Ernest Luning

A capacity crowd danced the night away at a VFW hall in West Denver on March 26 to celebrate the legacy of César Chávez at the dinner-dance sponsored by the local council of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

Colorado Republicans pick a new state chairman this weekend from a field of five starkly different candidates but the outgoing party boss looms large over the election even after withdrawing from the race more than a month ago.

It’s hard to be a Republican in Denver — at least according to Denver Republicans, who gathered for their annual Lincoln Day Dinner on March 18 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

The five candidates for Colorado Republican Party chairman got into a spirited discussion about money — how to raise it for the state party, whether old campaign debts should be an issue and whether the chairman’s job should be a paid position — at the breakfast meeting of the Arapahoe County Republican Men’s Club on March 9 at Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant in the Tech Center.

Seven years ago this month, two-term U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell sent Colorado’s political world spinning with an abrupt announcement he wouldn’t seek another term.

Ballot measures on taxes that were headed to the November ballot are being pulled by their sponsors, Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, and the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, but for very different reasons.

Heath told The Colorado Statesman Monday that he’s pulling his citizen initiative that would increase the rates of state income and sales taxes for three years, in favor of a measure that would make the increases permanent.

A Republican-turned-Democrat is preparing to announce her candidacy against a Democrat-turned-Republican for mayor of Aurora, The Colorado Statesman has learned.

Denver mayoral candidates agreed on at least one thing Tuesday during a debate over how to fix the city’s schools: Go Angels!

Colorado Democrats elected sixth-generation Pueblo native Rick Palacio as state chairman at the biennial reorganization meeting March 5 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. Palacio won on the first ballot, carrying 57 percent of the vote in a three-way race against a former state senator and past chairman of a crucial swing county.

In addition to being the Colorado Democratic Party’s largest fundraiser, the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner on March 5 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver was also a swan song for outgoing state party chairwoman Pat Waak, but she had Sandhill Cranes on her mind.