Jody Hope Strogoff

On the same day that U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet rallied campaign workers at President Obama’s Denver headquarters, Ron Paul’s campaign for president officially opened their field office in a storefront in the Stapleton community of town. A large crowd of supporters from throughout the state dropped by the Nov. 6 open house to meet staff and talk politics.

It’s somewhat rare to find Colorado’s typically stalwart Republican senate caucus with their guard let down, but that seemed to be the case Oct. 13 when the GOP state senators met at the Legislature to elect their new leadership team for the 2011-12 year. Minority Leader Sen. Mike Kopp, R-Littleton, was stepping down from his leadership post and resigning as a senator entirely so he could spend more time with his four children after the untimely death this summer of their mother and his wife, Kim, from cancer.

When attorney Cole Finegan learned that Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce President Kelly Brough had good naturedly agreed to a grilling at this year’s Colorado “I Have a Dream” roast on Sept. 20, he began salivating at the prospect of getting even with the woman who succeeded him as chief of staff for then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. “When Mary Hanewall and Steve Kaplan called me,” Finegan related about the “I Have a Dream Foundation” executive director and board member, “I just said, ‘Thank you God, you’ve finally delivered.’”

Embattled Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who has come under recent fire by Democrats and public watchdog groups for agreeing to participate in a Sept. 22 fundraiser to help the Larimer County Republican Party pay a $15,700 fine which his own office has levied, isn’t backing down.

In fact, Gessler reaffirmed his stance Friday in an interview with The Colorado Statesman shortly after he addressed a Republican business group on “all the great things that have happened since you’ve elected a conservative to the Secretary of State’s office.”

This western tale doesn’t change much from one year to the next — and that’s a good thing.

Joy Hoffman, the conscientious chair of the Arapahoe County GOP, is also host extraordinaire. Witness the lovely shindig she threw a couple weeks ago for incumbent Congressman Mike Coffman. Held in the expansive backyard of her beautiful Greenwood Village home where it is several degrees cooler than in sweltering downtown Denver, the second annual barbeque for Coffman featured hot dogs, some smoked meat, but best of all, a potpourri of politics to feed the appetite.

ASPEN — Surging in recent national polls that show him at the top of a crowded field of Republican contenders hoping to defeat President Barack Obama in 2012, newly announced candidate Rick Perry flew into Aspen Thursday afternoon for a private fundraiser hosted by Colorado Republicans Marc and Kristen Holtzman. Less than two hours later, the three term Governor of Texas reboarded a private jet at the nearby Aspen airport and headed back to Denver for another $2500-per-person fundraiser.

SILVERTHORNE — Tradition runs deep in Colorado’s mountains and valleys and nowhere was that more evident than outside of Silverthorne earlier this month when local Republicans gathered for their annual pig roast. As Summit County GOP Chair Debra Irvine explained to newcomers who joined several dozen more seasoned participants at the magnificent TYL ranch a few miles out of town, the annual event began a few years ago as a sort of thank you to party volunteers who helped clean up a portion of nearby Highway 9, which the local GOP had adopted.

Please don’t construe the headline on this article as a necessarily glum and fatalistic commentary on the stages of life. It isn’t meant to be. It’s just that it sums up three events that have recently occured (or will occur, in one instance) and which show us the differing points in life that we’re experiencing aside from all the politics.

Let’s begin, naturally, at the beginning: the first stage of life.

It hasn’t even been six months since Gov. John Hickenlooper took office, but he’s kicking off his fundraising for 2014 this weekend with a barbeque at his Park Hill home. The co-chairs of the event include some of the same Republicans who supported his election bid in 2010, such as Greg Maffei, a major fundraiser for former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and other Republican candidates, and Larry Mizel, a well known Republican businessman in Denver who was instrumental in raising big bucks for Hickenlooper’s first gubernatorial campaign.