Hi everyone, I'm Kyle Dyer, welcome to "Colorado Inside Outside" welcome to the people coming in for the Super Bowl of livestock shows.

The 118th national show runs in Denver through the 21st.

For this first show of 2024 we have a lot to talk about.

Let's get to the panel.

Patty Calhoun, founder and editor of "westward."

We have Alayna Alvarez.

We have Amber McReynolds, former director of elections for the city and county of Denver, and George Brauchler former DA for the 18th judicial district and current columnist.

Thank you for coming in.

On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court forebidding his name from abeering on the ballot here in March.

He say it's does not apply to a President and he says he does not believe he was part of an insurrection.

>> Timing is everything on this.

We're filming it on Thursday.

Tomorrow, January 5th is the deadline for the primary ballot to be certified in Colorado.

So the clock is ticking.

Let's hope it is not a ticking time bomb because the problem is we have two appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.

One from the republican party, one from Trump, no way, himself.

So can the power of the U.S. Supreme Court possibly make any kind of decision by January 5th?

It is really unlikely.

They could make a very fast decision on whether or not the Colorado Supreme Court was correct, that's not going to happen.

They could decide whether or not they're going to take the case, I'm guessing that's not going to happen, so they will probably do nothing at all which means we're going to be in limbo as we go into the primary not knowing if those votes will be counted or not because that will depend, ultimately, on whether or not the Supreme Court takes the case and upholds or overturns the court.

>> So his name will be the on ballot?

>> Very likely.

>> This is an interesting argument when it comes to right choice voting.

You have millions of Colorado republicans and unaffiliated republicans whose vote mate not count and they could have a chance if Supreme Court voting was in place to vote for a second tier candidate.

The way that it is unprecedented with the Colorado GOPs own actions.

They're planning a meeting later this month to decide whether to endorse Donald Trump and basically persuade other voters to vote for him, too.

That is unusual because of Colorado politics reporting, they usually have a long standing policy of not getting involved in primaries, contested primaries, they stay neutral.

So this is affecting the state in a lot of ways and it is turning into a mad house because Donald Trump, of course, doesn't know how to play by the rules.

>> There is a lot of steps to prepare the ballots, get the ballots out to overseas voters.

So there is a lot that has to happen for all of this, for the march primary to even occur just from an election had min straight perspective and the lack of clarity is a bad time for all of this.

This is another ply for right choice voting.

We have seen people lose their votes in 2016 and 2020 because they cast a ballot for someone that dropped out by the time the election came around.

This is another example of where you have a lack of clarity or a protest or a challenge happening with a particular candidate.

Right choice would not make that so difficult for voters because they could have at least their second choice be counted if something happens where he is no longer on the ballot.

That is something that we will be voting on in November?

>> There is some issues in front of the title board.

Right now, looking at that going forward, and there is the same package of reforms that include a couple different things, rank choice, an open primary, and addressing the vacancy issue.

>> Rank choice voting, only a couple people understand how it works and they're both names Amber McReynolds.

The other thing is that I would love for that conversation another time, in terms of the Supreme Court intervention here, timing matters and outcome matters more than that.

I don't have any doubts that he is going to be placed back on to the ballot and the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court will be overturned.

That is not important.

What is important is that they issue as close to a unanimous position as possible.

They would include narrowing that legal issue.

America can't survive another 6-3 vote as three of the people voting for this were put there by the guy they're putting back on the ballot.

We would like the Supreme Court to act more quickly and find a way to win over the Jacksons, the Kagans, and the Sotomayors.

We're not talking about insurrections or anything other than applicability to this or due process here.

That is my hope.

>> The rank choice voting topic is so interesting but in this case it would not solve things.

Whoever is voting for Trump and their vote is not counted no one who wanted to vote for Trump is going to think is a good new system in place.

They will think it is rigged.

>> Can you steal a rank choice voice?

>> Some people are questioning New Hampshire's primary and it has not even happened.

They're raising questions about a primary that has not even happened yet.

This is a constant narrative.

He wants to cast doubt and he will continue to do it regardless of the election, in my view.

>> After the presidential primary in march there will be primaries in June in Colorado for the Congressional seats.

And those will look different with Lauren Boebart saying she is switching districts and it is the talk of the state and beyond.

>> This underscores her fear of losing to Adam Frisch who lost to her but a few hundred votes in 2022.

I think she faces major backlash.

She says she is going to move there, but why she felt it was necessary to leave her own home and, you know, jump ship.

A lot of people are accusing her of clinging to power.

And she is also interesting a really crowded race.

We have Mike lynch, the house minority leader.

It will be a formidable opponent, and as much as that might be a challenge to her, it could also potentially help her chances.

All of her opponents are going to be really competing for the anti-Bobart vote.

And when it comes down to mass, they could essentially under cut each other and leave her with the most votes.

I don't know how CD4 voters are feeling right now, but we'll be watching closely and looking to their voices.

>> In many elections, you have to live where you're running for office.

That has been handled by state laws, and they did not clarify that because when the founders wrote the constitution, geography was not as dense and complicated as it is now.

It was more whole states where part of that representation process.

So this is an example, frankly, of a constitutional provision that doesn't have the specifics that frankly, it should.

The bottom line is that I disagree with you not having to live in the district and run for Congress, but the voters of CD4 will have to decide if they think they are being fairly represented by someone that doesn't live there, and the significant checks they have to write to pay for the cost of her to get to the eastern side to the western side if she doesn't move to the district.

>> You had her on your show for quite a bit the other day.

She answered some of these questions?

>> She is going to move into the 4th, whether or not that is tomorrow, next month, or before the election I'm sure she will have at least signed a lease agreement somewhere in the fourth.

It is such an unprecedented nature and the approach is so unprecedented you can't help but imagine a frog with one foot on two different lily pads trying to figure out which one to get on.

It lends itself to criticism and attacks by opponents, but I don't think that is going to matter if you have ten people in the race.

The name I.D.

is the name of the game.

I don't think this is decided in an assembly, I think it is a primary.

There is no way she will make the decision without having polled her name strength in the 4th and if she didn't see something other than I smoked the rest of the field by a bunch, she doesn't make this move.

So these are all legitimate questions.

There will be a question, and all things being the way they are right now, I think she will win.

>> What do you think will happen with the third?

>> I think the other person that used the F word after she announced was Adam Frisch because everything was about her.

We didn't have to hear his background, it was all just get Boebert.

I think the interesting candidate that jumps in is Ron Hinks who calls Jeff a RINO.

He pledged to support the candidate and then campaigned for someone else when he lost.

>> And RINO stands for republican in name only.

>> No one knows other than you don't support Trump.

>> The only person that looked more out of it than we did at the end of the year show, is Adam Frisch who was really in a good position with the no-Boebert vote.

And now Jeff would have certainly won without Ron Hanks jumping in.

The odds are good that he will take the third.

I have not heard this interpretation of Boebert doing so well.

They think she is a carpet bagger.

We'll see if they can coalesce the anti-Boebert camp.

>> Let's bring our focus now to state level.

The legislative session starts to coming Wednesday, the 10th.

We have a republican lawmaker suing other how things were handled in the session regarding the taxpayer bill, and another democrat says she has been expelled from her state capital office and two positions that need to be filled by the committee but the lawmakers said it was too toxic and they had to get out.

There is a lot of work, and there is just so much other stuff going on.

>> It would be great if everyone focused on what is going right rather than these fights over various things.

On the vacancy side, I brought this up for years.

I think we have a problem with our vacancy process.

It is chosen by a very small group of people from each party.

About 30% of the legislature currently are in their positions from this vacancy committee process not being elected directly by the voting populous.

We have 45% of Coloradoans are unaffiliated.

They have chosen and affiliated the process to choose their elected representatives.

So the vacancy committee process has been flawed for a long period of time.

I'm happy to see there is an initiative, at least one initiative so far that is before the title board to possibly fix this and make it more consistent with other states that actually fill their vacancies with an actual election.

That would be far more fair to the voters of Colorado if that happened.

>> Yes, exactly 30 right now.

26 democrats and 4 republicans made their way into representation without having to stand before the voters.

It is a problem.

For me, this is a grab the popcorn kind of a legislative session as we go into the election year.

You have people like Elizabeth Epps and Tim Hernandez who bring their own circus tents with them into the process.

When you're part of a party that managed to come up with 19 of 65 members in the house, and nearly a super minority in the Senate, there's not much you can do.

Mike Lynch said I think about 90% of everything we do will be defensive.

That setting up for some entertaining things but scary things for the state of Colorado.

Things like I'm moving my office, I'm being treated poorly, these are the dominant one party control.

There is no need for decorum if you don't have to reach across the aisle, or to not work with a coalition.

Maybe they do in their party but this will be a very interesting session.

>> On vacancy beat, you have people voting for these two vacant seats.

It is going to be more expensive, but what is the cost for us not to let people elect their own representatives?

We're seeing part of the cost because people are not being thrown out by the voters because of bad behavior.

People are choosing to leave because of the people not being held accountable.

We'll see how this session goes.

Let's hope everyone can behave and we don't have more people resigning.

>> On top of the democrats own self inflicted drama is the fact that they have a new challenge.

Which is dealing with a lot leaner of a budget this year and that is because a lot of the federal post pandemic dollars that were flowing in are drying up.

So they have less to work with, but they also have a lot of tension that is going to create more challenges with you know, handling this major challenge at hand.

It will be really interesting.

I think as far as legislative priorities go, housing will be a big one.

I know we talked about it, but they didn't have a lot to show for it last session that they promised they would.

So they have a lot to show voters this time around.

>> On December 31st, Mike Johnston reached his goal of housing 100,000 homeless people.

On the 2nd of January, $180 million is the number mayor Johnson gave to the city council to deal with the migrant crisis this year, George.

It's enormous, the cost.

>> Yes, we have done this to ourselves.

We are targets for people like Texas for them to drop off busloads of migrants.

That is one issue.

The issue of having how housed 1,000 people for, I don't remember the requirement, but three weeks or something like that, to get 1,000 housed for $50,000, that tells me that $50 million buckets equates to about $50,000 per homeless person.

We could have found a person for $100 a night and housed them for close to 18 months.

It is a staggering amount of money.

It is one and done.

It's not going to keep them off of the streets forever.

This is going to be, one, hats off to Mike.

I like Mike, but I don't agree with his policies.

This is a challenge moving forward.

This amount of money is not going anywhere.

>> Separating the migrants from the housing 1,000 initiative, he did have to go with hotels.

The micro communities he talked about when he went into office have not worked out.

He had to pivot and come up with another way to get 1,000 people off of the streets.

We were wrong in our last show of the year.

He did hit the number, but the biggest challenge is ahead which is as George says, you have to make sure they're not just off of the streets but learning to live better lives, not going back to the street, learning work skills, figuring out how to do things.

That is the huge challenge for that group.

And the migrant issue, whatever you want to think about Texas and the border crossings, there is no question these people are here.

They're in a really tough situation, they want to work.

Federally they cannot work.

So that is the first thing to work out.

Can there be some kind of work permit for them?

Every time you talk to one of the migrants they're like we want to work.

>> Yeah, it is really sad to see two populations in need competing for resources and really strapped resources at that.

The fact that the migrant encampment was able to be cleared and they were put into shelters was made possible because they pulled roughly $300,000 from their own budget.

They staid it is a one-time thing and it is not sustainable.

And the mayor said we hit a breaking point and there is going to come a point pretty soon where they will stop accepting migrants.

There is no place to put them.

Nearly every hotel in Denver is full.

It is really sad.

Something that we're watching pretty closely is how mayor Johnson housing 1,000 people will affect the new point in time count happening on January 2nd which is a count of the diverse homeless population.

He took 1,000 plus people off of the street but we have hundreds of migrants coming in and finding themselves homeless.

So I don't really know, it will be interesting to see how the numbers balance out.

>> I think, so a few things, this is a result of DC being broken and not being able to collaboratively figure out solutions that are affecting multiple cities and states around the country and that puts pressure on local governments which is exactly what is happening in Denver.

You combine that with the homeless issue that has been spiralling for years, for lots of reasons.

There is can multiple reasons blamed for that.

I feel like a lot of times it seems to be government that needs to figure this out.

I look at it more as it is government plus community plus business plus, you know, there needs to be more ideas and creativity around solving this crisis than currently exist because it is that type of issue.

It is multidimensional, it impacts all kinds of different folks.

The work issue that Patty mentioned at the federal level is significant for migrants.

I know multiple entities and businesses that have had job vacancies available including the postal service where I'm a governor we're constantly recruiting for people to come work.

There is a need and we need the federal government to step up and create a solution for that.

So that people can live.

>> Now is the time for our panel to go through and talk about some of the highs and lows of the week.

Let's start with something that you really wish you weren't seeing as we start this new year, Patty?

>> I wish we weren't seeing the anniversary, three-year anniversary of the insurrection on Saturday.

And the hangover in threats against election officials, judges, people who sue on ballot issues, and the fear that comes up on January 1st when there was a very strange man who wound up breaking into the judicial center and everyone thought that would be related to election issues.

Turns out it wasn't but that is a toxic environment.

>> There was a shooting on Sunday at the Denver museum of nature and science.

Packed with families, the least suspecting place you think that would happen, and it reflects a dark time in Denver.

If you can't take your kid to a children's museum and feel safe there, then where can you?

>> Election officials, junctions, folks simply doing their jobs should not be attacked and should not be harassed for simply fulfilling their duties, their oaths they have taken to make decisions or implement election administration and I'm deeply fearful for another year.

>> I want to talk about my own party and what we heard about from Alayna.

We're supposed to be the party of principal and procedure and certainly in a primary that is what you're supposed to be focused on.

He will win the republican nomination unless something drastic changes.

But here in Colorado, a foregone conclusion or not, we're about procedure and policy.

Some of the other candidates paid a fee to be or not be at the assembly to the state party and the state party took that money because they're strapped for cash and now we're saying we're going to put the stamp of approval in advance of a single vote being cast whether this guy is on the ballot or not.

I say it is a huge mistake, a horrible precedent, and we should get back to being the business of republicans.

>> Let's talk about something you're pleased about seeing?

>> Stock show season.

The only time of year when I'm appropriately dressed but it is such a great time in Denver.

Get out to the complex.

See the spur the youth project, it's incredible, a great 21 days.

>> On the migrants issue, community businesses getting involved and helping with this issue, I saw Stanley marketplace in Aurora announce they have a new initiative that every Tuesday they give migrants a space to sell some of their skills, teach cooking classes, do interesting things to support them in a way, they all want jobs and I think that is an interesting tactic.

>> I will say the youth.

My son just did a basketball camp, and doing their sports or activities, in school, they're full of vibrancy.

>> This is the first opportunity since 2016 that the Denver Broncos could have a winning season.

Just saying it out loud is shocking, right?

It felt like Peyton manning was bringing us another victory, and maybe getting to our first winning season since Trump was President.

>> Mine is seeing Aaron Gordon back on the court and to hear how touched he is from his teammates and all of the fans out there.

After a scare on Christmas he was bit by dog, and it was scary and he is back where he belongs, at the game against the Pistons, so I hope we win, and I'll be rooting on AJ.

So thank you, team, and thank you to all of you watching at home or listening to our podcast on Spotify, I'm Kyle Dyer and I'll see you next week here on PBS12.