Don Gips, an executive at Level 3 Communications in Broomfield, picked up his tickets at a VIP table set up outside today's rally for Sen. Barack Obama in Westminster.



Gips, formerly domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore, has raised money for Obama and was an early supporter of his presidential campaign.

"I've been working with him for four years," said Gips. "He's a wonderful, inspirational leader. He reminds me of my old boss, Vice President Gore, in his vision for the country." Gips said he got to know Obama by writing "him an e-mail and ended up helping him early on when he was still building his Senate office."

Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is targeting Independents in Colorado’s suburbs, Latinos in the southern part of the state, and voters in Republican-dominated areas most Democratic candidates write off, a top strategist said today.

“You can’t simply compete where Democrats have done traditionally well. You have to compete in all areas,’’ said Robert Gibbs, senior strategist for the Illinois senator’s campaign. “It’s a microcosm of a lot of different states where you have important constituencies, you have growing suburbs but you also have red areas that Democrats have traditionally neglected.

“Changing the score of those areas could also change the outcome,’’ of who wins the election,’’ Gibbs added.

Gibbs spoke about Obama’s approach to Colorado at a breakfast with reporters. He discussed a number of topics, including the economy, congressional negotiations over the economic bailout bill, and whether the first presidential debate will happen Friday.

In Colorado, Obama is talking economics to attract voters, and the campaign is registering voters.

“Changing the makeup of the electorate is key to changing the outcome of the election,’’ Gibbs said.

The campaign believes it can get voters to the polls, using people in communities to talk with other people in the same communities, he said.

Republican John McCain's political director Mike DuHaime on Wednesday said Republicans expect to win Colorado.

“There is certainly a commonality between Sen. McCain being from Arizona, understanding Western issues, the same with Gov. Palin,’’ DuHaime said. “That commonality, that understanding of those issues is one that is going to come across.”

Both campaigns are targeting the Latino populations in Colorado and the West, he said at a lunch with reporters. McCain’s campaign also is putting resources in the Denver Metro area.

Democrats have won statewide races in Colorado are moderates, DuHaime said.

“If you look at Senator Obama, his record certainly doesn’t show that,’’ and Obama hasn’t ever bucked the interests of his party, DuHaime said. “I think that will ultimately resonate over time.”

The McCain camp is ramping up voter outreach, he said, last week calling or knocking on doors of more than one million homes throughout the country. The Republican party's ability to reach voters is better than it was in 2004 or 2006, he said.

"What we've got are battle-tested volunteers who have done it before,'' DuHaime said.

At today’s breakfast, Obama strategist Gibbs said he believes Friday's debate will happen as planned.

The commission running the presidential debates “has not talked to us in any way about changing what is planned to happen Friday,’’ Gibbs said.

“We’re prepared to take questions from (moderator) Jim Lehrer without John McCain,’’ Gibbs said of the Republican presidential candidate.

He later said of McCain “I think he’s going to come to the debate.”

Gibbs tried to lower expectations for Obama’s performance, saying that debates are not his forte and that McCain has “staked his candidacy on 26 years of Washington experience on foreign policy.”

In answering questions, Obama “sometimes takes 60 seconds to clear his throat,” Gibbs said. “He tends to get a question, describe the problem, tell a story, give some solutions.”

DuHaime made a similar effort Wednesday, saying that debates aren’t McCain’s preferred format for reaching voters.

"We know that Senator Obama is a phenominal debater,'' he said. "Senator McCain does not have that same reputation as a debater. But I think is message will come across."

The lunch was held prior to McCain announcing that he was stopping his campaign to work on the economic bailout package. Asked if the effort would fail without McCain’s support, DuHaime said that “Senator McCain’s clearly a leader that folks look to, but there are 100 U.S. senators, 435 members of Congress, they’ve all got to vote the way they feel they need to vote.”

Any election that offers stuff this funny needs to go down as one for the ages.

Here is Sarah Silverman.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dafdd1aa7b

And here is David Letterman (and Homer Simpson).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVTbXcpN2s&eurl=http://104.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml&nocache=0&up_prefs_

Congressional hopeful Betsy Markey has said she followed ethics advice in 2005 and divested her interest in technology company Syscom Services when she went to work for Sen. Ken Salazar in a position that potentially put her in contact with the same federal agencies her company received contracts from. 

But in video of an interview Markey gave Wade Norris for 1510 AM in the Fort Collins area she still claims partial ownership of the firm. Morris posted the interview on his blog Sept. 6, about a week before the Syscom questions surfaced. It appeared on YouTube in February.

"Almost 16 percent of our budget at Syscom Services, which is a company my husband and I own, our budget goes to health care," Markey says. (Statement at 4:20 marker.)

The Markey campaign and Salazar's office have maintained that Markey followed all ethics rules - in this instance laid out in an October 2005 in a letter from the Senate ethics committee - every step of the way. 

Syscom received at least $1.4 million in contracts while she served as a regional director for Salazar, a post in which she acted as a liaison between constituents and the federal agencies with which they had problems. The $1.4 million doesn't include $1.5 million Syscom earned in contracts in 2007 because Markey worked for Salazar for only part of the year. 

The campaign for Republican incumbent Marilyn Musgrave has pointed out that if, in fact, Markey did divest her interest in Syscom to her husband Jim Kelly as she said - then Syscom should have lost its special status as a woman-owned business.

But Syscom officials sought in January 2006 the woman-owned business status at a time when Markey worked in Salazar's office, according to the company's contract with the General Services Administration.

The status allowed Syscom to be listed on the GSA Web site federal agencies use to shop for contractors among other disadvantaged businesses. 

The Markey campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Folks bashing Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave for co-sponsoring a bill to boost profits made off the sale of gold coins may not have found the treasure chest of scandal they thought.

The bill - HR2883 now in House Ways and Means - would lower the gains tax on standard gold bullion to 15 percent from the 28 percent rate it receives as a "collectible," according to Diane Piret of the Industry Council for Tangible Assets, which is supporting the bill in Congress.

On Musgrave's financial disclosures, the Republican incumbent lists among her husband Steve's assets between $50,000 and $100,000 in gold coins and precious metals. The campaign confirms he's a lifelong collector of rarities.

But not so fast with that "a ha!"

Piret says the bill will affect the standardized coins and bars issued by the U.S. Mint and other governments and not the plundered booty from a Spanish galleon or ancient Roman currency.

A plain reading of the bill's language doesn't seem to make that distinction, however, and the Democratic Betsy Markey campaign stands by its charge that Musgrave is trying to enrich her husband through the legislation.

Markey spokesman Ben Marter says the bill still raises questions. 

Musgrave spokesman Jason Theilman, who apparently was not aware of the potential discrepancy, had an answer.

"Her husband is a coin collector," Theilman said. "Marilyn Musgrave is very proud to lower taxes on precious metals. She's very proud to lower income taxes, and guess what. She has an income."

The coin conundrum follows Musgrave's allegations yesterday that Markey may have simultaneously held a Senate staff position while her company received millions in federal contracts or that her husband's company inappropriately labeled itself a woman-owned business.

The two are battling for the 4th Congressional District seat.

John Andrews says I'm falling for liberal propaganda when I quote Alaska talk radio host Dan Fagan's searing critique of Sarah Palin's actions in the "Troopergate" matter.
I'm sure that will be a surprise to Alaskans, for whom Fagan is a kind of local Rush Limbaugh.
Fagan's a winger, John, and he - like George F. Will and David Brooks and other conservatives - has found something not to like about the notion of Palin as vice president.
Now, you can throw links at me from conservative web sites, John, which are there for just this kind of politically self-reinforcing function. And I can toss links back at you, from Talking Points Memo and similar neighborhoods on the left. And neither, we probably can agree, will get us much more than the party line.
What struck me about Fagan's column is that he is an Alaskan Limbaugh going after his own party's golden gal, because he believes she is abusing her power as governor.

Unlike Rush, Fagan doesn't swoon over Palin (whom the real Rush likes to leeringly refer to as "a babe"). However, in earlier columns, Fagan has been quite critical of her former brother-in-law, the state trooper. In fact, Fagan sides with Palin in the original dispute.
It is Palin's abuse of her power as an elected official that alarms Fagan. She used the influence of her office and back door channels to continue to persecute the guy after the disciplinary system had done its job, and then dismissed a veteran Alaska public safety official (and ex-Marine) who wouldn't bend to her pressure.
Now, Alaska is a small state, population-wise, and its political community is relatively tiny. Palin may have cut in front of Fagan at the supermarket, or riled him some other way.
I've never met the guy. Maybe he's just in it for ratings. But to me, he's making sense.
Sum total, at the end of the day: Palin's human, impulsive, and a bit vindictive. We all can probably live with that. It's the oldest political trick - reward your friends and punish your enemies.
But as anyone who has been there knows, it's the cover-up that kills you in the end, not the original sin. And the governor who called for the investigation herself, is now frantically stonewalling.

With polls showing Republican Sen. John McCain gaining support among white women, Democratic women in Congress will push the issues of equal pay, health care and protecting Social Security as they campaign for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

If women look at the records of the two candidates, they will support Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver, and several other female House members said today.

“Sen. McCain misses the mark for women’s health care and for children’s health care,’’ DeGette said. “Sen. McCain wants to radically restructure our nation’s health care system, which would hit women the hardest.”

The McCain health care plan would give a tax credit to people who buy their own insurance, which DeGette said would push people out of employer-sponsored plans, putting many people’s health insurance at risk.

McCain does not support legislation that would mandate equal pay for women and men in the same jobs, the women lawmakers said, something Obama supports.

McCain’s camp yesterday issued a statement with a Seattle Post-Intelligencer news story revealing that on average women who work for McCain in his Senate office make more than those who work in Obama’s. More women in McCain’s office hold higher-ranking and higher-paying jobs than those in Obama’s, the story said, with women working as three of McCain’s five highest paid aides.

The women lawmakers did not speak directly about Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin. Her name came up only once, in a reference to the “McCain-Palin” ticket.

The women lawmakers are talking about McCain because he is the presidential nominee, DeGette said, but Palin’s positions are similar to McCain’s.

The women also rejected the idea that supporters of Democratic primary contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are shifting to McCain.

DeGette will campaign for and act as a surrogate for Obama in Colorado through the election.

"My fellow conservatives, remember how frustrating it was when Bill Clinton committed perjury and liberals looked the other way.

"As conservatives, we are no better unless we demand full disclosure from our governor when it comes to Troopergate."

 

Hmmm.

I'm inclined to give Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt until I see how she copes with the pressure of the campaign and her debate with Joe Biden.

But this column from one of Alaska's leading conservative columnists was startling.

Maybe there is more to this than we thought.  

Pueblo - Locals sit shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar in the one-room Alibi Lounge on the town's south side.

Nearby thousands of Barack Obama supporters line up in the blazing sun at the nearby State Fair grounds hoping to get a seat in the grandstand or arena floor, typically the territory of bulls and broncos.

But in the cool of the neighborhood bar, David and Juanita Andrews relaxed in their vinyl seats and toasted the candidate with tequila shots and lime-laden Coronas. Their prediction?

Obama may not have won Pueblo in the Democratic primary, but his humble roots and appeals to the working class on economic issues will go over big in the steel town now struggling with poverty and joblessness - a town that mirrors many rural stops in Western states.

"There's a poverty problem," said David Andrews. "The middle is disappearing. A lot of people are out of work. We don't like that."

The old-school Democratic town still pines for the days of Bill Clinton and consistently delivers big and essential Democratic majorities during statewide elections.

As Obama crisscrosses the country today and tomorrow targeting key voting groups - Independents and Republicans in Grand Junction and swing voters in Jefferson County - he must pay his respects to the blue-collar and largely Hispanic population of Pueblo, says analyst Floyd Ciruli.

It's a stop most top Democratic presidential candidates make, though as Colorado takes it place as a battleground state, energizing the base here becomes essential, Ciruli said.

"It's the most important Democratic city outside the metro area," Ciruli said. "It's the Pittsburg of Colorado."

Consider Cindy Benecke of Colorado Springs energized. In her visor and sunglasses she hoisted high a neon-green poster reading "This hockey mama is for Obama" as she waited in the entrance line with her two friends.

Before the trio made it into the party atmosphere of the arena - draped in red-white-and-blue bunting, mariachi music and a massive, 150-foot flag - they said they hope Obama ignores Republican superstar vice presidential pick Sarah Palin and focuses on real issues.

They fire in rapid succession:

"The economy."

"Education and schools."

"The issues with Lehman Brothers."

Or, as Obama supporter Stefan Creighton puts it, "Don't forget about the little guy."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane was late arriving at DIA, and so she missed  the eating part of her scheduled lunch with a group of Washington columnists and reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor at the Brown Palace this afternoon.

Not to worry. The Speaker got there in time for dessert, and attacked the chocolate mousse with relish as she gave an energetic performance.

“You’re getting me right off the plane, with chocolate,” she said, explaining the exuberance with which she launched salvoes at the Republicans. The GOP has “taken us into war, into debt,a decline in the economy, a mortgage crisis, an energy crisis,” Pelosi said. “There isn’t an area of public policy this administration has not failed in.”

Pelosi, predictably, hailed the choice of Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s running mate. She called the 65-year-old Biden “the All-American boy” with the right mix of experience and independence.

The Speaker said the nation’s capital was “a city of status quo,” ruled by special interests that can frustrate the best of efforts. “You have to know the territory so you can work it,”Pelosi said she warns freshmen representatives, “but you can never become apart of it.”

Biden, with 36 years in the Senate, will balance Obama’s relative inexperience in Washington, said Pelosi.

But “not being around a long time ain’t a bad thing,” she said. “Our founders were disrupters. Martin Luther King was a disrupter.”

In an Obama administration “the leverage is no longer going to be with the super rich – it’s going to be with the working class families of this country.

“We need that disruption,” she said.