House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald voiced support for California and 11 other states as they seek a waiver from the federal government allowing them to implement “Clean Cars” legislation.

In late 2004, California adopted the first state standards requiring cars and light-duty trucks to limit emissions that contribute to global warming. Since then, 11 other states have adopted California’s tailpipe emissions standards. However, the EPA must first approve California’s waiver in order for all 12 states to enact legislation cutting global warming pollution from tailpipes. California applied for its waiver in late 2005, but the EPA has yet to OK it.

Colorado’s tourism industry employs 200,000 people, jobs which could be imperiled if climate change continues to affect Colorado’s snowfall, rivers and land.

Below is the written testimony submitted by President Fitz-Gerald and Speaker Romanoff.

(more…)

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

Well, most everybody has left here in San Francisco, as the DNC’s Western Regional Caucus wrapped up its 2007 meetings here on Sunday morning with a breakfast sponsored by Speaker Pelosi (sponsored by the Speaker, but she was not there). I’m still here, with my family, taking a mini-vacation and enjoying the Northern California sights and activities.

Since I last wrote, we heard from all of the campaigns for Presidential hopefuls. Most sent along a personalized video, with each candidate addressing the Western Caucus meeting directly via that video opportunity. A few campaigns also sent representatives to lobby each of the DNC members (each of whom is a “super-delegate” to Denver, getting an automatic vote at the Convention).

Saturday night was the culmination of the weekend of training. We enjoyed a “Pacific Rim Buffet” here at the Grand Hyatt, and heard updates from several of the states. It was “open mic night,” with a festive atmosphere. Hawaii’s delegation got up and sang, of all things, an Irish tune. We heard great reports from such places as Idaho and Alaska, and there was even a raffle at the end of the evening. The raffle worked out well for Colorado’s DNC members — there were about 8 items in all, and we won two of them. I won a $50 gift certificate to the Levi’s store next door. Ramona Martinez won the big prize, though: a hand-drawn, hand-painted framed drawing by Senator Diane Feinstein. She already has a place in her home set up for it!

Since I had my family with me, I thought I’d keep my kids busy with a great little task. I gave them both a list of all of the states in the Western Caucus and made a contest of finding one person from each of the states and finding out something about each state. It was a great way to get them to interact with different people, and to learn a little bit of geography in the process. It worked out great, with the DNC Members being so cooperative and helpful — they were eager to tell about their states, which is always so great to see. In the end, it was a tie, so I have to find a prize for each of them tomorrow morning before we head to the airport…

We’re back in Colorado tomorrow night. San Francisco is fun, but there’s no place like home. Once I get back, it’s back to the road to get out to the counties and talk to Democrats across the state. Saturday, I’ll be in Monte Vista for the Rio Grande County Dems’ dinner, where I will be the keynote speaker. Sunday, I’m headed the other direction, up to A-Basin to attend the Summit / Clear Creek Dems’ joint fundraiser ski run and BBQ. Hope to see you there!

I do have the last set of pix up from San Francisco, including one of Ramona’s winning Feinstein drawing. Head over to:
http://www.DemNotes.com/photos

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

This morning began bright and early here at the DNC Western Regional Caucus meetings. We began with breakfast, followed by a discussion of grassroots organizing in the red parts of California.

That was followed by a great panel presentation on the Democrats’ message on immigration in the West, with an emphasis on the new media opportunities available to political campaigns. There was a nice discussion of polling in the West, expanding on some of yesterday’s discussion, with how voters view immigration. In general, we learned that the Democratic view of immigration is generally the more accepted view by the public, while the hard-line GOP view is not helping the Republican Party (which, as you may recall, was in line with what we heard yesterday, as well).

We also heard from a number of media providers about the changing media habits of Americans, and the need to make sure that media plans keep up with these changes. The shifts to cable viewership, video-on-demand, and mobile communication devices have changed the ability to reach key voters. Our Democratic candidates need to be aware of these changes, and the fact that a “traditional” media plan may not have as much “bang for the buck” as in previous years.

Finally, we had a wonderful lunch featuring California Lt. Governor John Garamondi. I had the honor of joining the Hawaii delegation in sitting with the Lt. Governor (the highest-ranking Democratic state official in California) during lunch, and learning a lot more about what he does, and how he works with Republican Governor Schwarzenegger. The Lt. Governor gave a wonderful speech — one which would be well-received by any crowd in Colorado — about the need for us to be energy-independent, and how important that issue is to our national security. It was a very cogent, intelligent dissection of the needs and opportunities that require a Democratic President to implement.

There’s more discussions this afternoon (including presentations by the campaigns of our Democratic Presidential hopefuls), followed by a dinner. Tomorrow morning, we’ll conclude with a breakfast hosted by Speaker Pelosi and some communications training.

I finally have some photos up — although the quality of many of them is very poor due to my distance from the stage and the poor lighting — you can find them at:
http://www.DemNotes.com/photos

In addition, there are a couple of other folks out here live-blogging from the meetings. You can check out a detail of each of the sessions at the DNC Western Caucus blog at:
http://web.mac.com/jgreenleaf

You can also check out Calitics (much like SquareState) at:
http://www.calitics.com/frontPage.do
Calitics has much better photos than I do, and several sessions blogged in more detail than I’ve done here.

PS - I mis-spelled Rick Ridder’s name yesterday — it isn’t spelled like the Governor’s name. I’ve corrected the online versions, but wanted to be sure those of you who get this via e-mail know of the error, as Rick’s years of wonderful service to this Party deserve better than that…

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)  

We’re here in San Francisco for the DNC’s Western Caucus meetings. They kicked off today rather appropriately — with some discussion of polling data and analysis of “How the West Was Won”. Mannie Rodriguez, Pat Waak, Sherry Jackson, Debbie Marquez and I all sat together and heard some great discussions of the 2006 elections and how their lessons can be applied to 2008.

We began with a presentation by Lake Research on polling numbers on how to deal with a number of issues, including how to talk about immigration. What we learned was that the public in the West is generally much more supportive of the Democratic positions on immigration than the Republican, Tancredo-led, hard-line.

Rick Ridder from Ridder-Braden was next, and gave a great presentation on the state of the West politically, from a numbers perspective. While we’ve seen some solid gains, Ridder was very cautious to point out that no Democratic Presidential candidate has received over 50% in New Mexico, Nevada, Montana or Colorado since 1964. Ridder emphasized that energy and conservation are critical issues to Western voters, particularly inter-mountain western voters.

We next heard from the head of a California SEIU local, who discussed their campaign against a campaign to raid public workers’ pension in California by Governor Schwartzenegger. They were successful in their work to preserve retirement security for public workers such as teachers, nurses and firefighters.

The last part of the first session was led by Maggie Linden, who was able to successfully fight two efforts to pass a draconian “parental notification” law in California. She talked about the importance of doing research and examining the exact and precise language used in the campaign.

After a nice break, we began the next session by viewing some of the political ads from 2006 Congressional races, as introduced by DNC Member (and famous daughter) Christine Pelosi. Among those featured were two ads by now-Congressman Perlmutter’s campaign, as well as a ProgressNowAction ad run in the Paccione-Musgrave race.

Then, we had a very powerful presentation by Carl Pope, who is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Pope emphasized an important point about the 2006 victories: we didn’t win an Academy Award, we only won an audition. What we do now will prove whether we get to keep the part we auditioned for. He spent a fair amount of time talking about what was done to win in the Pombo/McNerny Congressional race in California, which was a key race for the environmental community. He emphasized: “I believe that all politics is not local; all politics is not even personal; instead, all politics is about listening…. In the West, listening is a sign of respect.”

He concluded by making an important point about the Mountain West: here, the Federal Government is seen as a “Landlord”. In order to govern effectively, the Democrats must work as a Federal Government who listens. He concluded by indicating that we also have to stop seeing security and freedom as mutually exclusive — polling is showing that the public sees the two as linked at the hip (a point the Republicans have yet to understand).

Next, we heard from Larry Scanlon, the national political director of AFSCME. Scanlon talked about efforts that labor has made to better train candidates, as well as the different things that labor is doing independent from candidates and the parties that helped win elections in 2006.

Our final speaker of the day wals Jim Gonzales of the New House PAC. They worked hard to win House races, with the motto “New Direction For America.” This helped define the targeted Democrats as positive and associated them with a powerful message of change. We are seeing some fundamental changes in the political picture in America - we lost rural voters by an amazingly thin 2% margin in 2006!

Tonight, there is an opening night reception that I’ll head to with my family right after I’m done typing this. Then, the Oregon Dems have invited me to join them at the Rockies / Giants game tonight. I’ve been to two Rox / Giants game this year (the only Rox games I’ve been to this year) — let’s hope the outcome is better for the Rockies, as both prior games were utter blowouts by the Giants.

I’ll post pix later!

Yesterday Congressman Salazar secured $3 billion via a supplemental appropriations bill to provide relief to Colorado farmers who have suffered losses from blizzards or drought.

Relief will be available to farmers who lost 35% of more of their crop in 2005, 2006, or 2007 in counties designated disaster areas by the USDA.

Here’s contact information for Congressman Salazar’s local offices:

Grand Junction
225 North 5th Street, STE 702
Grand Junction, CO 81501
970-245-7107
970- 245-2194 (fax)

Pueblo
134 West B Street
Pueblo, CO 81003
719-543-8200
719-543-8204 (fax)

Durango
813 Main Avenue, Suite 300
Durango, CO 81301
970-259-1012
970-259-9467 (fax)

Alamosa
609 Main Street, #6
Alamosa, CO 81101
719-587-5105
719-587-5137 (fax)

Yesterday Governor Ritter signed an executive order re-establishing the Colorado Community and Interagency Council on Homelessness. An estimate in August 2006 found more than 16,000 homeless people statewide, and the true number is almost certainly higher.

One third of Colorado’s homeless population are children or teenagers, and 62% are children, teenagers, or parents. Homelessness disproportionately affects minority communities.

The Council brings together the Departments of Human Services, Health Care Policy and Financing, Corrections, and Local Affairs; the Commissioners of Agriculture and Education; members of the state legislature and the non-profit community; and others.

The Council’s mission is to “make cross-agency and community cooperation the norm in responding to homelessness and to use a more efficient and supportive approach in creating and implementing evidence-based plans to address homelessness and, to the extent possible, end it.”

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

Sunday night, I drove over to Salida to attend the last in a multi-leg training tour of Southwest and South-Central Colorado. Party leaders from Chaffee, Saguache, and Fremont Counties were treated to precinct training (courtesy of Democracy for Colorado’s “Think Precinct” folks) and training on VAN, the Colorado Democratic Party’s online voter database.

Both trainings were great introductions to their topics — the Think Precinct training was a wonderful motivator to get out in your neighborhood and organize friends and neighbors; the VAN training was a good beginning course in some of the many features in VAN. It was long (boy, was it long!), but it was well worth it. The Salida trip capped off a weekend of training that included such exotic (and rarely-visited-by-Democratic-trainers) locales as Pagosa Springs and Creede.

Tomorrow, we pack up and head out to San Francisco. There, we’ll participate in the DNC’s Western Regional Caucus annual meeting. The last time we met like this was in 2005, when we went to Helena, Montana. That was a great opportunity to focus on issues and policies important to the West, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they have for us this time.

Pat, Sherry, and I are off on the same plane tomorrow afternoon (and my family is joining me — it’s San Francisco, for Pete’s sake!). Once there, we expect to hear presentations on detailed polling data, organizing techniques, and policy discussions. As always, I’ll be sure to post plenty of updates while we’re out there. Since this is for all of the DNC Members in the West, I’m sure we’ll see our other DNC Members, such as J.W., Mannie, Debbie, Maria, and Ramona, but I just don’t have the details on when they’re headed out there.

The 2007 golf tournament was a great success.. The event raised several thousand dollars, with almost thirteen sponsors; they were Qwest, Products of the Rockies, Mike Turner and Scott Henderson Law Firm, Kelly Garnsey Hubbell and Lass LLC, C&D Printing, Hylands Hills Recreation Department, U.S. SENATOR KEN SALAZAR, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN SALAZAR, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE ED PERLMUTTER ( who was there to greet golfers, early in the morning), U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DIANA DEGETTE, GOVERNOR BILL RITTER, RONALD E. MONTOYA-PASTICOM INDUSTRIES CEO, CORINNE AND ROSE RODRIGUEZ.
Please!!!!…………..A BIG THANK YOU TO; SENATOR PETER GROFF, SENATOR JENNIFER VIEGA, AND REPRESENTATIVE MIKE CERBO FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF THE EVENT! ( BY THE WAY, SENATOR PETER GROFF’S FOURSOME WON THE EVENT WITH A “58″).
ALSO A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE GOLFERS….(TOTAL OF 56), WHO PARTICIPATED AND DONATED TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. RAMONA MARTINEZ DNC MEMBER; JEFF VIGIL, ADAMS COUNTY LATINO INITIATIVE CHAIRMAN; CIPRIANO GRIEGO, AMERICAN GI FORUM MILE-HI CHAPTER COMMANDER; HOLLIE VELASQUEZ, SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISER, AND ALL THE OTHER GOLFERS WHO PARTICIPATED………….THANK YOU!!!!

Jay Marvin, from AM760 radio, traveled around the golf course with Colorado Democratic Party Chair, Pat Waak. John Turk, Jay’s sidekick, actually golfed with the other participants.

AND DON’T FORGET OUR COMMITTE, MELANIE ULLE, CHRISTINE POKRANDT. CORINNE RODRIGUEZ, PAT WAAK AND ME, MANNIE RODRIGUEZ…….

Last week Sherry, Dan and I were in Annapolis for the state chairs meeting. I got there late because I attended the outstanding Mesa County Spring Fling dinner on Saturday night in Grand Junction. I flew from Grand Junction back through Denver to Annapolis. (The dinner had record attendance and an “on fire” speech from Governor Ritter). Paul and Sue Brown were wonderful hosts.

In Annapolis, it was an opportunity to meet with new state chairs and DNC staff. Dave Boundy is the new political director. He comes with a stellar background in organizing and managing voter efforts. We won’t have to miss Pam Womack, his predecessor, because she has gone back to the Democratic Governor’s Association and is still around the meetings of the Association of State Democratic Chairs (ASDC).

We flew back on Wednesday and Thursday was the day that Gov. Dean came back to Colorado. He did an interview with Aaron Harber. Watch for broadcast dates. He also did private and public fundraisers for the state party. I was particularly impressed by his discussion of values.

Saturday morning I went down to Castle Rock for the Douglas County Central Committee meeting. The room was filled with eager Democrats. Paul Thompson, Ron Clark, Diane Bailey and so many others are doing a great job of organizing in Douglas County. They were already hard at work preparing for the coming year.

This week was filled with meetings and projects. The highlight was our trip to Aspen. Blanca and Cavanaugh O’Leary hosted a lovely reception in their home to raise money for the state party. The featured guest was Jeanne Ritter, First Lady of Colorado. She was magnificent. Everyone loved talking to her and asking questions about mental health, which she has adopted as her project. It was a long trip up and back, but we had a great time.

(Mick Ireland was there. Mick is running for mayor of Aspen. All the best to this great Democrat.)

Today I made a presentation to the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association’s board meeting. Rosemarie McDermott had suggested that I go and tell the group about the state party’s plans for this year and next. I had the opportunity to pass out hard copies of our powerpoint presentation and make a pitch for support.

Pat Waak

Okay, I’m sorry I haven’t posted in the last few days — it’s not because I haven’t been busy; quite the contrary is true.

We arrived back from Annapolis on Wednesday night. Wednesday morning was filled with a few more training sessions and seminars before Sherry, Pat, and I set off for a side trip to Baltimore on the way to our 5:30 pm flight. We enjoyed some wonderful seafood at one of Pat’s favorite restaurants, then took a nice stroll along the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. Before heading home to Canon Wednesday, I decided to take a detour downtown to attend a bit of Denver’s Drinking Liberally event. I’d always wanted to make it, but just never had been in Denver on any of the scheduled nights.

There was a good crowd still there when I arrived — easily 30-40 people, including freshman State Representative Joe Rice from Arapahoe County. Representative Rice is a fresh new face in the Legislature, but he’s already turning heads and impressing folks statewide for his intellect and abilities as a legislator. It was so great to see him at the DL event and see the great reception he received from the Metro-area activists.

Thursday, I should have been in Denver to help welcome Governor Dean. Alas, I had not seen my children in nearly a week, so I decided to stay home and rest and spend time with them (especially considering the schedule I had for the next few days — see below). I’ve heard from our Party Treasurer, Mark Ferrandino, that the Dean events on Thursday went very well, and the State Party raised a fair amount of money from those events.

Friday night, I attended the Colorado Young Democrats Celebrity Poker Night — the second year in a row that I had attended. This is easily one of the most fun events I get to attend each year — partially just because the view is stupendous. The event is held on the rooftop of a high-rise condo building just off the edge of Downtown Denver. The view of downtown and the mountains is breath-taking, and at night it gets even better. Watching the sunset there joined by a great group of like-minded young people is one of the best experience you can have.

I had meant to get to the poker tables — really, I did! But I got so caught up in conversations with old friends, and meeting new ones, that I just never made it over there. I did get to hear about all of the great plans that are being made to keep young people involved in the electoral process in 2008. Governor Dean has been discussing the importance of the youth vote more and more at DNC events — he made a point of encouraging state parties to do more to reach out to Young Dems and College Dems when we met with him in Annapolis.

Finally, on Saturday, the Site Selection Committee for the Colorado Democratic Convention and Assembly met in Denver, at Denver Dems Headquarters. We spent quite a while dissembling and comparing the bids from Broomfield and Colorado Springs to host the Convention next year. We’re working on setting site visits for early June and requesting more information on a variety of topics from both communities.

————-

I do have some photos up now from several of the above events, including some from the last day of the ASDC meeting in Annapolis. Feel free to check them out at:
http://www.DemNotes.com/photos