little spindle of the pills, and you time them out and take them daily, and you’re done.  That doesn’t… That’s twelve months a year, and that doesn’t total ….

NF:  Ummm

JL:  A day earlier now, President Obama called her to congratulate her.  (Laughs)  I mean, you,…this is such a strange story.  I mean, if I were Obama, you let Rush swim in it and whatever he’s got to do.  Rush can dig himself out. Rush is a big boy, and Rush will be just fine.  But now Obama’s out there… This girl who in Congressional testimony, saying that she is having relations of a Bill Clinton proportion on a regular basis.  (Impersonating Clinton):  “I did not have sexual relations….”  But she says, (still as Clinton) I did have a thousand dollars of sexual relations this year…”  And she’s doing that this year.  And Obama calls her to congratulate her and thank her for telling us. “Thanks for speaking out.”

NF:  Aren’t there more important things for Congress to be worried about?  Aren’t there more…ah…absolutely right-in-front-of-us kind of issues:  the economy, the election coming up, the Republicans running, whatever.  And we’re talking about this.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.

JL:  Makes absolu… for a Congressional hearing to be going on about this, it’s absolutely … ah… positively…. dee-gusting, is what I would say…

(BREAK)

JL:  Well, evidently it’s reached presidential level and Ms. Fluke gets a high five from President Obama.  “Thatta girl!”  It’s like a fraternity house around there.

NF:  Don’t know what to tell you, Jimmy.

JL:  I don’t either.l..

(BREAK)

JL:  All right, the calculations were off, my friends.  It’s worse than we thought.  Sandra Fluke spends three thousand dollars, not one thousand, she spends three thousand dollars a month on…ah… a year, on birth control.  That’s two hundred and….forty nine?

NF:  Two hundred and forty-nine dollars.

JL:  Two hundred and forty nine dollars a month.  That’s … Does that include the booze?  Does that include the cigarettes afterwards?  I mean, what does that include?

NF:  It’s gotta include something other than prophylactics, I’m sorry…

JL:  Does that include the hotel room?  Does that include….  I…

NF:  [inaudible] I don’t know.

JL:  What… whatever… I… Two hundred and forty-nine dollars a month…a year, on contraception….. uh, a month.  Two hundred and forty-nine dollars a month.  Three thousand dollars a year.  I’m going to post it on the Facebook fan page, the actual testimony of her wasting time and Congressional dollars and your tax dollars, uh, testifying before the Congress, in which she confesses to such…  You know, her parents, her grandparents, all of her family has just got to be really proud.  (laughter in background)   They’ve got to be really proud about right now… (Impersonating Sandra Fluke’s grandfather)  “Oh…”

NF:  Do we know where she’s from?  Do we know what state she is from?  Have we… have we seen this?

JL:  (Still impersonating Ms. Fluke’s grandfather): “Oh, Sandra!  Oh, Sandra!   Oh, we’re so proud of you.  We’re so proud of that Congressional testimony you had.  So happy!  Oh, Granpa’s happy.  Come give Granpa… a little hug!”  Is that a … Does that sound like Granpa?

NF:  (laughing)  That sounds nothing like Granpa.  (Both laughing)

(BREAK)

JL:  Seriously, I think,…. We make fun of Ms. Fluke, but it is an embarrassment that the House … there was a House …this was a House committee, right?  And the House committees are all chaired by Republicans. And they said we’re gonna have a hearing about this…

NF:  And they said okay.  Instead of a hearing about our economy, instead of a hearing about jobs, instead of a hearing about … oh, about a million other things that are more important than this.

JL:  Yeah, I think that’s the point that could get lost on some things is um… is that this is John Boehner’s house!  These are Republicans!  This should have been shut down long before.  This should have never … we’re not,… because all they’re doing is playing into this nonsense that they’re trying to get the Republicans…They’re want to take the eyes of America off the economy, off of the failed policies of Barak Obama, and so they want us to be painted as a bunch of cooks, and talk about social issues, and that’s why they’ve been going after Santorum, that’s why they’ve been going after Romney and Gingrich, and all this stuff … They’re trying to get all the attention on social issues.  And whoever chaired this committee… I ought to find out who it is and give you his office phone number…. Really ought to have his committee chairmanship stripped, unless I’m …. Maybe I’m missing some explanation because this hearing happening was absolute ludicrous, I tell you, ludicrous!

NF:  Well, the phones are lighting up hotter than a sex pistol… (Lakey laughs)

KOA’s Mike Rosen agreed with Colorado Attorney General John Suthers Thursday that the legal decision forcing states to offer a grade-school education to undocumented children is bogus.

If you don’t think this tidbit deserves to be my first blog post of the week, you would be wrong.

Here’s what Suthers had to say on the topic, which came up during a discussion of the ASSET bill, granting a tuition break to children of illegal immigrants, which Suthers called the “a complete run around” of two federal statutes:

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers: For some incredible reason, in 1982, the United States Supreme Court in a case called Plyler v. Doe, I think it was a San Antonio case, said any child regardless of immigration status is eligible for a free primary or secondary education. I’ve never been able to find that in the United States Constitution, but they said it’s in the 14th Amendment.

Rosen: Yes, which was all about slavery by the way, but that’s another story.

The federal requirement to give a basic education to all children, regardless of immigration status, is a long-settled legal matter.

No reporter, no teacher, no chef, no mom, no dad, not even a Republican talk-radio host, should let Colorado’s top-dog lawyer trash this Supreme Court’s decision in favor of undocumented kids without any discussion or scrutiny whatsoever.

Too much is at stake. We’re talking about grade-school education for some of the most vulnerable children in our country. And Suthers’s unsympathetic tone on Rosen’s radio show seems to show that it’s not just the legal issues that bother him, but the notion that children of illegal immigrants should be offered a public-school education in the world’s richest nation.

Rosen should have Suthers back on his radio show to illuminate more details on this topic, and, meanwhile, Rosen should bring a guest on air who will defend the basic humanity — and legal reasoning — for giving undocumented children a public-school education.

Westword’s Kylie Horner askedAndrew Cole, Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s Communications Advisor, about Gessler’s repeated references to unproven instances of election fraud in Colorado.

I’m sending over a big high-five to Westword for asking the question, which major media are ignoring, but Cole slipped out of it, as you see below, leaving the door open for Westword or some other enterprising media entity to follow up.  Gessler’s office won’t answer my questions on this matter.

Here’s what Cole told Westword:

“We don’t have proof of a lot of fraud,” Cole says. “Critics on the left say he’s talking about massive fraud. When we point to incidences of fraud, they say that’s too limited. He’s never talked about massive fraud; he’s only talked about instances in the fraud which we know are there.”

The Secretary of State’s office pointed to a 2010 election case in which six voters were found to have voted twice — once in Colorado and once Kansas. “We think that those sorts of instances of fraud point to vulnerabilities in the system,” Cole says.

I wish I could send you one of  Jon Stewart’s dumbfounded faces through this blog.

I mean, where’s the fraud?

The six people accused of voting twice have yet to be convicted. All we have here is possible fraud. Not actual factual fraud, yet.

Also, Gessler said on the radio Monday that “some” noncitizens voted. This of course raises the shadowy specter of Colorado elections being influenced by foreigners. Are the people who allegedly voted twice noncitizens?

So someone should ask Cole, or preferably Gessler himself, where’s the actual fraud he’s been talking about?

Before he entered office, and discovered the salary to be too low, Gessler was a high-paid lawyer who knows better than to play fast and loose with the f word.

With advertisers dropping the Rush Limbaugh and after the apparent widespread backlash against his comments, I thought I’d call KOA, the radio station that airs Rush Limbaugh in Denver, to find out if the station was considering dropping Limbaugh.

On the “contact” page, I found a statement expressing KOA’s respect for the “right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”

In its statement, KOA said Limbaugh “did the right thing…by expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke.”

KOA’s entire statement is here:

850 KOA is committed to providing its listeners with access to a broad range of opinion and commentary without condoning or agreeing with the opinions, comments or attempts at humor expressed by on-air talent.  We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.  The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue.  Last week, in an attempt at absurdist humor to illustrate his political point, Mr. Limbaugh used words that unfortunately distracted from the message he was trying to convey.   We believe he did the right thing on Saturday, and again today on his radio show, by expressing regret for his choice of words and offering his sincere and heartfelt apology to Ms. Fluke.

ABC reports that at least 22 companies have pulled their ads from the show:

Geico, Netflix, Service Magic home contractor, Goodwill, Amberen menopause medication, PolyCom web conferencing, Hadeed Carpets, Accuquote Life Insurance, Vitacost vitamin supplier, Bonobos clothing company,  Sensa weight- loss program, Thompson Creek Windows, AOL, Tax Resolution Services, ProFlowers, Legal Zoom online document creator, Carbonite web security firm, Citrix software maker, Sleep Train Mattresses, Sleep Number mattresses and Quicken Loans.

I’m hoping to reach a Clear Channel spokesperson later today, and I’ll update this blog post at that time.

It’s great to see the Colorado Independent staying on the story of Scott Gessler’s hollow numbers and unsupported allegations of election fraud.

Today, after Gessler’s assertion Monday that “some” noncitizens voted in Colorado, the Independent’s John Tomasic asked country clerks if they knew of any noncitizens on their voting rolls.

County clerks and staff contacted by the Independent so far in some of the state’s most populous counties, including Adams, Boulder, Denver and Pueblo, have said that they, like Reiner in Mesa County, have no knowledge of any non-citizens ever being registered to vote nor have they knowingly received any requests to be removed from the voter rolls from non-citizen residents of the state.

The Colorado Independent today submitted another open records request asking for any related “work product” created or commissioned by the secretary’s office, including any database searches seeking information concerning non-citizens being registered to vote in Colorado.

You have to assume media outlets all over town are also filing open records requests with Gessler’s office, right?

But we don’t know, because they don’t tell us, like Tomasic did.

I’d like to see reporters from Denver Post and other major media outlets start telling readers on a regular basis when they file CORA requests. Or at least more often. Not after the fact.

This would make us proud of our big daily newspaper and legacy media, like we are of the Independent when it informs us of the actions it takes in the public interest.

Maybe The Post doesn’t make a huge deal of its CORAs all the time, though it might sometimes, because, hey, it adds some drama to a story, no? But it could at least mention more CORA requests in the Spot blog or within articles.

Not telling us about CORAs is old-school journalism, worrying about a scoop or thinking that how journalists do their jobs is not interesting to readers. That’s not true. Quite the opposite.

The media frenzy around Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” comment last week, referring to a woman who believes birth control should be offered as part of her health insurance plan, makes you wonder whether progressives should ignore right-wing whackadoos on the radio.

Obviously, insults run deep on the conservative airwaves. Limbaugh hit a nerve last week, but Rush-like comments aren’t uncommon from radio hosts in Colorado.

Should the major media, or the minor progressive media critic like me, ignore them, given the tiny audiences (mostly) that listen to them.

The Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow wrote a good piece a couple weeks ago laying out different explanations for why conservatives dominate on talk radio and TV.

But she didn’t address the question of whether they deserve the attention of reporters, like her or me.

Should progressive journalists listen to their shows, shine the sun of the blogoshphere on what they’re saying, and hope the attention stops their insensitivity/hate/insults from infecting others and spreading underground? The assumption here is that educating the wider public about his stuff is a good thing.

Or does the light of day simply allow the worst of conservative talk to gain strength? The assumption here is that publicity help these jokers get more people to listen to them.

But before we get to those questions, here are possible explanations, offered by Ostrow for why talk  radio and TV is dominated by conservatives: 1) the right is more hate-filled, and the angrier the rhetoric, the more people gravitate to it in the talk format, and 2) conservatives own more radio conglomerates, which provide the infrastructure that the left lacks.

I’m not sure what the reason is, but I tend to agree with Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers Magazine, whom Ostrow quoted her article:

Harrison of Talkers magazine believes conservatives dominate, “because the conservative audience is easier to target than the liberal audience.”

Listeners of a conservative bent, who feel alienated and disenfranchised by big media, Hollywood and academia, represent “a perfect mind-set for radio, a niche medium, to target an audience that will be loyal,” Harrison says. “They’re seeking validation.”

Harrison, who avers he is apolitical and speaks only as a broadcast expert, says, “the conservative audience mind-set is much more cohesive and uniform, whereas “liberal” is a broader term that takes in many different political philosophies, ethnicities, voting habits, socio-economic classes. It’s not as cohesive a unit.”

Ostrow reports that even though most of the radio airwaves are filled with righties (“Conservative talk radio rules 90 percent of the political airwaves today.”), Denver’s David Sirota pulls a cumulative weekly audience of 115,000 on AM760, beating KHOW’s Peter Boyles by 2,000 listeners. But Sirota trails KOA’s Mike Rosen by 30,000 listeners.

At the end of her piece, Ostrow writes that the “titans of talk actually draw tiny niche audiences.”

That would include Rush Limbaugh. In other words, their voices are loud and shrill, but few real people are listening.

Unless, of course, a righty talker like Limbaugh ignites a media frenzy like he did last week. Then his audience is massive.

So this leads back to the question, should we ignore our local Colorado yappers when they get ugly (e.g., Democrat Donna Brazile as “ignorant slut,” and Michele Obama as “Chewbacca,” kill all Iranians, Katrina victims who didn’t leave deserved their fate, etc. )

Or is the silent treatment the best way to fight back?

If you follow my blog, you know I’m on the side of listening and exposing them. That’s why I follow these talk shows and write about the misinformation, omissions, and rudeness you find there (not all the time, for sure, but too often).

I like to think that pulicizing the latest talk-radio outrage, and possibly educating some people about it, undermines the audience for it in the long run, though maybe a few more people are drawn to it in the short term.

Limbaugh’s idiocy last week proved my point. Now more people will quietly dismiss the Limbaughs of the world when they say insulting or outrageous things about women who expect birth control to be covered by their health insurance.

Limbaugh and his anti-woman cause lost ground last week–and advertisers.

And eventually Limbaugh and his allies in Colorado will lose their audience and their jobs, as they become more and more irrelevant, right? Or is that wishful thinking?

Every time Secretary of State Scott Gessler alleges outright voter fraud in Colorado, I think to myself, this has to be the last time he says this, unless he produces evidence to back it up.

And then he says it again, like he did on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado Monday:

We’re continuing to do the analysis on the issue of noncitizens not voting here, or I’m sorry, noncitizens being on the voting rolls here in Colorado, and some of them voting. We did a study last year, and we’re going to do some more analysis and come up with more evidence to show people that there, in fact, are problems here in Colorado with that and, again, hopefully we can get folks, particularly Senate Democrats… [BigMedia emphasis]

Just because Gessler has alleged actual, real, not-theoretical, election fraud before, without showing proof of it, doesn’t mean it’s any less serious an accusation when he says it again.

Sorry to repeat the obvious, but this is from the mouth of Colorado’s Secretary of State!! And sorry to use two exclamation marks.

It’s our voting system, and he’s in charge of it. And we like to think of ourselves as tough when it comes to corruption, especially in the all-American area of voting.

Yet Gessler’s repeated accusations of election fraud (I now count three times he’s said it) have flown largely under the major media’s radar, not mentioned once, for example, in The Denver Post news pages, though columnist Fred Brown brought up the topic.

Again, I’m not talking about Gessler’s many warnings and innuendos about fraud. I’m talking actual fraud here.

If journalists won’t publicly hold Gessler accountable for his comments on this topic, which is so central to why journalism is supposed to exist then, I’m sorry, they should find new jobs.

I’m not saying reporters have given Gessler a free pass. They haven’t, and he doesn’t think so either. On the radio Monday, Gessler said:

The mainstream media beats me up all the time. They don’t like what I’m doing.

I don’t see reporters not liking Gessler as such. They’re mostly just reporting what he’s doing, but on the fraud issue, the election-fraud-is-happening-now-in-Colorado-now angle to this story, there’s been too much silence, except from Gessler.

Just after Tisha Casida announced her candidacy last year to represent Colorado’s 3rd congressional district (the race featuring Republican incumbent Scott Tipton and Democrat Sal Pace) she got a call from Ryan Call, the Chair of Colorado’s Republican Party.

Call asked Casida not to run for Congress because it could hurt the Republican Party’s chances, according to a report in the Colorado Statesman .

“He was very polite,” Casida told me yesterday. “After I made it clear that I was going to run for Congress, he tried to get me to run in a different district.”

She immediately rejected Call’s suggestion, she told me, because it would be “carpet-bagging.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said. “This is the part of the state that I love and want to represent.”

It’s no surprise that Call would try to talk Casida out of running. Apparently, Call’s assumption is that, as an unaffiliated candidate with ties to Tea Party folks disillusioned with the GOP, Casida could siphon off voters who might otherwise back the Republican. For example, Casida has the support of Bob McConnell, who ran for the 3rd congressional seat in the GOP primary in 2010. You never know whom third-party voters will go for, so Casida could pick up Dems too, but if you look at Casida’s positions, you think Tea Party.

And everyone knows that, at least for now, the race for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional seat is expected to be among the closest in the nation.

Casida was on the syndicated Cari and Rob Show Thursday, where host Rob Douglas called her a “serious candidate,” and some journalists in the district are treating her like one. She’s gotten good coverage in, among other outlets, the Grand Junction Sentinel, Craig Daily Press, on Grand Junction’s NBC affiliate, Channel 11, and others.

But despite the stakes and the intereting political undercurrents, no major Denver media have reported on Casida’s shoestring campaign. Not the Denver Post. Not any local TV station.

On the radio Thursday, Casida, a Colorado native who’s run a small marketing business for the past six years, explained why she wants to be in Congress:

“What really started  to make me more interested in politics is a lot of the federal rules and regulations that are coming down the pike that are having negative repercussions on small businesses, which are the backbone or our economy, and in my opinion something we really have to allow to flourish to get out of the economic turmoil that we’re in.”

She wants to be a “good statesman, not a politician” in the mold of Ron Paul, who’s “advocating for use of the Constitution at the federal level of government.”

She also likes Justin Amosh, who’s “doing something great for the youth movement and the liberty movement.” Host Cari Hermacinski pointed out that Casida is a young woman “frankly a face that the conservative movement needs more of.”

Asked by host Hermacinski if she gave some thought to running on the Republican ticket, Casida said:

“Absolutely. I did for a brief period of time. I did follow what happened in 2010 with the McConnell campaign fairly closely. I feel like a lot of the Republican Party has become fairly corrupt in saying that they stand for small government, saying they stand for the Constitution, Republican values, so they profess. But I don’t believe they are actually standing for that. And I think the race with McConnell was one that people might recognize. The Republican Party, at least in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District is not ever going to allow a candidate like myself to run on the Republican ticket.

We have to get back to what our founding fathers had intended. Our founding fathers warned us against political parties, and the reason is, political parties are a collective, which is collective rights, which is the antithesis of individual rights, which is what the Constitution protects.”

Casida believes she needs to raise $250,000 to “compete effectively” in the race.

“In July/August we’ll have a good idea on how effective we can be,” she told me. “It’s not only financial support but also grassroots support. The ballot access is fairly easy. I need 800 signatures, and we have a window of time to capture them in.”

“I feel that there’s a group of people whose voice isn’t being heard by the two party system,” she said.

If you were in charge of a big political fundraiser in Colorado, where women voters are obviously a key voting bloc, and your keynote speaker was recently embroiled in a national controversy for his joke that contraception need not be so expensive because, back in the old days, “The gals put [Bayer Aspirin] between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly,” would you disinvite the guy and find another keynoter?

It’s a legitimate question.

Yet, as far as I know, no reporter has posed it to Larimer County GOP officials who’ve got Foster Friess listed as the keynote speaker for their April 6 Lincoln Day Dinner.

Friess, a wealthy Republican donor and backer of Rick Santorum, made the comments back in February to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who said his response took her breath away. Mitchell had asked Friess to comment on Rick Santorum’s statements about contraception, which include his opposition to some forms of it.

Friess later apologized, writing on his website that he was kidding, and his joke “bombed.”

“To all those who took my joke as modern day approach I deeply apologize and seek your forgiveness,” Friess wrote. “My wife constantly tells me I need new material—she understood the joke but didn’t like it anyway—so I will keep that old one in the past where it belongs.”

Still, the joke generated controversy, particularly on talk shows around the country.

Asked if the flap around Friess had given him second thoughts about inviting Friess to their fundraiser, Larimer County GOP  Chair Michael Fassi said,  “We’re going to move ahead with Foster Friess.”

Former CU Regent Tom Lucero, who’s the master of ceremonies for the event, told me that Friess’s joke didn’t give him second thoughts about his own involvement in the dinner.

“I think that Foster handled it appropriately,” said Lucero, who’s served as Chair of the Larimer County GOP. “He was  trying for a joke, and it fell flat. It wasn’t the appropriate forum for that particular joke, and we moved on.”

Asked if he’d disinvite a speaker who made a controversial comment that women could reduce the cost of birth control by placing pills between their legs, Colorado Democratic Chair Rick Palacio said, “In a word, yes.”

Friess has said he plans to back key Senate candidates across the country during the next election cycle, and his appearance in Colorado may signal a broader interest in getting involved in Presidential swing state or in backing social conservatives like Santorum (e.g., Mike Coffman, Joe Coors, Cory Gardner) running here in Colorado.