News from tonight's primaries:

In Connecticut's Fourth District, Orange to Blue candidate Jim Himes administered a severe electoral beating to his primary opponent, Lee Whitnum.

How severe?

Himes won 87% to 13%. Granted, Whitnum was an exceptionally weak opponent, but still, a 74-point win is not bad.

In Colorado's Second District - perhaps the one of most interest to Democrats, as the Democratic primary here will determine the next Representative from a safe Democratic district - Jared Polis leads Joan Fitz-Gerald by just under 1,400 votes, with just 30% of the vote counted. Polis has 43% of the vote, to Fitz-Gerald's 39%.

The third candidate, Will Shafroth, trails with 18% and is pretty much done.

In the Fifth District, widely loathed GOP incumbent Doug Lamborn has apparently lived to fight another year. Lamborn picked up 46% of the vote in his reelection bid (it's an R+16 district, so the Republican primary usually is the election here).

His two rivals, Jeff Crank and Bentley Rayburn, have 29% and 26%, respectively, with 58% of the vote in.

Meanwhile in the Sixth District, Tom Tancredo's old stomping grounds, 93% of the vote is in, and it appears that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has fended off fellow Republican Wil Armstrong (son of former Sen. Bill Armstrong) to win the nomination (and almost certainly win election).

This has two side effects. First, the next Colorado Secretary of State will be a Democrat, appointed by Democratic Governor Bill Ritter.

Second, Coffman has been mentioned as a potential U.S. Senate candidate for 2010, against Democratic incumbent Sen. Ken Salazar. A loss here would have neatly ended such talk, but Coffman's victory makes a future Senate run a bit more likely. With a statewide electoral pedigree, it would seem the GOP could come up with worse candidates than Coffman.

Colorado's slightly schizo political profile is in stark relief today, where the three competitive primaries are in stark contrast. You've got CO-02, the extremely safe seat Mark Udall is leaving for his Senate run and on the other end of the spectrum are the R+16 CO-05 and the R+10 seat CO-06. CO-06 is the seat being vacated by the immigrant-hating Tom Tancredo, and CO-05 is represented by freshman wingnut Doug Lamborn. Swing State gives the basics on those races.

The winner of these primary races are almost certainly going to be the general election winners, so it's no suprise that so many candidates are vying for them. Of particular interest for us is who is going to be filling Mark Udall's seat in D.C. next January. In what has been one of the most expensive primary races in the nation, and is expected to bring out lots of voters.

The contest pitting former state Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, conservationist Will Shafroth and wealthy entrepreneur Jared Polis is expected to generate turnout surpassing the high of the past 10 years and perhaps even that of the big campaigns in the 1990s.

This time, the big turnout will be linked to the race for a U.S. House seat. The three biggest 2nd District Democratic primary turnouts of the past 20 years - in 1990, 1992 and 2004 - were tied to U.S. Senate races.

This year, 2nd District voters - residing in 10 counties stretching from the north metro area into the mountains - have been exposed to the costliest congressional primary in Colorado history, with the three candidates raising more than $9 million. The bulk of that is linked to Polis, who has devoted $5.3 million of his personal fortune to the effort.

The turnout will be interesting to see, and a potential indicator of who's going to come out in Colorado in November. This district will be key to Obama's and Udall's prospects in November--driving high turnout today and building that enthusiasm through the fall will be critical to flip the state to Blue in November.

For more background on the race--and one of the most ironic journalistic efforts to make a non-issue an issue by declaring it a non-issue (Polis's sexual orientation)--see this Time article.

Hello Kossacks, MaverickModeratehere, Netroots liason for the Collins For Congress campaign CO-06.

One of our own, long time Kossack Mike Collins aka ranger25 of Aurora, Colorado entered the race in February and has now decided to embrace the Netroots and make it a cornerstone of his campaign.

Mike is a decorated war hero, twice awarded the bronze star for his service in Vietnam. During his service Mike was exposed to agent orange and developed esophageal cancer as a result. Today he speaks with an electro-larynx which serves as a constant reminder of his sacrifice in the line of duty. This could actually be an advantage in Tom Tancredo’s sixth district.

Mike gave his voice in the service of our country, now he wants to give progressives a voice in Washington.

***More below the jump***

Just had to get this out there, renewable energy is a huge part of my campaign as well as the future of American transportation and the economy it feeds.  For those that think corn based ethanol is the answer to the fuel appetite of America, you are way off the mark.  There is always hope, even if there is little time  MC

Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae
Michael Briggs, University of New Hampshire, Physics Department

(revised August 2004)

I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.

But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)

This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.

crossposted to swingstateproject

On Monday (December 17th), Colorado's Republican Secretary of State, Mike Coffman announced the results of Colorado's long-delayed, long-anticipated review of electronic voting machines.  Colorado has one of the strictest voting standards in the country, and it was no surprise that most of the machines were decertified as a result of the review.

What was surprising, was that Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold) was the only company to have all of its machines conditionally certified!  This flies in the face of all known reviews of their equipment - and, as it turns out, against the recommendation of Colorado's Testing Board (PDF)

Now the story is becoming clearer - at least for Colorado citizens...

In the front-page diary on our friend Tom Tancredo's Vietnam deferment I was asked if any Democrats are running for his seat next year.

As far as I know only one person has announced and he's amazing.

TakeBackTheHouse wrote a diary when Mike first announced but while Tom Tancredo is on the frontpage I figured it would be a good time to reintroduce him to everyone.

Mike Collins is a disabled Vietnam veteran who was awarded two Bronze Stars, one for Valor and one for Meritorious Service.

You may remember this web ad from Mike Collins, a disabled Vietnam veteran who expressed his displeasure at Marilyn Musgrave and her inability to understand what it really means to support our troops.

Well, Mike has decided to step up and make a bid for the House seat being left vacant by a departing Tom Tancredo.

Mike's website is up, although he says it is a 'work in progress' on his Progress Now blog.

I finally got out my ballot today after it came in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

To me knowing who to vote for in local elections is futile. So little press is given and local newspapers tend to have the writing level of an elementary school paper. Spell check dammit!

So I started doing Google searches on the candidates and even did Open Secret searches and didn't have much luck until I found this great article by an obvious tool of a Republican telling his similarly brainless friends who to vote for.

We will use his article to help us to know who NOT to vote for.

Just after the last out of the World Series, Tom Tancredo announced that he would not run for his Congressional seat again, regardless of the outcome of his Presidential bid.  Apparently, he has lost the fire in the belly.  Or so he says.

More below the fold.

Xenophobe and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo has announced that .he will not defend his suburban Denver Congressional seat in 2008, waiting until the Rockies went down to defeat in the World Series before announcing his plans.

This is going to be a fairly quick hitting diary, because I am due to leave for work in about 15 minutes.

As was expected in some quarters, Tom Tancredo has elected to either move up to the White House, or out of elective politics. Which means, of course, that he is going out of elective politics.

OMG!!! An AP story in the Denver Post says that Mr. Tancredo is being indecisive regarding running for re-election in CO-06. He will withdraw if he doesn't end up in the top three slots in either New Hampshire or Iowa.

his candidacy will be "pretty much over with" and he will have to decide whether to run for re-election to his House seat next year

Wouldn't it be sweet if he didn't run again? Quick, someone call Jay Fawcett!

Note: Jay, ran in CO-05 last year and has been urged to move to CO-06 and run there.

Cross-posted on SquareState

If you ever needed proof that the Colorado Republican Congressional delegation is in the nuttiest camp of the lunatic fringe of the right wing, look no farther than this vote Friday.

Only 84 Republicans in the House voted for an amendment which would have forbidden Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi from traveling to other countries. 337 members voted No, including all the Democrats and a vast majority of Republicans.

But among the Yes votes were all three of Colorado's Republican contingent--Lamborn, Tancredo, and even the "new" and supposedly "bipartisan" Marilyn Musgrave.

Jay Fawcett's nemesis in Colorado's 5th CD appears to have fallen flat on his face in campaign funds raised in 1st Quarter of 2007.  Doug Lamborn, raised only $75,000, a poor beginning for a 1st term Congressman. Let's hope Fawcett takes advantage of this, if at all possible.  

   My wonderfully ignorant and racist House member Tom Tancredo (CO-6) just announced he will in fact run for the Presidency in 2008.

It took me a minute to digest this and I've come to the conclusion that this can only help us come November 4, 2008.

What better to divide the Republican party than to have an extremist racist that has a huge following with racist groups such as the KKK, The CCC and SOS

Granted the man won in my district for a disgusting 3rd time but we all know the country as a whole isn't as ignorant as those that voted for him last November in CO-06.

The Colorado Republicans have appealed to the Supreme Court to allow them to put in place a redistricting map they came up with in 2003.  However, since a Democratic state judge had already created a map in 2002, and since that map had been approved by the state legislature while they were still working on a new map, the 2002 map has to stay.  Apparently Colorado law permits redrawing district lines only once per decade.

Month 3 of Tracking the Top 50 House Pick up Chances

With the Presidential race gearing up at a its fastest pace ever, it is extremely important to remember that 2008 is still a chance to strength our majority in the House and as importantly, punish the Republicans who stood with Bush every step of the way until it was politically inconvenient. So this is Month Three.