Monday, May 4, 2015

The people of Colorado win!

Today the Colorado Senate Appropriations Committee voted to not send SB15-286 to the floor of the Colorado Senate for further consideration.

What I've done to help stop this very misguided idea from becoming a reality has very much been in the spirit of Save the Caucus, the committee that was formed to fight Amendment 29 in 2002. Despite being outspent 1400 to 1 (yes 1400 to one) Save the Caucus won big 60% to 40%.

SB15-286 was brought to the Senate last Friday in the closing hours of this session. I've been monitoring such a possibility for the entire session after the Denver Post editorial created the idea of a Presidential Primary in Colorado.

Some reporter needs to dig into what triggered the idea of a Presidential Primary with the with the Denver Post? Was it something that came out of their advertising department? Ad revenues would sky rocket with a primary election, that's for sure.

Is Colorado better off with our Colorado Caucus than we would be with a Presidential Primary? Absolutely! Look at the states with our system (down to 17) to those that powerful forces have driven to the darkside and what do you observe? Here's what:

"Primaries (as opposed to selection of delegates via a caucus system) have probably fostered exactly the kind of television-driven, sound-bite-heavy, attack-oriented presidential politics Americans deplore,' writes Christopher C. Hull in his Stanford University Press book "Grassroots Rules."

"The last three decades' drive toward more representativeness (the illusion created by a Presidential Primary instead of the Caucus system) may be not only be selecting worse candidates but harming the country's politics."

I did the little that was possible for me to do myself, posting here on the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and this educational website that has been my personal project for a few years, making phone calls, and, most importantly, getting Corky Kyle and others involved in fighting it..

This fight about how Colorado selects our delegates to the national nominating conventions of the major political parties is far from over.

More about what might happen next tomorrow.

Thanks again to Corky Kyle and all the others who gave our wonderful Colorado Caucus a reprieve so it has that tomorrow.

No comments: