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Colo. Springs Candidate Forum Goes to Ken Buck, Dan Maes, J.J. Ament

by Ben DeGrow | 6:46 am, March 11, 2010 | 3 Comments

Tuesday night featured another in the latest of well-attended grassroots debate sponsored by conservative or pro-liberty groups: Candidate Debate 2010 in Colorado Springs. It got the attention of one Colorado Pols diarist, and made for a couple humorous anecdotes reported by the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels.

After the forum — which included Colorado candidates for U.S. Senate, governor and state treasurer — a poll was taken of forum viewers. Some have reported the results collected by text message, but have overlooked the paper ballot results. I checked with one of the event organizers, and was given the following official results including both types of ballots (I tallied the percentages myself), for those who are curious to know them:

U.S. Senate: 430 recorded votes cast
Ken Buck 195 (45.3%)
Jane Norton 125 (29.1%)
Tom Wiens 64 (14.9%)
Cleve Tidwell 32 (7.4%)
Steve Barton 14 (3.3%)

Governor: 339 recorded votes cast
Dan Maes 191 (56.3%)
Scott McInnis 148 (43.7%)

State Treasurer: 274 recorded votes cast
J.J. Ament 205 (74.8%)
Ali Hasan 51 (18.6%)
*Walker Stapleton 18 (6.6%)

* Candidate did not participate in the forum, but had a proxy speak on his behalf

If you didn’t get to view the forum but still want to express your views about these and other candidates and issues, you still have until tomorrow afternoon to register your opinions on the March edition of the Survey of Colorado’s Political Temperature.

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Comments

  1.   Dan Maes
      March 11th, 2010 @ 3:37 pm

    We are very pleased with these results given the strong support for my opponent in El Paso County. Another well done event by the grass roots.

  2.   Donald Johnson
      March 11th, 2010 @ 4:58 pm

    What the results show and don’t.

    1. Ken Buck may have a chance at the top line on the U.S. Senate primary ballot, but that doesn’t mean he’d win the primary.

    2. Activists attending candidate forums may favor Maes over Mcinnis, but they’re not putting their money where their meaningless straw poll votes are. No one has beat a well-financed candidate for governor or senator in Colorado. McInnis has the money and the organization needed to win. So far, Maes does not and probably won’t.

    3. In the treasurer’s race, credibility, experience and endorsements by the former governor and treasurer Bill Owens and by three former U.S. Senators, among many others, is putting J.J. Ament ahead of his much wealthier opponents even at a candidates’ forum dominated by activists. This doesn’t mean the GOP can beat the incumbent Cary Kennedy, however.

    My problems with candidates’ forums is that while they make the organizers feel good, they don’t do much to educate voters. This is because the candidates don’t get to show their stuff or their lack of it. You can’t make much of an an impression in a 5-minute talk loaded with family history, irrelevant quips and a couple of carefully targeted jabs at opponents. Like online polls, straw polls are fun for the winners but don’t reveal much and shouldn’t be relied on by anyone who is trying to decide who to back in any given race, imho.

  3.   Chris Maj
      March 11th, 2010 @ 10:51 pm

    Dan, congrats!

    Donald, compared to centralized online polls, in person straw polls are safer from automated ballot stuffing by both internal and external actors. Online maybe “MARBLE CAKE ALSO THE GAME” but never at a straw poll.

    Also, Donald, your insistence on early money’s importance in your second point is, strangely enough, balanced by your dismissal of early money’s importance in your third point.

    Dan, Congrats!

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