The Colorado GOP this week sent out a transphobic email attacking the Democratic opponent of state Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, who is running for reelection in the toss-up Senate District 6 — a race that could have big implications on the trajectory of policy at the Capitol.

The email Thursday repeatedly used male pronouns to refer to Vivian Smotherman, a transgender Durango farmer and Navy veteran. It also included a screenshot of a social media post from the far-right “Libs of TikTok” account saying Smotherman is “a man pretending to be a woman” and that “in Peru he would be considered mentally ill.”

“Given Senator Simpson’s commitment to improving prosperity in rural areas and his wide-ranging support across SD-6, there is not one good reason to vote for Smotherman,” the Colorado GOP email said. “However, we have seen several Colorado elections in which gender identity garners votes from people wanting to be progressive and fearing they’ll be labeled as ‘anti-trans’ for not supporting the media’s DEI candidate.”

The party said Democratic state Reps. Stephanie Vigil and Brianna Titone — referring to Titone by her dead name — benefited from diversity, equity and inclusion pushes to win their elections. Vigil identifies as gender fluid while Titone is the first transgender person elected to the legislature in Colorado.

Smotherman called the email a fear-mongering distraction.

Republican campaigns have been privately complaining about the emails the Colorado GOP has sent out recently in support of the party’s candidates running in toss-up districts. The missives have included offensive remarks and unsubstantiated allegations about their Democratic opponents.

The emails come as Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams has come under fire for not doing enough to support Republican campaigns across the state. But now some are wishing the party would just stay away altogether.

“I already called Vivian to let her know I did not have advance knowledge of this and the attacks do not align with my value system,” Simpson told The Colorado Sun, adding that he plans to voice his frustration to the party, too. 

He pointed out that he has sponsored a bill with Titone.

“I’ve been a Republican my entire life and largely a part of the calculus to run for reelection was to demonstrate you can be a conservative Republican under the gold dome and still be effective,” he said. “If you treat people with dignity and respect you can still build some small wins.”

Simpson called the state party’s email a “step backward” in his cause.

Williams or Colorado GOP Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Sun on Friday. Neither did Darcy Schoening, the director of special initiatives at the Colorado GOP, who sent out the email.  

In Senate District 6, the Colorado GOP’s decision to wade into the contest could be particularly damaging. 

A nonpartisan analysis of election results in the district between 2016 and 2020, completed as part of the state’s redistricting process, estimated it leans 1 percentage point in Democrats’ favor. But the 2022 election results tell another story. 

Gov. Jared Polis won the district by 11 points, while U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet won it by 8 points and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser won it by 5. Polis, Bennet and Weiser are Democrats.

Democrats hold a 23-12 majority in the Colorado Senate, one seat shy of a supermajority. That makes Simpson’s race critical.

Democrats will be defending two competitive Senate seats in November and trying to pick up three others. 

The state Senate districts with races this year will be up for grabs for the first time since their boundaries were redrawn in 2021 as part of the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process. When Simpson was first elected in 2020, his constituency was more conservative and his district included counties in southeastern Colorado. Now, the district has shifted westward and the electorate is more favorable to Democrats.

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Senate District 6 includes all or parts of Alamosa, Archuleta, Conejos, Costilla, Dolores, La Plata, Mineral, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Juan and San Miguel Counties. Major cities and towns in the district include Durango, Pagosa Springs, Cortez, Telluride and Alamosa.

Still, Simpson is known as a low-key moderate Republican who works across the aisle. He’s won the endorsement, for instance, of Democrat John Salazar, a former congressman who lives in District 6. His reputation means he is expected to have a solid chance of winning reelection. 

The Colorado GOP’s unwelcome approach to the district could jeopardize that. At the very least, the email is giving Democrats an easy line of attack.

“Dave Williams should be ashamed of himself,” Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib said in a written statement. “Everyone from Cleave Simpson to Jeff Hurd to Gabe Evans has a responsibility to condemn this hatred and division.”

Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, and Evans, a state representative from Fort Lupton, are Republicans running in competitive congressional districts this year.

Smotherman, in an interview with The Sun, said Simpson offered “a very sincere and genuine apology” when they talked. She said the Colorado GOP’s claims that she is focusing her campaign on her identity are false. 

“It’s something we’re not surprised at,” she said of the email. “We were hoping we could avoid it and stick to the issues.”

Smotherman said she and Simpson have agreed to keep their campaigns focused on the debate over how to improve the lives of people in Senate District 6.

Election Day is Nov. 5. Voters will begin receiving ballots in October.

For the second year in a row, Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday called lawmakers into a special legislative session to cut property taxes.

Only this time, lawmakers won’t reconvene just out of concern over rising property taxes; it’s also out of fear that without a special session, voters might enact tax cuts so deep that they decimate state and local budgets.

“It’s really a win-win, if we can save homeowners money and small businesses money on their property taxes and make sure that we’re not going to devastate our schools and other local entities,” Polis said in an interview with The Colorado Sun ahead of the announcement.

The session will start Aug. 26, and would have to last at least three days in order to send a bill to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. 

In exchange for a modest package of additional tax cuts and stronger limits on property tax growth, conservative groups said they would pull two measures off the November ballot — Initiatives 108 and 50 — that have created panic among state and local government officials, developers and bond investors over their wide-reaching impacts.

Initiative 50, which would amend the state constitution, might be the more consequential of the two. It would limit property tax revenue growth to 4% statewide, with no flexibility for local governments or their voters to opt out without a statewide referendum. 

Initiative 108 would cut property taxes for homeowners and businesses by an estimated $2.4 billion. That’s the equivalent of 15% of the $15.5 billion that schools and local governments collected this year. The state would be on the hook to reimburse schools and local governments for much of the revenue lost to the cuts.

Polis said to preserve the agreement, he won’t sign any bills passed during the special session until Initiatives 50 and 108 are pulled from the November ballot.

Legal interpretations vary on how much the state government would have to pay if the measures passed. But state budget officials say the measures could create a budget crisis on par with an economic recession, mandating deep cuts to essential public services like K-12, higher education and Medicaid.

The proponents of the measures — Colorado Concern, an alliance of state business executives, and Advance Colorado, a conservative political nonprofit — have argued those concerns are overblown.

Business groups insist the property tax relief passed by the legislature in recent years hasn’t gone far enough to serve as a true replacement for the Gallagher Amendment, the tax-limiting constitutional provision that voters repealed in 2020.

Even after the legislature passed a round of cuts in last year’s special session, property tax revenue still went up 21% statewide in the 2023 tax year, according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

“This property tax cut and cap agreement provides the permanent tax relief that Coloradans have been demanding and will prevent future spikes in property tax bills going forward,” Advance Colorado President Michael Fields said in a statement.

Under a proposed deal presented to the state’s Property Tax Commission on Monday, the legislature would cut taxes by an additional $255 million next year, for taxes owed in 2026. That’s on top of $1 billion in tax cuts the legislature approved at the end of its regular legislative session, which ended in May.

The legislature would also put a new cap on school districts, limiting their property tax growth to 12% over a two-year period.

In exchange, lawmakers have demanded that the groups provide assurance that they won’t bring back similar ballot measures in the next 10 years.

Lawmakers are racing against the clock to get the deal finalized before a Sept. 6 deadline to remove initiatives from the November ballot. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office has to certify the ballot by Sept. 9, as ballots must be mailed to military and overseas voters by Sept. 21.

The special session will be the third under Polis since he was sworn into office in 2019. 

The deal was negotiated behind closed doors in recent weeks among the governor’s office, Advance Colorado’s Michael Fields, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers. A special session seemed unthinkable until all the sides restarted negotiations that flamed out during the regular legislative session, which ended in May. 

The talks started up again after lawmakers and the conservative groups behind the ballot measures presented to the Colorado Forum in recent weeks. The forum is a decades-old public policy panel made up of state business and civic leaders that takes positions on pressing issues. Forum President Gail Klapper urged the power players to try to find a solution.

When the mayors of Colorado’s three largest cities and a long list of top civic and business groups from across the political spectrum separately issued letters saying they supported a special session to find a compromise, it was clear lawmakers would be returning to the Capitol.

“I think it’s a good compromise,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican who was the first elected official to publicly call for a special session. “It reduces risk in the future, makes sure that Colorado has a viable future and still further reduces property taxes, which is what my aim is, is looking out for the property owners of the state.”

On Thursday, the top four Democrats in the legislature issued statements in support of the special session, saying it was needed to keep “reckless” measures off the ballot.

“It is a grave risk to our state that wealthy special interests have proceeded with ballot measures that would devastate our economy, cut funding for schools, and risk financing for critical infrastructure projects like affordable housing,” House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, said in a written statement. “I’m proud to go back to work to help keep people in their homes, provide additional tax relief, and protect funding for our schools that we’ve fought so hard for.”

Top legislative Republicans issued statements of support as well.

But not everyone is happy about it. At the tax commission meeting this week, Rep. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins said House Democrats were divided over whether it was worth taking the deal.

“There are some people who are risk averse and would like to proceed with a special session and there are others who don’t appreciate that this is the way things are moving forward,” she said.

Holding a special session isn’t free. Past sessions have cost taxpayers close to $25,000 a day to pay staff and lawmaker stipends as they trek to Denver from across the state. 

Polis said he would have preferred the deal to have been reached during the regular lawmaking term this year, but that the special session “de-risking the November ballot” is still better than nothing.

“It came close,” Polis said. “In fact, I now think we see how close by the fact that a lot of this is just refining the cap mechanism that already went in place and building off the work that was already done.”

The special session could also bring political intrigue beyond the property tax debate.

It’s an election year, and Republicans are trying to dismantle the Democratic supermajority in the House and prevent one from being secured in the Senate. The GOP could be tempted to force the issue with controversial amendments and floor speeches.

The session may also invite disruption from Democratic lawmakers who aren’t returning to the Capitol next year after losing their primary races in June or abandoning their reelection bids midcycle. There are also several term-limited Democratic and Republican representatives and senators who will be returning for the special session.

Finally, unions could push lawmakers to take up some pro-labor bills passed during the session this year that Polis vetoed. That’s part of why a special session wasn’t called to strip out a provision in a bill kneecapping a 2024 ballot measure that would overhaul the state’s election process.

The governor can limit what topics can be discussed in a special session, but lawmakers have some legal leeway to decide what qualifies within that scope. Polis said he’s happy to have discussions about those union measures next year, but that the special session is limited to property tax legislation in order to stop the measures from appearing on the November ballot.

“There’s only a small window of time before the ballot initiatives can be taken down,” Polis said.

Despite the risks, Polis is already pointing to the special session as another example of his ability to broker policy deals. During the regular lawmaking term this year, he helped shepherd agreements on oil and gas, medical malpractice lawsuits and Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds.

The legislature’s next regular session begins in January, when newly elected representatives and senators will begin their terms.

Facing millions of dollars in fines, dozens of violations, legions of complaints from homeowners as well as local governments, oil and gas operator Prospect Energy on Wednesday had its right to do business in Colorado canceled.

The Energy and Carbon Management Commission endorsed a settlement agreement between the commission staff and the Highlands Ranch-based company. Prospect Energy also has an agreement with Larimer County and Fort Collins to clean up sites.

As part of the agreement, $1.7 million in ECMC fines will be waived, with what funds the company has going toward securing and cleaning up its sites. Prospect Energy was fined for illegal flaring, spills and failing to do well-integrity tests.

Prospect Energy’s 59 wells will end up in the ECMC Orphan Well program and will eventually be plugged and abandoned by the state.

Under the agreement, Prospect Energy’s owner, Ward Giltner, must obtain commission approval before owning or operating any future oil and gas properties in Colorado. Giltner did not reply to email and telephone requests for comments.

The company, however, still faces $337,000 in fines from the state Air Pollution Control Division for air emission violations. In 2022, the division ordered one of Prospect Energy’s sites closed until dangerous emissions could be curbed.

“This is an exceptional and rare course of action,” APCD director Michael Ogletree said at the time. “This is a unique situation that calls for extraordinary measures to ensure we are protecting public welfare.”

Division inspectors found emissions of volatile organic chemicals and hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs, on repeated visits to the company’s Krause facility tank battery.

“These issues have been going on for more than four years,” said Matt Lafferty, Larimer County principal planner. “The county and the city filed a formal complaint to push the ECMC.”

Prospect Energy operates mainly low-producing wells — 49 in Larimer County and 10 in Fort Collins — and several tank batteries for collecting produced water and oil. The wells date as far back as 1928.

“We have an old, outdated oil field that has seen the end of its life, and I am sure it is hard for owners to let go because they still make a little money,” Lafferty said.

Still, the passage in 2019 of Senate Bill 181, which made protection of public health, safety and welfare as well as the environment the priority in regulating oil and gas operations, has put pressure on small operators and low-producing fields, Lafferty said.

For example, Lafferty said, in 2020 the state adopted rules severely limiting flaring, the practice of burning off gas from oil and gas wells, and it created another violation for Prospect Energy.

“Once that ball started rolling on Prospect Energy, it was clear it didn’t have the resources,” Lafferty said. “Everyone is starting to take action. The snowball got pretty big.”

“This isn’t an oil and gas thing,” Lafferty said “It is a health and safety issue.”

Andrew Klooster, the Colorado field advocate for the environmental group Earthworks, first documented emissions from Prospect Energy, using an infrared FLIR camera, in 2021. Klooster said exasperated residents had contacted his group.

“People were complaining of odors, headaches, nausea,” Klooster said. “Krause tanks had holes in them because they were so old and decrepit,” he said, adding that even when they were replaced, emissions from hatches continued.

“An operator that was not interested in complying”

Klooster said over the years he has made 29 visits to Prospect Energy facilities finding repeated violations, with a big point of concern the Fort Collins Meyer tank battery, where in recent years the Hearthfire development — with homes going for $1 million or more — has been built.

“The refrain the county has been hearing from us and the community is that this was an operator that was not interested in complying with the air quality regulations,” Klooster said.

Meanwhile, ECMC inspectors were also logging a string of problems and began issuing violation notices in 2020. The company racked up 14 penalties adding up to $1.7 million.

Prospect Energy provided the ECMC staff with financial documents showing that it could not pay the fines, Caitlin Stafford, a senior assistant attorney general representing ECMC staff, told the commission.

Commissioner Trisha Oeth said she was “unhappy” with the company completely avoiding paying a fine. Stafford said it is the “hope the operator puts whatever remaining money they have to put the last bit of compliance.”

“It’s not the best outcome,” ECMC Chairman Jeff Robbins said, “but the only likely outcome.”

Prospect Energy still faces the air pollution fines. Under an agreement with the state air pollution division, the company was going to pay in installments, but failed to pay starting in March, according to Zachary Aedo, an agency spokesperson.

“On Tuesday, Aug. 13, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit on behalf of the division seeking compliance from Prospect Energy and its manager Ward Giltner with the terms of the enforcement agreement,” Aedo said in an email.

Under the terms of a separate agreement reached with Larimer County and Fort Collins, Prospect Energy will shut in all its wells and then hire an independent inspector, approved by the local governments, to check that none are leaking.

Any leaking wells will be repaired within 21 days. In addition, the company will remediate a flowline spill in the Country Club Reserve neighborhood east of the Fort Collins Meyer tank battery, and remove the surface equipment there and from the Krause facility to the north within 90 days.

Lafferty said that Prospect Energy hopes to recoup some money by selling off the equipment. He also said that the county’s inspector will participate in the third-party inspection of the shut-in wells.

“It has been a saga,” Klooster said. “Prospect gets out of paying some fines, but for the residents it is worth it for the peace of mind it will bring.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaking Wednesday at a campaign fundraiser in Denver, encouraged Democrats to maintain a breakneck pace heading into the final three months of the 2024 presidential election. 

“Sleep when you’re dead,” Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ recently selected running mate, told a fired up crowd. 

Some $3 million was raised at the event, according to host Tim Gill, a Democratic megadonor who opened up his central Denver estate — known as the Phipps Mansion — to about 150 people for the occasion. The Denver visit was part of a five-state fundraising swing for Walz, who is making his first solo appearances since he and Harris became the presumptive Democratic ticket in the presidential race. 

In a speech just shy of 15 minutes, Walz attacked Republicans for supporting school vouchers, wavering on financial support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and for restricting abortion access. 

“You need to make your own health care decisions, not us,” he said. “We don’t need their help deciding which books we’re going to read. We will decide that on our own.”

He also attacked former President Donald Trump for falsely claiming that photos showing large crowds at recent Harris-Walz events were generated by artificial intelligence.

“I assure you, in Detroit that wasn’t AI,” he said. “And I’ll also assure you every one of the ballots that they’re going to cast will not be AI.”

Walz said it’s been an “interesting” week since Harris named him on Aug. 6 as her vice president pick after President Joe Biden decided mid-election cycle not to seek reelection. 

“That’s a Minnesota word,” he said. “‘Interesting,’ Minnesotans know, has multiple meanings. They called me up, picked me up at my house last Tuesday, put me on a plane and flew me to Philadelphia and said ‘here, you’ve got 45 minutes. Give this speech off the teleprompter.’”

Walz said he had never used a teleprompter before.

“Politics is a means to an end, and that end is a better, fairer country for everyone,” he said. “You don’t get elected to office to bank political capital for the next election. You get elected to office to burn that capital” to make people’s lives better.

Walz also contrasted the life experiences of Trump and Harris, who as a kid worked part time at McDonalds.

“Can you picture Donald Trump working at a McDonalds?” Walz said. “You think he knows you? You think he knows who you are? You think he knows your family?”

Walz was accompanied at the event by his daughter, Hope. He was introduced by Gov. Jared Polis, the nation’s first openly gay governor. Polis attacked Trump for being a convicted felon and for “destroying voting rights, destroying LGBTQ rights.”

“The future is the bright future that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to bring for every American — no matter who they are,” said Polis, who has become a top Harris surrogate.

Gill made his fortune as a software entrepreneur and is a prominent LGBTQ activist.

“Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are ready to carry the torch of liberty forward, ensuring that the gains we’ve made aren’t lost,” Gill said, standing in the backyard of his 33,000 square foot home.

Gill said Walz’s “ability to reach across the aisle while staying true to our Democratic values makes Tim exactly who we need at this moment.”

Gill’s husband, Scott Miller, was nominated by Biden to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein and has held the job since 2021.

Tickets for the fundraiser started at $1,000. Donors who gave at least $50,000 received an opportunity to get their photo taken with Walz.

The money raised will go toward the Harris Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee benefiting Harris’ campaign, state Democratic parties across the country and the Democratic National Committee.

The fundraiser was attended by a list of top Colorado Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. Also in attendance were former U.S. Reps. John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter.

Walz served in Congress with Polis, Salazar and Perlmutter.

Walz, who didn’t take questions from a small group of reporters at the event, was headed to Boston after his stop in Colorado. 

Homelessness in Denver increased by 12% in the past year, but for only the second time in recent history, the number of people living outside has decreased, according to the results of an annual count released Wednesday. 

The number of people living in shelters, transitional housing, tents and on the streets of Denver climbed to 6,539 from 5,818 the previous year. In the seven-county metro area, homelessness rose 10% to 9,977 people. 

In Denver, the good news is that there are fewer people sleeping in tents and on the streets after a massive effort to move people indoors. 

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who campaigned on a promise to house 1,000 people by the end of his first year in office, said the drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city was among the largest in the nation, in line with Houston and better than Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.

There were 1,273 people sleeping outside in Denver on the January night volunteers and outreach workers conducted the count, down from 1,423 a year prior. 

And as of Wednesday, there are 117 tents in the city, down from 242 when the “point-in-time” count was taken, the mayor’s office said. The city has cleared 17 encampments and closed 350 blocks of downtown to camping under the mayor’s homelessness initiative. Critics have accused the city of offering people temporary shelter instead of more permanent options. 

“We have always believed that homelessness is a solvable problem, and now we have the data to prove it,” Johnston said in a triumphant news release. “Denverites should be proud to live in a city that responds to homelessness with compassion.”

Not counted in the survey: the 4,300 new migrants from mainly South America who were sleeping in city-funded shelters on the night of the count. 

The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, which organizes the annual count required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that leaving migrants out of the count was the best way to determine “the most accurate information of those experiencing homelessness on a single night.” 

The number of people living in shelters in Denver grew by 20% throughout the year, however.

In the seven-county area, the number of people sleeping outside increased by 5.6%, to 2,919. The number of chronically homeless — people who have not had a home for at least a year — rose by 16% and the number of homeless families grew by nearly 50%, to 3,136 from 2,101.

Volunteers spread across the metro area, throughout Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, from sundown Jan. 22 to sundown Jan. 23, tallying and interviewing people in shelters and outside. 

Johnston said the data shows the city needs to work harder at preventing homelessness in the first place, as well as expanding family shelter and permanent housing options. The Denver City Council is scheduled to vote next week on whether to ask voters to approve a sales tax to generate $100 million annually for affordable housing. The Affordable Denver Fund would pay for 44,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years, the mayor said.

By Will Weissert, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is branching out this week and holding his first solo events as Vice President Kamala Harris ’ running mate, making a five-state dash for campaign cash and addressing a key union gathering.

Walz will be in Colorado on Wednesday.

Walz will speak Tuesday at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees convention in Los Angeles before headlining a campaign fundraiser in Newport Beach, California. The 1.4-million-member union has endorsed Harris.

“With all the anxiety and uncertainty in the country, we have a responsibility to bring people together around common values,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in his convention keynote address on Monday. Then referring to top Republicans, he added, “Instead, antiworker forces have decided to double down on the most extreme, divisive agenda you can imagine.”

On Wednesday, Walz will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and he’ll do more of the same on Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.

The Denver fundraiser will be hosted by Democratic megadonor Tim Gill, who made his fortune as a software entrepreneur. Gov. Jared Polis is a featured guest.

Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he stormed through a series of battleground states with Harris last week to introduce himself to voters nationally. The two held rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was announced as Republican Donald Trump ‘s running mate during the GOP convention in Milwaukee, had his own rollout largely overshadowed by unforeseen events. It came after an assassination attempt against the former president the previous weekend and before President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris during the following one.

Walz has salted his early campaign appearances with talk of joy and positivity, stressing that he and Harris are championing being kind and neighborly. But he has frequently laid into Trump’s policies and the former president’s 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case.

Vance, meanwhile, has leaned more heavily into the traditional No. 2 role of lobbing political attacks on the opposition. He spent much of last week holding his own events in the same states that Harris and Walz visited and arguing the Democratic ticket was too ultra-liberal for most Americans.

The senator has also suggested that Harris chose Walz over another contender for running mate, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, because Shapiro’s public support for Israel in its war with Hamas might have angered some progressives.

Vance said picking Walz meant that Harris took advice from the “Hamas wing of her party.” He also criticized Walz’s military record, arguing that his retirement ahead of his National Guard Unit’s deployment to Iraq and his implication that he had served in a combat zone suggested “stolen valor garbage.” Over the weekend, the Harris campaign said that Walz “misspoke” when he referenced “weapons of war that I carried in war.”

Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker, picked up on charges that Walz has been imprecise with his characterizations of his military service, saying in a statement Monday that the governor, “may walk away heavy with campaign cash from liberal donors but he will leave with the same empty and fake record he came in with.”

Vance has also faulted Harris and Walz for not sitting for media interviews. When his plane coincided with Harris’ on a tarmac in Wisconsin, where both sides held events last week, Vance began walking toward the vice president’s motorcade, saying he wanted to talk to reporters traveling with her since she’d not done it herself.

Harris has yet to sit for a major interview since Biden left the race but has said she wants to do that later in the month. She briefly took questions from the press traveling with her twice during her battleground travels last week — something Walz did not do, except for one session, answering questions off-the-record, which meant his answers couldn’t be publicly shared.

Vance has appeared on a variety of podcasts angling to appeal to a younger voter set. At age 40, he’s closer to that demographic than any of the other three top-of-the-ticket contenders. Trump is 78, Harris is 59 and Walz is 60.

Colorado Sun reporter Jesse Paul contributed to this report.

If opponents of embattled Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams fail to remove him from the party’s top post later this month, they may be unable to dislodge him for the rest of his term, which ends in March.

A major bylaw amendment being proposed by Williams’ allies would make it harder starting next year to call a special meeting to remove the Colorado GOP chairman or other party officers. 

Currently, it only takes a written request of 25% of the members of the central committee to force such a meeting and a vote. The amendment would require that request be made through a form developed and authorized by the party’s secretary, and that each member of the central committee who signs it disclose “sufficient identifying information so that the secretary can verify the requesters are voting members and that they do, in fact, desire that the requested meeting be held.”

Additionally, the amendment would create a seven-day challenge period after a request for a special meeting to remove a party officer is made. During that time, the Colorado GOP executive committee could postpone the gathering while the challenge is pending.

The bylaw amendment is scheduled to be considered at the central committee’s Aug. 31 meeting, which is about a week after Williams’ opponents on the committee are planning to take a vote on whether to oust the chairman. 

Getting the votes to remove Williams may not be easy. 

The Colorado GOP’s bylaws say a party officer can only be removed “by a vote of three-fifths of the entire membership of the (central committee) eligible to vote at a meeting called for that purpose.” There are two interpretations of the rule: It could mean 60% of those present at the meeting, or 60% of the entire central committee — which is made up of about 400 people. 

Passing a bylaw amendment is arguably easier. It requires the support of two-thirds “of those members present and voting” at a central committee meeting. 

There’s a scenario in which members of the central committee who dislike Williams show up to the Aug. 24 meeting organized by opponents of Williams to try to remove him and are unsuccessful, then skip the Aug. 31 meeting where the bylaw amendment is then adopted.

The bylaw change is particularly important because Wiliams’ opponents believe the party won’t take up a motion to remove him as chairman unless they run the meeting themselves. The bylaw change would be particularly impactful if Williams runs for reelection as chairman and wins.

The Colorado GOP executive committee has already ruled that the Aug. 24 meeting to remove Williams was improperly organized and that they won’t recognize the results of any action taken during the gathering. And it’s unclear if the party will take up the question of removing Williams at the Aug. 31 meeting if they don’t recognize the results of the Aug. 24 vote. 

“It is exactly designed to prevent him from being removed,” Todd Watkins, vice chair of the El Paso County GOP and the leader of the effort to remove Williams, said of the bylaw amendment. “Textbook despot.”

Watkins called Williams “Xi Jing Dave,” a nod to Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of China. 

Williams told The Colorado Sun “we are still deciding” if the amendment will be considered at the central committee’s Aug. 31 meeting. He argued that even though the change was borne out of the effort to remove him, it will have no effect on removing party officers, calling any claim to the contrary a “deceptive narrative.”

He also emphasized that the change wouldn’t take effect until next year to comply with a state law preventing political parties from altering their bylaws in election years.

“Our critics are free to continue doing what they wish for the rest of the year, regardless of any bylaw changes that may occur at the end of this month,” Williams said. 

The proposed amendment isn’t the first time Williams and his allies have tried to change the party’s bylaws to their benefit. Last year, they unsuccessfully tried to pass an amendment that would have made it easier for the GOP to block unaffiliated voters from participating in their primaries, a major objective of Williams and other ultra conservative Republicans in Colorado.

And the Colorado GOP isn’t exactly broadcasting that the amendment will be considered Aug. 31. 

In a notice about the gathering, the party said the principal purposes of the meeting will be to consider a bylaw change on fractional voting that wouldn’t be implemented until after the 2024 election. Also on the agenda are an update on the party’s open primary lawsuit and consideration of party officer removal requests “that were properly submitted and verified.”

The only way people would know about the bylaw amendment around removing party officers is if they read the entire report of the party’s bylaws committee.

Shoring up the effort to remove Williams

Williams’ opponents — led by Watkins and Jefferson County GOP Chairwoman Nancy Pallozzi — are taking steps to quash claims from current Colorado GOP leadership that the Aug. 24 meeting will be “invalid and illegal” because the legitimacy of the list of people who asked for it is unverifiable. 

Chris Murray, the former Colorado GOP lawyer now representing Watkins and Pallozzi, said in court last week, as the matter went before a judge, that he had collected nearly 50 declarations from people confirming they had requested the meeting to oust Williams. 

“We are in the process of gathering declarations from everybody who signed that petition,” Murray said. 

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But, he added, even if he can’t get declarations from everyone who signed the petition, if at least 25% of the central committee shows up to the Aug. 24 meeting, that will prove there is enough support for a gathering to vote on whether to oust Williams. 

Murray said Williams has been trying to prevent a quorum as a way to protect his position. “Tell people it’s a bogus meeting. Tell them not to show up. And if they don’t have a quorum, they can’t do anything,” he said in court, as he successfully asked for an order halting the special meeting to be lifted.

It takes a third of the committee to constitute a quorum to even hold a valid meeting — more than is required to request the gathering in the first place.

If Williams is removed, who will replace him?

If Williams is removed, any candidates vying to replace him would only have to win a majority of those present at a central committee meeting called to fill the vacancy to take over the party’s top leadership post.

Watkins has added filling any officer vacancies to the agenda of the Aug. 24 meeting.

The Republicans who are seeking to replace Williams so far include Eli Bremer, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2020 and formerly served as chair of the El Paso County GOP; state Rep. Richard Holtorf, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress this year; former Routt County Treasurer Brita Horn, who ran unsuccessfully to be state treasurer in 2018; and Douglas County GOP Chair Steve Peck.

Another special legislative session on Colorado’s property taxes appeared imminent Monday after a long list of top civic and business groups from across the political spectrum said they supported a deal to stop a pair of measures from appearing on the November ballot.

The deal would cut property taxes by an additional $255 million in 2025 for taxes owed in 2026 — on top of the $1 billion cut the legislature already passed this year during its regular legislative session.

In exchange, Michael Fields, who leads Advance Colorado, a conservative political nonprofit, said he would pull Initiatives 50 and 108 off the statewide ballot. Doing so would prevent even larger tax cuts that elected officials in both parties feared would lead to recession-like cuts to state and local services.

“This seems like a good path forward to end — hopefully — the property tax battles, and de-risk the budget,” Mark Ferrandino, the governor’s budget director, told the state’s Property Tax Commission on Monday.

A special session — the second one on property taxes in the last 10 months — seemed unthinkable a month ago. But after lawmakers and the conservative groups behind the ballot measures presented to the Colorado Forum in recent weeks, the two sides reignited negotiations that had stalled at the end of the legislative session, which ended in May. (The forum is a decades-old public policy panel made up of state business and civic leaders that takes positions on pressing issues.)

Initiative 50 would amend the state constitution to enact a strict cap on annual statewide property tax growth, while Initiative 108 would cut property taxes by $2.4 billion. The measures are being supported by Advance Colorado as well as Colorado Concern, a conservative-leaning nonprofit that represents state business leaders.

Fights over property taxes have become a fixture of the state’s politics in recent years, starting with the 2020 repeal of the tax-limiting Gallagher Amendment. Last tax year, residential tax assessments rose 27% even after lawmakers enacted multiple rounds of tax cuts, leading to ongoing pressure for additional relief.

When the negotiations started up again, a special session seemed unlikely given how poorly the ballot measures have been polling and because Democrats didn’t want to give in to the groups behind the initiatives. But attitudes started changing late last week.

On Monday, the dam burst when social justice groups, business interests, the state’s hospital association, schools, teachers unions and foundations — both liberal and conservative — joined together in a letter asking for a special session to be called.

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“These initiatives present a very significant and real threat to all communities in Colorado,” the groups wrote. “For those reasons, we are supportive of a compromise and a special session.”

The organizations asked that the special session be narrow in scope and limited to one bill implementing an agreed-upon deal. The signatories included labor groups like the Colorado Education Association and the Working Families Party; K-12 school district and university leaders; and business groups like Club 20, the Colorado Contractors Association and the Colorado Hospital Association.

The mayors of Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs also signed a letter to lawmakers Monday calling for a special session to prevent the ballot measures from passing.

“If passed, these two initiatives will drastically defund K-12 schools statewide, deplete local public safety resources and demand crippling cuts to local fire districts and special districts,” wrote Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade. “These are very real impacts that will negatively impact every resident’s quality of life. We are depending on our legislature to ensure this does not happen.”

The mayors said a special session would give the legislature the opportunity to find a “compromise that would avoid such negative impacts white still providing tax relief to our residents.”

Support for a special session isn’t universal. Some think any further cuts to property taxes are unnecessary and ill advised. And they question whether conservative groups could be trusted not to bring back similar initiatives for the next 10 years, per the terms of the proposed agreement.

State Rep. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat from Fort Collins, said her caucus was divided over whether a special session was a good idea.

“There are some people who are risk averse and would like to proceed with a special session and there are others who don’t appreciate that this is the way things are moving forward,” she said.

“I’m less agreeable, personally, to letting the deal be continually revised to the detriment of our state and our citizens,” she added.

On Monday, some members of the state’s bipartisan Property Tax Commission bristled at being asked to weigh in on yet another tax cut that had been negotiated behind closed doors — just months after the legislature passed a property tax measure in Senate Bill 233 that many believed was supposed to put the matter to rest. 

“If it wasn’t a deal (back) then, why did you pass 233?” said Mayor Guyleen Castriotta of Broomfield, who serves on the commission.

“The decision to have a special session has probably already been made by people who have a lot more power than me,” she complained.

Others, though, said further tax cuts were warranted. State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican who helped negotiate Senate Bill 233 as well as the new proposal, said Advance Colorado never agreed to drop the ballot measures the first time around.

“(My constituents’) number one issue is property taxes,” said state Rep. Lisa Frizell, a Republican from Castle Rock. “Their number one pain point is how much their mortgage has gone up on a monthly basis, and how really worried they are about how they can put groceries on the table.”

In exchange for dropping Initiatives 50 and 108, here is the framework for the deal that would be considered during the special session, according to Ferrandino:

• In the 2025 tax year for taxes owed in 2026, the residential assessment rate for local government taxes would drop an additional 0.15% to 6.25%. Today the rate is 6.7%, but under Senate Bill 233, which was passed by the legislature this year with bipartisan support, it is scheduled to fall to 6.4% in the 2025 tax year for taxes paid in 2026. Residential assessments for schools would remain separate from those of local governments, and would fall to 7.05% from 7.15%. (Both cuts could be larger if property values grow faster than expected next year.)
• In the 2026 tax year, the residential assessment rate for local governments would rise to 6.8%, but the increase is offset by a tax break that kicks in that year, exempting up to $70,000 of a home’s value from taxation. Under current law, it is scheduled to rise to 6.95%. The school assessment rate would remain at 7.05%.
• Nonresidential assessment rates would drop to 25% in the 2027 tax year. Under Senate Bill 233, only commercial and agricultural property assessment rates fall to that level, while the rates for industrial and some other properties increase to 29%. The oil and gas industry, which pays much higher property taxes, would not benefit from the cuts.
• Local government revenue would be limited to 10.5% growth over two years, instead of 5.5% annually under Senate Bill 233. School districts would be limited to 12% growth over two years, a new cap that doesn’t exist in current law.

Fields also confirmed the details of the proposal to The Colorado Sun.

The session will likely happen the last week of August, since several Democratic legislators are traveling to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention next week.

Logistically speaking, either Gov. Jared Polis can call for a special session or the legislature can summon itself back to the Capitol by a two-thirds vote.

To meet the demands of conservatives, the deal would have to be completed before Sept. 9, when the November ballot is required to be certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. It takes at least three days to pass a bill at the Capitol. 

Holding a special session brings political risks beyond the property tax debate.

It’s an election year, and Republicans are trying to dismantle the Democratic supermajority in the House and prevent one from being secured in the Senate. The GOP could be tempted to force the issue with controversial amendments and floor speeches.

The session may also invite disruption from lawmakers who aren’t returning to the Capitol next year after losing their primary races in June or abandoning their reelection bids mid cycle. 

For instance, state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat who was unseated in the June 25 primary, has already been critical on social media of the tax debate. During the last special session on property taxes in 2023, she used the occasion to disrupt proceedings in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

Finally, unions will likely push lawmakers to take up some pro-labor bills passed during the session this year that Polis vetoed. That’s part of why a special session wasn’t called to strip out a provision in a bill kneecapping a 2024 ballot measure that would overhaul the state’s election process. 

Polis can call a special session for a specific purpose, but can’t limit the legislature to only consider a specific bill. Courts have said the legislature has some leeway to introduce measures beyond the narrow scope of a governor’s call, as long as it has a “rational” connection to the session’s stated purpose, according to a legislative legal memo.

So far, much of the planning for the special session has happened behind closed doors. 

Last week, the House and Senate Democratic caucuses met to discuss the situation, but reporters were kept out.

The Senate Democratic caucus met Thursday evening on Zoom to discuss “what would even be possible with schedules/logistics” around property taxes and the state budget, a spokesperson said.

The Sun tried to attend the meeting, but was barred because legislation wasn’t going to be discussed and nothing is currently pending before the legislature, the spokesperson said.

A similar situation played out when The Denver Post tried to attend the House Democrats’ gathering, according to a reporter for the newspaper.

The new open meetings law for the General Assembly that was passed by the legislature this year says the public does not have a right to attend meetings about subjects that “are by nature interpersonal, administrative or logistical.” Previously, an open meeting was broadly defined as “any kind of gathering, convened to discuss public business, in person, by telephone, electronically, or by other means of communication.”

People convicted of felonies who have served their entire sentences can vote in Colorado. So can people on probation and parole.

Those convicted of felonies who are imprisoned or confined to detention as part of their sentence cannot vote. They regain their voting eligibility after they have completed their “full term of imprisonment,” according to the Colorado Secretary of State.

“The day you are released from detention or incarceration is the day your eligibility to register to vote is restored,” the office stated on its website.

Defendants facing criminal charges in jail who are pretrial detainees or out on bond awaiting trial can vote. In May 2024, the General Assembly passed a law requiring county clerks to work with county sheriffs to allow voting in jail for at least one day, give detainees information on voting eligibility and provide them with instructions on how they can verify or change voter registration. 

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

See full source list below.

GRAND JUNCTION — Tina Peters opted Friday not to testify in her defense — but not before expressing dissatisfaction with the fairness of her trial.

“I just feel like I have been prevented from providing a defense for myself,” she told 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett. “The court has excluded that and therefore I decline.”

On the eighth day of her trial, Peters had dangled the possibility she would testify, but only if the judge agreed to put guardrails on the questions she might be asked.

“I don’t want prosecutors to come in and bully me around like I have seen them do to others,” Peters told Barrett while the jury was out of the courtroom.

Barrett told Peters several times that he could not give legal advice to a defendant about whether she should testify, or not.

She persisted.

“I just ask that you restrain them and rein them in,” she said. “This will affect my decision whether to testify.”

“This is exceedingly unusual,” Barrett said about Peters’ request. He instructed her to consult with her attorneys.

Peters did that over a break and ultimately said she would not testify.

Defense lawyers rested their case after that, putting the trial on track to be wrapped up on Monday on schedule.

Four witnesses were called to defend Peters, but one was not allowed to testify

Peters’ lawyers called four witnesses to defend her actions when she and a cadre of election deniers breached the Mesa County elections system in May 2021.

Several cyber security experts testified briefly about blurred passwords in images released on a QAnon website in August 2021 — ostensibly to show that what Peters took from the elections system was not a thing of value.

The defense called a fellow former Colorado clerk, Dallas Schroeder, to testify. But Schroeder, who is now an Elbert County commissioner, was asked only three brief questions before the defense ended his testimony following a lengthy attorneys conference at the judge’s bench.

Schroeder said outside the courtroom that he had traveled to Colorado from a family vacation in Tennessee to testify.

Earlier, another hoped-for Peters’ witness — an election denier named David Clements — was not allowed to take the stand after more private attorney arguments.

Clements recently made a conspiracy-theory documentary that was shown in a Grand Junction church two weeks before the Peters’ trial began. Speakers at that event threatened violence against those trying to prosecute Peters and others trying to expose voter fraud.

No reason was given in open court for Clements not being allowed to take the stand. But the judge has repeatedly admonished the defense attorneys over the past week that the case before him is not about election fraud.

The defense’s star witness, Sherronna Bishop, a far-right activist and friend of Peters, was on the stand for a second day Friday for cross-examination by the defense.

When asked why she helped organize and took part in Peters’ breach of the election system, she answered “I was there as a voter and a concerned citizen.”

Bishop admitted she organized meetings with national-level election deniers, she set up encrypted chat sessions with those involved in the Mesa County breach, and she communicated regularly with Peters about the details of carrying out the breach. Those communications often occurred in the middle of the night.

Bishop’s memory of the details of the election deniers’ actions three years ago was sharp under defense questioning. She repeatedly answered, “I don’t recall” under questioning from the prosecution.

Once the defense rested its case and the jury was sent home, defense attorney Daniel Hartman asked Judge Barrett to throw out two of the charges against Peters — identity theft and official misconduct. Barrett declined.

Peters is charged with 10 felony and misdemeanor counts, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, identity theft, violation of duty and failure to comply with an order from the Colorado Secretary of State.

She faces the possibility of more than 20 years in prison if the jury finds her guilty.

The jury is expected to begin deliberations Monday after closing arguments.