It's August, the time of year when many of us are trying to squeeze in a last minute getaway, getting ready for back to school, or maybe heading to the movie theater.

Yes, I was one of those who took advantage of the air conditioning and saw the Odyssey and Spider-Man back to back on two weekends.

Let's face it, it's nice to escape the heat.

And also the headlines.

But Colorado is not taking a break and taking the month off.

No, no, political campaigns are really taking shape ahead of the November election.

And a new gun law went to effect this week.

That is a lot of people talking.

Those behind me have a lot to say as well.

So let's kick off this month with Colorado inside out.

Hi, everyone, I'm Kyle Tyler.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start with Patty Calhoun, founder and editor emeritus of Westword.

David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute.

Elena Alvarez, reporter at Axios Denver.

And Adam Berg, government affairs professional and policy advisor.

So Labor Day is often when political campaigns kick into high gear.

But already in early August, polling suggests some some races may be more competitive than expected, including Jeff Hurt's seat in Colorado's third congressional district.

And national Democrats believe they have a path the competing quite well in all eight of Colorado's congressional districts.

This is interesting to see this party.

We only have to look at what happened in Michigan on Tuesday to see that we shouldn't trust the polls too much.

But Wednesday, when they said that eight congressional districts could be in I mean, the most Republican congressional districts could be in play in Colorado.

Was fascinating, at least to really think of what the opportunities were.

I mean, you've got Crank and Jessica Killen down in the pit.

I mean, if El Paso County elects a Democrat, it would be amazing.

But they are shifting a little less Republican than they used to be.

I think Jeff Hurd, even though that's a very optimistic poll, I think he's pretty much of all the incumbents that a Republican has a lock on that.

The fascinating one is Lauren Boebert versus Eileen Laugher.

She has an amazing pedigree.

Early early entry into the Naval Academy.

Five kids has homeschooled an incredible resume for that area, which Lauren Boebert does not have.

I mean, she's not a rancher.

She's not a farmer.

Eileen at least has a military background, unlike basically every Republican candidate.

So that's going to be incredible coming November.

You would think maybe the Republicans would really be in a weird space, because no one's going to come out to vote for Victor Marcos, or I should say, not enough to make a difference.

But the ballot measures will bring out Republicans, and that will get all these congressional areas really in play.

Okay.

All right.

David.

Well, as Patty said, you have to be skeptical sometimes about trusting a poll that was commissioned by the candidate, the candidate's own campaign.

So like it like in Michigan, that this guy, Abdul El-Sayed, who wants to exterminate the state of Israel and says he loves the Jews.

So very honest fellow.

He had a poll that said he was 19 points ahead from his own campaign, and he ended up winning by 1%.

However, this one in the Jeff Hurd race is different because that poll the Hurd's challenger, the Democrat he hired, Keating Research and their Colorado poll on presidential elections 1216, 2024 was almost exactly right on the nose for the final margin.

They were right in 2022 that, Lauren Boebert race was going to be very close on the West Slope.

And they were right in 2024 that Boebert, in her new district on the Eastern Plains, was going to win big.

And as far as Boebert on on the Plains, her opponent has a huge money advantage.

She's got 3.6 million cash on hand and Boebert only has a quarter million.

However, in the 24 general election, Boebert only spent $1 million and her opponent spent 4 million, and Boebert won by 12 points.

Okay, okay.

All right.

Lina Patty sort of hit on this, but one of the reasons that Democrats are feeling confident that they could flip three GOP districts is because they have candidates who they see as having cross Partizan appeal because of their military backgrounds.

So in the, third, fourth and fifth districts, where three Democratic contenders are running, they all have armed, force experience.

And those three Republican incumbents in those seats do not.

That could be especially key in the fifth Congressional District, where Jessica Killen is running, because there are five military installations there.

There are more than 100,000 veterans there.

And it's also worth noting that the district hasn't elected a candidate with military experience in decades.

Then again, you know, KMS got some ties to Biden, so that could complicate things.

But it'll be really interesting to see how this military background experience sort of translates on the ballot.

If the Democratic Party did manage to win all eight congressional seats in Colorado, sort of the unthinkable that could push Democrats into control of the US House.

So, so a lot of big implications there.

Adam, I think one of the things to watch is going to be how much money is going to flow into this general election cycle that were coming up both at the congressional level.

But also we had a national legislative group recently saying they're going to target Colorado to find Supermajorities in both the state House and state Senate.

Keep in mind, it's it's basically one additional seat in each chamber right now, but a supermajority does come with some other authorities.

I think Kate's going to be one to watch.

Really closely.

Mandy Bruno's victory in the primary was certainly one to watch.

He won by a massive margin that I think caused a lot of people off guard.

The question is going to be, going against the sitting Republican congressman.

What will that look like?

Where are CDA voters?

And if it rides the tide, we're sort of seeing and we see this big sweep towards Democrats.

It could be a big win up there as well.

Okay.

All right.

Colorado's newest gun law, which went into effect on the first adds new requirements for people seeking to purchase certain semi-automatic firearms before the law took effect.

Gun sales surged with nearly what is it, 60,000 background checks requests in July.

That's almost triple the number from a year earlier.

From the beginning, when it was first debated in the legislature, this law faced some opposition.

And now one sheriff in Montezuma County says he will not enforce it.

David, you are an expert in constitutional law, especially when it comes to the Second Amendment.

So please start us off.

What stands out to you and all this?

Well, this law covers 900 different models of guns.

But those guns are not different in the sense that they are more powerful or they fire faster.

And I've been involved in the issue with the state legislature since 1989.

And when I explain things like that, the answer I get back from the anti-gun lobbies is, well, so what if we get rid of some guns?

That's a good start towards getting rid of all guns.

this upcoming US Supreme Court term, the court is going to hear the case called, Vermont is and is probably going to rule that the government cannot ban the most popular and common guns, such as AR.

They are model, firearms.

So the anti-gun lobbies are going to point to this Colorado law as their fallback.

And they say, okay, if we can't have a ban, then let's have a really onerous licensing system.

And that might work if the licensing system were fair and reasonable, like our concealed carry lawyers, where the fees are set and the government officials have to make a decision within a set amount of time.

But this law doesn't have any of those protections.

It allows the government officials to sit on an application forever and never do anything with it.

And when you add up all the expenses, that come along with buying a gun under this, according to State Representative Ava Fornell, that could be up to $782 just to buy a gun.

So more than the cost of the gun itself.

But once Governor Polis is gone, then the gun prevention lobbies are going to take this bill and make it even worse.

Okay, Elena, we've kind of been here before, right?

So in 2019, when Colorado passed its red flag law, you saw numerous counties declare themselves a Second Amendment, sanctuary city.

And the law, of course, stayed on the books.

Right.

But it was very varied as far as how it was actually enforced from county to county.

This one's a little different, because it's not just asking sheriffs to enforce the law.

They're actually responsible for, helping administer it.

And so that's this new point of friction that you're seeing between state government and local officials, including this, Montezuma County sheriff, who opposed the law.

And we're seeing even a state website about this new gun law openly admitting, you know, some some places just aren't going to accept the application, like F.Y.I.

So the real test, as with any Colorado law, comes down to implementation.

Can the state actually put in place, system that works across all 64 counties, or is this going to be another law that gets tied up in the court for years and is very, you know, patchwork as far as the way that it's actually put in place, county by county.

That's something that's that we have to watch for the next few months.

think Elena mentioned a great point, which is when red flag law was passed, it was like 37 of 64 counties said they were Second Amendment sanctuary jurisdictions.

So clearly what happened at the state Capitol didn't bode well.

Or sit well with a bunch of communities across the state.

I think this law is of a similar effect also in the way it went through the legislature.

Right.

Which is we have very large Democratic majorities who tend to favor stricter gun laws and at times a Republican base who tends to want to support Second Amendment rights and access to firearms.

But the biggest point is I think it's both about the law itself, but also that this is another unfunded mandate coming down from the state to communities who are hurting and their budgets are financially strapped.

And so one of the arguments the Montezuma sheriff said is we frankly don't have the money to implement all of these requirements and that that is not a made up issue.

That is a real issue with implementation.

And it happens more and more often.

I feel like at the state legislature.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you Patty.

And that's what I wanted to bring up.

It is not just philosophical support of the Second Amendment, support of guns in some of these counties.

It's financial.

They are strapped.

They are having enough trouble dealing with the issues in their communities that may not have much to do with guns at all, unlike, say, some of the urban communities where homicides in Denver, where homicides are up, or Aurora, where you have younger and younger people committing murder, you know, in some of these rural areas, they have bigger issues they have to deal with.

Right now.

They don't have the money, they don't have the time, and they probably don't have the will.

So I think David's right.

As soon as Polis is gone and depending on if we get Supermajorities in the House and the Senate, we're going to see a lot more efforts to push things, and we're going to see a lot more blowback in rural communities.

All right.

Denver City Council is going through a period of change and at a very consequential time at large.

City Council member Sarah Peretti stepped down this week, opening a citywide seat that voters will decide in November.

And another council member, Chantal Lewis, will be remain on the council but is running for mayor.

Meanwhile, Denver is facing budget pressures.

We've talked about that before, major decisions about growth and development, including the future Broncos Stadium District.

New renderings of that project were released just this week.

Elena, there is so much in the works for the city of Denver right now.

There is so much in the works about those renderings.

We didn't see renderings of the stadium itself, so that that's a big question mark.

Just the dome.

Yeah, not inside side.

So so staying tuned on that one.

Everything that you just laid out really underscores the pivotal moment that is underway when Diana Romero Campbell is stepping in to lead the City council.

She was just elected by her peers.

There is so much that she's going to have to navigate the council through and it's important to note she's not a veteran.

But compared to some of her colleagues like Paul Cashman and Kevin Flynn, who have been on the dais for over a decade, she was elected in 2023.

So she's facing, you know, the budget constraints.

You mentioned, a lot of big decisions ahead.

And then that special election is going to be really interesting to watch, because the Democratic Socialists of America's local chapter, who backed Sarah parody when she was first elected, they hope to retain that seat.

And Romero Campbell is a moderate herself.

So assuming DSA, you know, gets their way, that could set up a sort of tense dynamic on uncertain decisions.

And I think, you know, yeah, a lot to navigate in the months that are really going to put her leadership to the test very early on.

the special election will be an interesting test of this at large CB, situation we have now, or it's a specific at large seat also that you have a November election.

The person will then serve until spring, where they will then have to run for a full term.

And then with Councilwoman Lewis announcing at the time where DSA seems to have some level of momentum in Denver coming off the Cv1 race, I think if I'm the mayor, I'm watching this really cautiously, and I'm trying to figure out the months ahead about what I can do.

The issue is you have a huge budget problem.

You have energized Denver, changes coming.

You have ergo or formerly waste No More going into effect in September with new composting rules.

You have vibrant Denver bond money you want to spend, and you have council proposing, a pretty sizable change to the procurement process under a best value contracting proposal, which I would highly encourage people to look out.

It is a city under a lot of change, the really difficult time when what we really need is leadership and consistency.

So I will be curious to see how the mayor works with council as we head towards the spring election.

I think Diana Romero Campbell is a really interesting person to be there right now because she is a moderate.

She has seen she is able to talk to the community.

She seems very open right now and it is going to be really tricky.

If you listened to the Bronco preview of what they were going to release on Saturday, Leach was talking about, well, we which some things have gone a little more slowly.

And there was definitely the insinuation that maybe talking to the community and the neighbors have slowed things down.

Well, they're going to I mean, they're going to be very affected by that.

And that's going to be a big issue for council.

How do you look at all those beautiful drawings of everything about the stadium?

But the four different districts they're going to have, in addition to the stadium full of like parks and lovely places?

And then how do you also accommodate the people and the Alma and Lincoln Park?

We're very concerned about what's going to happen to their quality of life, and those who are worried about what's going to happen to the old Mile High.

So City Council has to be listening and be prepared.

And that community involvement is part of the deal with the city, right?

That it's a very talk with the people.

And so the city also has to be a liaison between them, between them to see can we grow, will it work?

I mean, obviously something's going to happen with with the stadium, with the Broncos threatened to leave.

We've seen that before with bowling.

It looked impressive like I don't know it looks impressive.

But they put out the warning before they released those beautiful things.

And David Tribe of his architecture firms involved.

And that's great.

He's a person who cares about the city and making things look good.

So my late father, Jerry Koeppel, the state representative, was a Broncos nut, never missed a game.

And even in the 1960s, when they were awful, in 1967, they threatened to move to Birmingham unless the taxpayers expanded the stadium.

And my dad helped defeat the ballot measure to do that.

And then in 1999, the Broncos threatened again to move unless the taxpayers built a whole brand new stadium at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, which the taxpayers did.

The current owners of the Broncos bought the team for $4 billion.

The owners themselves are worth at least 133 billion.

The city of Denver claims it is so poor you can't even fix the sidewalks in normal business districts.

But Mayor Johnston's progressive government says they're going to shovel in $140 million of taxpayer money for infrastructure upgrades like functional sidewalks, around the Broncos stadium.

Even though the Broncos owners could pay for all of that stuff themselves.

There's a second thing going on with the new stadium, which is ripping off season ticket holders, because when they move from the old stadium to the new one, they will impose a personal seat license, maybe $1,000, just to buy your season tickets.

You got to buy the seat license in order to buy it.

So there's sort of copying the, the new gun law.

$1,000, probably for an upper deck thing.

Could be $10,000 or more for level one.

It's the same thing they did the last time they got a new stadium.

All the suite owners who had bought their suites permanently suddenly lost all their property, and the Broncos got to resell a whole branch of new suites to a whole brand new set of suckers.

It'll be interesting to see how that all plays out, but the council is definitely.

We're all watching that.

Okay.

You know, we are in the dog days of summer.

We certainly are.

People are either taking those vacations in back to school mode or maybe taking a break from the headlines.

Right?

Some people are, before the political season gets going in high gear this fall.

So what's one Colorado story, everybody that you're watching that people really should not be overlooking right now, that maybe they are because they're just kind of taking a mental break.

I will start with you, Adam.

Outside of the fact we have a Republican lieutenant governor nominee, which seemed to just be buried in other headlines the last week.

I just want to talk high level, which seems to be that Congress actually seems to have done something, where we may have the passage of a CR, which is sort of a short term funding extension, coming up within the next few days that will punt to December 11th, kind of any budgetary issues.

The reason this is so strange is because historically, in recent years, they've waited till days, if not hours before that September 30th fiscal deadline to do a CR and extend it.

I think some of this is good news for states who are depending on some funding coming through.

The issue is when they come back after August, they obviously have time.

You know, post this now, punted to post November election, but they do have to figure out a full funding plan for the government.

The other item I tell folks to watch is there is a rule coming from the office of Management and Budget at the federal level that would completely reform how great grants are awarded to states, nonprofits, other groups.

It's in the rulemaking process, but something to to Google if you have time.

Okay.

Patty, one of the most divisive issues in Colorado is immigration.

And the concerns we see over the Geo group in Aurora and beyond, since the one of their facilities outside of Colorado is where, detainee was just killed, we're going to be watching that.

We're going to be watching what's going on in Hudson, where they are taking over.

An old Geo Group was taking over an old private prison.

We're going to be watching what's going on in Aurora, where we had one security guard shoot a protester.

We still have Geo Group and Ice refusing to cooperate with Adams County about their requests for health info on the tuberculosis cases.

And this is really a divisive issue.

I mean, we all are worried about the Colorado River.

We're all worried about the drought, but we are very divided on how we feel about ice.

For the Denver Public Schools, people that are paying attention right now to the controversy over the sweetheart contract for Superintendent Alex Marrero, Jimmy Berger wrote a good column about it in the Denver Gazette explaining multiple problems, including that the negotiations for the contract probably violated the open meetings law.

But a longer term thing for the Denver School Board is itself is they've been sued for civil rights violations in a case called Moore versus School District number one, because it says the new districts that the school district school board drew for itself for school board elections are illegal because they violate the 15th amendment and the Voting Rights Act, both of which forbid racial discrimination in voting rights and according to the suit, two of the five new districts were explicitly gerrymandered for the primary purpose of particular racial outcomes, and the school board members said so very overtly, at the public hearings on the redistricting.

So this lawsuit was filed recently, just a couple weeks ago.

Yeah.

Early July.

Yeah.

Early July.

Okay.

All right.

And school starts there in a couple weeks.

Yeah.

But the school will go on even if the school board.

School board has trouble.

Yes.

It does.

All right, all right, Elena, I'm going to return to the special November election for that, At-Large City Council race.

It's only three months away.

We know at least eight people have already filed paperwork.

So a lot of stuff is happening behind the scenes.

And then, of course, we know that the local chapter of DSA is organizing quickly to secure that seat.

And whoever they organize behind, it has to be a really strategic pick.

They have to be really viable because not only will they need to win this November special election, but then they're going to have to win again to keep that seat this upcoming spring.

So we know again, DSA chapters across the country are really feeling, optimistic, confident and, bullish about, all sorts of different political positions based on the momentum that they've seen.

And so I would be really surprised if, we didn't see a DSA candidate lock in this seat because one already has with Sarah Purdy.

So something definitely to watch.

Yeah, there's a lot going on.

We need to be a little more aware of right now.

Let's go around the table and talk about some of the highs and lows that you all have witnessed.

This week.

We will start on a low point, so we end on a good note.

And we'll start with Patty in the making lemonade out of lemons department in Crested Butte, there's been the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory that has done amazing work over the decades, including studying marmots.

And because they're losing a lot of their federal funding or in danger of losing a lot of their federal funding, which would put an end to this very important study.

They are now launching a fat marmot, website.

It's kind of like the Fat Bear website.

It's starting August 24th.

Go vote for your favorite marmot and keep the funding coming.

I think one headline said it's like the only fans for marmots, but it's the only thing we can talk about.

I mean exactly.

Oh my gosh.

All right, check that side out.

Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were all very personally, financially crooked.

But in terms of revenue, Donald Trump is by far the most corrupt.

Now, he says he's going to charge 60,000 $100,000 a month for advance access to his posts on his Truth Social website.

And of course, financial institutions are going to pay because even a 32nd head start on presidential information can make a huge difference in profits.

On that inside information in trading.

Now, Donald Trump is not the first Washington DC swamp creature to sell government information for personal gain.

But he's outdone the others by orders of magnitude.

I had not heard about that.

All right, Elena, I'm very invested in Fat market Week.

And something that was kind of lost in the headlines.

The lead scientists had mentioned that, this past winter, this marmot population is around, like, 160 or something like that.

And they lost over 100 marmots because it was so dry.

There wasn't water.

And so this is all these sort of, you know, the scientists are saying it's sort of tied to climate change.

And it's the greater, you know, impacts that we're seeing in our state.

So we gotta we gotta find those marmots.

Yeah.

All right.

The federal stopgap spending measure, the thing to emphasize is the 2021 bypass bipartisan infrastructure law expires on September 30th.

The stopgap that runs through December 11th does not extend funding of roughly 38.6 billion in annual transportation funding to local and state projects.

And we already are hearing from lots of groups that this this would have a real impact.

It would delay many projects currently underway.

So we will see ultimately, if Congress does decide to fund that.

But as of now, they are not okay.

All right.

Something good please.

Even if we have another record breaking heat weekend, go out, see some of the things that are still great in Colorado, like the Palisade Peach Festivals coming up, Carnation Festival, and the last concert of the season at City Park Jazz.

So get out, sweat and enjoy.

Okay, good.

And eat a lot of peaches.

That is a great festival.

I've been there.

Yeah.

On October 5th, the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court's new term will open with oral argument in a case where the Independence Institute is an amicus son corps versus commissioners of Boulder County.

The Boulder County commissioners argue that because of global warming, they have the right to sue every energy producer for activities that didn't occur in Boulder or even in the United States.

As we say in the brief, that Boulder's theory is extreme and unconstitutional because a county can't regulate or punish conduct that occurs beyond its borders and is lawful elsewhere.

Whatever that is to be done about global warming is a national issue and not something for the Boulder County commissioners to try to run the rest of the county country.

Will you be going to DC for that?

I will not be going to DC, and I'm not will not be participating in the oral argument.

I'll just be listening with interest.

Okay.

All right.

Elena, the Colorado Rockies have officially beat their very dismal.

But they're winning record.

And, you know, we'll take it.

We'll take it.

We can get it totally.

So initially this is sad, but it turns out it's a it's a good thing.

It's a thank you.

Which is, Heather Guyer has announced she is resigning as the city manager of the City of North Glenn.

Heather has served in that role for four years at this point, and I just want to thank her.

I, being a city manager is for personal experience, watching people do it and often thankless, difficult job.

So I'm really thankful for people like Heather who choose to do this kind of work.

Okay.

All right.

Good.

My.

Hi.

I have gone out to outside things and sweated this summer, but I'm going to go really simple is just going back to the movies.

At the top of the show, I mentioned how I've been to the Spider-Man and the Odyssey, and it was.

My youngest daughter is a big movie person.

She's home for the summer and she's been organizing us to go back to the movies this summer, and it's been really fun.

I had, you know, we all took a break from going to the movies.

While I highly recommend it.

So that's all, it's fun to go back to the movies.

Thank you, insiders, for joining us this week.

So good to see all of you.

Thank you for watching or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer and we'll see you next week here on PBS.

Well have a good one.

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