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The Dispatch is now on Wednesdays! |
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Hi folks! You may have noticed you're getting your edition of the Democratic Dispatch a couple of days early! Well, it's because the Dispatch will now be coming to your inboxes on Wednesday going forward!
Same great content, same Dispatch, new day! Now, onto the newsletter: |
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Just because the President denies facts doesn't mean that you should too! As we continue to work through these uncharted times, make sure that you're staying up to date on what's happening in Colorado and with our democratic processes by checking out these websites:
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COVID-19 Updates |
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Polis Says Modeling Shows Colorado Is Ready To Slowly Reopen With ‘Safer-At-Home’ From CPR
Gov. Jared Polis outlined why now was the time to lift Colorado’s statewide stay-at-home order and gave an update on “Level Two” of the state’s COVID-19 response: Safer-at-Home.
“Why now?” Polis said on Monday from the state Capitol. “Our modeling shows that we can handle the caseload and that we need to figure out how to do this in a sustainable way.”
This phase is a step toward reopening some businesses in the state. The new executive order keeps many of the same recommendations — like wearing a mask when you go out on essential travel, and maintaining social distance — but adds more clarity to what a gradual reopening looks like.
“We bought time to build our healthcare capacity,” Polis said, referring to the now-lifted stay-at-home order. That includes purchasing masks, gloves, face shields and other personal protective equipment and hiring medical staff. “The goal was never to eradicate the virus in the United States. It’s unrealistic."
Starting Monday, retail businesses can reopen with curbside pickup, and are allowed to reopen their doors to customers on Friday with strict precautions. In-person real estate showings are allowed to resume as well, but not open houses.
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Making a Difference Virtually |
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Join us for the first of our 2020 Win Stops -- in the digital world!
As you may remember, Team CDP has held similar statewide tours and trainings in the past as “Listening Stops”, “Action Stops”, and "Outreach Stops". Our goal is to stay in touch, learn from everyone and organize everywhere in the State of Colorado so Colorado is ready to go blue in 2020.
In a COVID-19 world, we're holding them again, only we're calling them "Win Stops" now so you can be part of ensuring Democrats WIN up and down the ticket in November! Each Win Stop will focus on a particular region in the state, and Democrats from those communities are highly encouraged to sign up! |
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Join Democrats from the North Front Range (Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer, and Weld counties) for the first of numerous Win Stops we'll hold from now until November 3, 2020!
Click here to sign up for the Sunday, May 3, 2020 Win Stop Webinar! |
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SAVE THE DATE (More Days and Regions to Come!)
Saturday, May 16, 2020 -- Western Slope Saturday, May 30, 2020 -- Central Mountains Saturday, June 27, 2020 -- Northeastern Colorado Saturday, August 8, 2020 -- San Luis Valley
Note: As we continue to progress in combating COVID-19, Team CDP will explore hosting these trainings as live and in-person in these communities if it is deemed safe by then to hold larger gatherings of people! In the meantime, they will be virtual to ensure that grassroots Democrats can get the training they need to win in 2020 while staying safe and healthy! |
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Work for the 2020 Wave Webinars |
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Homer's getting ready to show the family the next CDP Webinar! |
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Ready to launch another blue wave in 2020? SAVE THE DATE for our upcoming "Work for the Wave" webinars! |
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Wednesday, May 6, 2020 @ 6:00pm MST VAN 101: Pulling Simple Lists (Hosted by Pete Williams) FOR BEGINNERS! Learn how to pull lists for your candidate and volunteers by going into the voter file and seeing how you can identify communities and voters you want to contact! |
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Monday, May 11, 2020 @ 6:00pm MST Precinct Organizer (PCP) Training (Hosted by Morgan Carroll and Karin Asensio) Precinct organizers (formerly known as PCPs or Precinct Committee Persons) are the heartbeat of organizing at the grassroots. They are community leaders and are indispensable to Democrats winning in November! |
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Monday, May 18, 2020 @ 6:00pm MST Messaging and Combating Disinformation Training (Hosted by Halisi Vinson and David Pourshoushtari) Trump and the Republicans thrive on disinformation tactics. Whether it's on social media or by email, there's going to be a lot of disinformation out there -- learn how to combat it and protect your community by learning how to identify and counter disinformation! |
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Wednesday, May 20, 2020 @ 6:00pm MST Candidate Training (Hosted by Morgan Carroll) We need more good Democrats to run for office at every level of government. Whether it's running for state representative, city council, transportation board, or district attorney, you can do a lot of good for your community if elected to office! Learn the basics from CDP Chair Morgan Carroll! |
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Dems Leading the Way |
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Bennet, Gillibrand Collaborate on Legislation to Create Health Force |
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Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet proposes hiring hundreds of thousands of Americans for Health Force From the Denver Channel
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, announced Wednesday new legislation to create a Health Force to battle COVID-19.
In a news release, Bennet said the proposed Health Force will be “one of the most ambitious and expansive public health campaigns in our nation’s history.”
The $110 billion piece of legislation would fund a program for two years that would train individuals to work in health care.
“These workers would be dedicated to combating the coronavirus, carrying out testing and tracing and eventually vaccinations,” Gillibrand said.
The workers would be get 90 to 100 hours of training by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then, they would be employed at the local level using funding from grants.
“Could be hundreds of thousands of people, it could be a million people,” Bennet said during a video conference talking about the legislation.
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Neguse Goes to Bat for Firefighters, Gets Them COVID-19 Testing Priority Status |
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From CBS Denver
As fire danger rises in Colorado, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added firefighters among those eligible for priority coronavirus testing. The change comes at the urging of Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.
His district includes the Elk Creek Fire Department where, last month, a firefighter developed symptoms of COVID-19 on the same day that three wildfires erupted in Jefferson County. Chief Jacob Ware said he had no choice but to quarantine the entire wildland fire team.
“At that point in time, there weren’t really a lot of options for testing or anything like that. The recommendation was to have everybody go isolate and monitor for symptoms,” said Ware.
Firefighters were not a priority for testing at the time.
“That impacts our readiness from firefighting capability standpoint, significantly,” said Neguse.
Neguse fired off a letter, also signed by Congressmen Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn and Ed Perlmutter, to Vice President Mike Pence and the CDC.
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Crow Innovates to Boost Medical Student Enrollment |
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Crow proposes federal public health loan forgiveness program From Colorado Politics
U.S. Rep. Jason Crow has introduced legislation to create a student loan forgiveness program for people in their final year of school or who have graduated within the past 10 years. The measure is intended to boost the number of people entering the medical profession.
“I know there is no shortage of individuals in this country who are looking to serve,” said Crow. “For many, the coronavirus has helped spurred the next generation of healthcare leaders and shown just how important it is that we support these essential workers.”
To be eligible for loan repayment, an individual must work with a public or tribal health agency for at least three years. Jobs in areas of high need would also be eligible for greater repayment amounts. Each year of eligible service would merit up to $35,000 of forgiveness.
The bill, titled the Public Health Workforce Loan Repayment Act, would allocate $100 million in for the program in its first year, and $75 million for every year afterward through 2025. Crow credited John Douglas, the executive director of Tri-County Health Department, with the idea.
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#CoLeg Dems Condemn Bigotry, Anti-Antisemitism Motivated by COVID-19 |
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State Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, chair of the Jewish Caucus. |
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From the Colorado Times Recorder
Democratic members of both the Colorado House and Senate released a letter Thursday denouncing hate crimes and hate speech that have emerged across the state during the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Our response to this pandemic requires that we follow CDC guidelines, listen to public health experts and practice proper social distancing,” the letter reads. “As we do so, it is imperative that we do not allow another sickness — racial and religious intolerance — to spread unchecked. In these unprecedented times, combating one pernicious disease is difficult enough.”
The letter was organized by the Jewish Caucus and endorsed by the Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ legislative caucuses.
All 60 Democratic members of Colorado’s General Assembly signed their names to the letter.
“We are seeing an unacceptable rise in hate speech in our communities in the wake of this outbreak, and as Colorado’s representatives, it is our obligation to speak up and show that this type of language has no place in our state,” said Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet (D-Commerce City), chair of the Jewish Caucus. “We are calling on Coloradans to join us in condemning bigotry and anti-Semitism and to work together in our communities to confront this danger.”
The letter emphasizes the importance of community and the value of working together to help quell the number of new cases and deaths due to COVID-19. The letter also thanks medical professionals and other essential workers who have put their health at risk during the pandemic. The bulk of the letter, however, consists of criticizing the “abhorrent behavior” seen in recent weeks.
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Weiser: "We will keep the lessons from this crisis in mind" |
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Slate Magazine Interviewed AG Phil Weiser on their Amicus Podcast, and the AG represented Colorado proudly! Click here to take a listen! |
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Weiser: Learning from COVID-19 In the Grand Junction Sentinel
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, I marvel at the sacrifices of communities across Colorado. Coloradans have changed their lives — not just complying with public health orders, but also caring for neighbors and strangers regardless of the impact that the coronavirus has had in their community. That is the Colorado way. Whether it is recovering from destructive wildfires, historic floods, or the Great Recession, we have seen, time and again, how Colorado comes together during a crisis.
Sacrifice and service build resilience. We are learning from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and will need to continue to do so in the months and years ahead. In a word, we need to prioritize resilience — not just as a character quality, but as a national goal. In the future, we will experience other crises and perhaps even other pandemics. Next time, however, our society needs to be more prepared to adapt.
As Americans, we have largely prized efficiency over resilience in recent years. Efficiency has driven globalization, outsourcing, and centrally managed supply chains. But spurring the ever-cheaper delivery of goods and services at the cost of redundant supply chains has its costs. In doing so, we have weakened our ability to respond to mass tragedies, as we have not built up the spare and necessary capacity (think masks and testing resources) to respond to a crisis.
To underscore how unprepared we were for the COVID-19 pandemic, consider that the United States was a net exporter of important medical supplies — including masks that we are still short on — to China in February as the crisis was brewing. To be more resilient, we must develop better early warning systems for emerging crises, whether it be pandemics, extreme weather, or terrorist attacks. After 9/11, we worked hard to improve our intelligence infrastructure and airport security. After COVID-19, we will need to do the same with our testing capacity, medical supplies, and response time.
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Trump, Gardner, & GOP Watch |
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Trump was warned as far back as "January and February" about COVID-19. |
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President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat From the Washington Post
U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.
For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.
But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.
The advisories being relayed by U.S. spy agencies were part of a broader collection of worrisome signals that came during a period now regarded by many public health officials and other experts as a squandered opportunity to contain the outbreak.
As of Monday, more than 55,000 people in the United States had died of covid-19.
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All Fluff, No Substance: Workers at Meatpacking Never Tested After Gardner Boasts of their Tests. |
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From the Colorado Times Recorder.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) might want to pick a better anecdote to showcase his strong relationship with Vice President Mike Pence than their recent work to reopen Greeley’s JBS meatpacking plant.
Speaking online to an invite-only group of Republican activists Monday evening, Gardner was asked to describe his work with Pence during the pandemic.
Gardner recounted their recent effort to address the deadly outbreak at the JBS facility, concluding, “We got 5,000 tests for that plant, and they’re up and running again as of this past Friday.”
JBS is indeed open for business, but only after the company’s leaders broke its promise to test all employees for COVID-19 before they returned to work.
As Denver Channel 7’s Investigative team reported, “Contact7 Investigates has confirmed promises from the White House and JBS management to provide testing for employees at the massive meatpacking plant in Greeley have not been kept.”
As noted above, it wasn’t just corporate managers who reneged on the deal, Vice President Pence himself also publicly promised that JBS workers would get tests. According to Gardner, he was intimately involved in the discussions that led to that promise.
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Republican Texas AG Tries to Bully Gunnison County for His Rich Friends. |
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Texas attorney general helped donor fight virus lockout in Gunnison County From the AP
When a small county in the Colorado mountains banished everyone but locals to blunt the spread of the coronavirus, an unlikely outsider raised a fuss: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who called it an affront to Texans who own property there and pressed health officials to soften the rules.
“The banishment of nonresident Texas homeowners is entirely unconstitutional and unacceptable,” Paxton said in a news release April 9, when his office sent a letter asking authorities in Gunnison County to reverse course.
An Associated Press review of county and campaign finance records shows Paxton’s actions stood to benefit an exclusive group of Texans, including a Dallas donor and college classmate who helped Paxton launch his run for attorney general and had spent five days trying to get a waiver to remain in his $4 million lakeside home. Robert McCarter’s neighbors in the wealthy Colorado enclave of Crested Butte are also Paxton campaign contributors, including a Texas oilman who has given Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, more than $252,000.
Less than three hours after Paxton announced the letter, Gunnison County granted McCarter an exemption to stay, according to documents obtained by AP. The county says the timing was coincidental.
The depth of Paxton’s connections in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, which were not previously known publicly, raise questions about Texas’ top law enforcement officer using his office to lean on a secluded Colorado county as it scrambled to keep COVID-19 at bay. Paxton has at least nine donors in Texas who own property in Gunnison County, and who collectively have given him and his wife nearly $2 million in political contributions. He sent the letter even as his own state was requiring people arriving from New Orleans and New York to self-quarantine for 14 days.
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Volunteers of the Week |
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The chair of the Routt County Democratic Party swears that it would have been impossible to hold their virtual assembly recently without the energy and expertise of Anne Barounos, Communications Director for the Routt County Dems. Anne has an extensive background in holding video events with her husband in their business in Steamboat Springs, so she was a natural for getting everyone trained in the use of Zoom and ready to participate in the Assembly. She even managed to introduce this technology to a pair of 80-year-old staunch Democrats who had never used Zoom, so they could join in! In addition to working on the assembly for the Democrats, Anne also handles their Facebook page—and she also makes sure that Steamboat citizens in isolation can participate in the twice-weekly Zumba classes to stay healthy.
Anne admits that she was “a little nervous” about coordinating the virtual assembly, but with a practice event a week before, everything went like clockwork online, even to the complicated discussion of several resolutions before the party members. This was one step up—or perhaps several—from the heavy canvassing she’s used to doing every fall for the Democrats and the booths she’s manned for Dems at all sorts of local events. And her work meant that all of Routt County’s Democrats were represented by their elected delegates, even in the time of COVID-19, which is quite a coup!
When asked why she volunteers for the Routt County Democrats, Anne says that she’s “community-minded” and very aware of the advantages she has in her life. Being cognizant of how lucky she is, she does not take lightly her responsibility to share the good things with others who are less fortunate. But why should others volunteer? Anne notes that so many people were not easy to persuade to participate in political activities for the Dems, in her experience, but once they did, they absolutely loved it and wanted to do more. She often found that “getting out and doing something makes people feel good about themselves,” especially now, when so many are frustrated, feeling powerless to act in the face of so much harm being done by the current administration. It’s easy to tell that Anne is very much energized and ready to tackle even more by all her volunteer work for the Dems of Routt County, which makes her a perfect Volunteer of the Week! |
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Do you want to volunteer? Reach out to our volunteer coordinator Karin Asensio at [email protected], and see how YOU CAN GET INVOLVED! |
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Join the Elbow Bumpers Club! |
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What's the Elbow Bumpers Club (formerly known as the High Fivers Club), you ask? It started with a simple idea: There are nearly 1.2 million registered Democrats in Colorado -- what if every single one of them gave just $5 a month to the Colorado Democratic Party (CDP)?
Answer: The CDP would be the best-funded state party in the country -- with zero dollars from corporate PACs and plenty for flipping red seats to blue!
Here's the reality -- the Colorado Dems are working in overdrive to keep the wheels of democracy moving forward, and now is a time when we could really use your help! If you haven't joined the High Fivers Club (temporarily known as the Elbow Bumpers Club now) -- please consider a few reasons to give!
Click the gif below to join the Elbow Bumpers Club! |
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The Funnies! |
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Editor's Note: Since we haven't been able to be on the road, we thought we would end today's edition of the Dispatch by showing a few solid political cartoons! |
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If you didn't catch last week's Saturday Night Live, Brad Pitt did a hilarious job playing as Dr. Anthony Fauci. Click the screen grab above or click here to watch! |
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Contributions or gifts to the Democratic Party of Colorado are not tax deductible |
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