Free Republic

Donald Trump's campaign is planning its biggest ad buy to date — upward of $10 million on commercials airing over the next week or so. The campaign is expects the ads to air as soon as Monday in nine swing states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, where the campaign has already been on the air, along with New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney lost eight of those nine states. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has so far been badly outspent by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and groups supporting her....

Support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ticked up across battleground states following the Republican National Convention last week, according to the new CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll. Trump now has 42 percent support across the 11 battleground states surveyed — up from the 40 percent he had last week before the convention. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has 41 percent support, unchanged from last week's poll. According to the poll, 55 percent of Republicans said Trump's message at the convention made them feel hopeful, and about 40 percent said it made them feel enthusiastic. Among independents, 32 percent...

Donald Trump is getting serious about Colorado. After an abysmal showing at the state assembly - he didn't win a single pledged delegate to the Republican National Convention - Trump will be in Denver Friday for both his first public speech and his first private fundraiser in the Centennial State. Trump is scheduled to talk at the Western Conservative Summit in the morning before attending a private fundraiser in the home of former Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan. The rumored $10,000 a couple lunch event is being co-hosted by Pete Coors and Larry Mizel. For those unable or unwilling to...

DENVER – Darryl Glenn emerged as the winner Tuesday following a divisive and chaotic five-man Republican U.S. Senate race that observers saw as uncertain to the last minute. Glenn will now turn his attention to incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet, who has received more than $7.6 million in individual contributions and has more than $5.7 million in the bank, after already purchasing significant television advertising in recent months. Glenn, an El Paso County commissioner, earned 37 percent of the vote as of 8:30 p.m. He was followed by Jack Graham with 25 percent, Robert Blaha with 16 percent, Jon Keyser with...

Pete Coors and Mike Shanahan, a pair of giants in Colorado beer and football, are two of several boldfaced names planning a Friday fundraiser for Donald Trump to coincide with the Republican candidate’s visit to the state that day for the Western Conservative Summit. While the names on the host committee may suggest a Sunday-tailgate kind of affair — Coors is a longtime beer executive and Shanahan used to coach the Denver Broncos — the entry fee to the presidential fundraiser is decidedly more expensive than what one would find in the parking lot of Mile High stadium. It’s at...

How can anyone take this woman seriously, she is reporting on the election results tonight looking like a street walker instead of a journalist. The men all have suits on, why do all the women reporters now think they have to look like they are at a cocktail party. Their appearance makes their comments laughable when their attire doesn't match the event.

The chairman of the Colorado Republican Party has gotten such a violent reaction to the results of his state’s caucus last weekend that he says he is considering bringing a local sheriff as one of his guests to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer. “I’ve made the decision that I would not take my wife along. I am certainly at the very least going to use my personal guest pass to bring along a Republican sheriff," Steve House told POLITICO in an interview. “People might think that’s crazy, but not after what we’re growing through right now.” What...

The delegate selection process in Colorado turned out to be something of a disaster for the Trump campaign. And according to witnesses, it’s the way that Trump staffers treat potential delegates — and even supporters — that could end up costing the businessman in a big way. Despite new leadership in Paul Manafort, several precincts noted that Trump delegates were left off the ballots. Investigation revealed that those who were left off the ballots had failed to pay the requisite fees, but that was not before Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize the process: (TWEETS-AT-LINK) In order to get...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

Donald Trump’s organizational problems have gone from bad to worse to flat-out embarrassing. Here’s Politico with the play-by-play from this weekend’s Colorado GOP convention, the latest scene of Trump’s delegate-securing failure: Trump’s last-minute organizing effort did not go well. The leaflet his campaign handed out listed a slate of 26 delegates. But in many cases the numbers indicating their ballot position — more than 600 delegates [were] running for 13 slots — were off, meaning that Trump’s team was mistakenly directing votes toward other candidates’ delegates. When the balloting results were announced Saturday evening, [Ted] Cruz picked up the 13...

The funniest part of this is when he says the rules in Colorado were changed to help “a guy like Cruz.” In reality the rules were changed to block guys like Cruz. Colorado used to award its delegates via a caucus, but that backfired in 2012 when Rick Santorum upset Mitt Romney there. That’s how it tends to go with caucuses — unlike a statewide primary, they benefit well-organized candidates with a passionate grassroots following, both of which are hallmarks of Cruz’s campaign. When the rules were altered last August, decoupling the caucus from the process of awarding delegates, it...

In Colorado and South Carolina, the GOP's embattled front-runner had another very bad day. Donald Trump’s struggle to win loyal delegates to the Republican National Convention grew even more desperate on Saturday, with crushing losses in Colorado and South Carolina that put victory at a contested convention further from his grasp. Trump, who handed the reins of much of his campaign this week to strategist Paul Manafort in an effort to shore up his operation before the nomination slips away, was swept out of delegate slots up for grabs at Colorado’s state convention. Adding to his woes, he picked up...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — It’s not easy being a Donald Trump supporter in Colorado. Becky Mizel, a prominent Trump volunteer and former county party chairwoman in the state, was standing at the entrance to the Colorado GOP Convention, waving a slate of delegates the Trump campaign has endorsed to send to the national convention. With her arm still in the air, she needled a volunteer tasked with setting up Trump signs outside of the arena where the convention is being held, and was upset because they went missing. “Somebody stole them,” Mizel said under her breath, sounding irritated but unsurprised....

The assumption for months was that everything would fall into place. That there was no need to really dig in, that the outcome was obvious. And then, too late, it became clear that this optimism was unfounded. Or maybe not too late, but late enough in the process to mean that folks would have to scramble. And now everything is up in the air. The paragraph above describes the Republican establishment’s attitude about Donald Trump’s candidacy, obviously. But it also describes Trump’s push for the nomination itself. From the moment he stepped onto that escalator on Trump Tower until about...

Ted Cruz continues to rack up delegates in Colorado with another clean sweep today, bringing his total in the state to 18...

DENVER, April 2 (UPI) -- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz appears positioned to take the most pledged delegates out of the Colorado Republican convention set for April 9. The Denver Post reports a majority of delegates will seek to go to the GOP convention uncommitted to any candidate. Colorado sends 37 delegates to the GOP convention, but will not hold a statewide vote to determine how those delegates are apportioned. The party had planned a straw poll that would have been binding for the delegates, but later canceled the vote. Instead, the party will hold a convention to determine how to...

So who is Jon Keyser? He’s a 34-year-old, first-term member of the Colorado House of Representatives who will resign from his local lawmaker seat so he can devote his full attention to a run at the big show. What’s he bring to a race that includes state Sen. Tim Neville, wealthy Colorado Springs businessman Robert Blaha, and former Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, among several others? Youth, an apparent coating of fairy dust from the national GOP establishment, and, oh, a biographical data point that includes killing terrorists as part of special ops missions for the U.S. military.

SALT LAKE CITY — Donald Trump continues to be the front-runner in the GOP presidential nomination race, but he's languishing in fourth place in a new poll of Utah voters. The new UtahPolicy.com poll by Dan Jones & Associates comes as former Utah governor and 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. is suggesting Trump has a shot at winning the White House. "People really are hungry for change. They were last time, but it hadn't reached the 212-degree boiling point. This time it has," Huntsman told USA Today's weekly "Capital Download" video series. Huntsman said that's why he thinks Trump,...

State Rep. Jon Keyser, R-Evergreen, an attorney and decorated Air Force reservist, is preparing to launch a likely-to-be well-funded campaign in a crowded but mostly lackluster primary field of Republicans hoping to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, bringing star quality and credibility to an election his backers believe will turn on national security. "Republicans have been waiting for a first-tier quality candidate, and now they have one,” said former state Rep. Rob Witwer, who held the House seat Keyser won last year. “Jon brings gravitas, real world experience and a fresh perspective. Most importantly, he can win.” “I’m strongly considering...

Republican Donald Rosier, a Jefferson County commissioner since 2010, has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, hoping to challenge Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet next year. Rosier formally announced his run Thursday at an event in Arvada. The Denver Post first reported his candidacy. Already in the GOP race are state Sen. Tim Neville of Littleton, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, former Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier and former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez. Bennet is seeking a second term in this battleground state. In 2010, he narrowly edged Republican Ken Buck, who went on to win an open U.S....