Opinion & Commentary

Doug Campbell knows just how important third-party candidacies can be (and how often they’re ignored). After all, it was Tom Tancredo’s run for governor in 2010 as the American Constitution Party candidate that elevated that group to major-party status here in Colorado, even though Tancredo has since returned to the…

Back in 2007, Denver residents voted for an alphabet soup of nine civic improvements. While almost all of those bond-backed Better Denver projects are done (with signs to prove it), much of the money from G and H, earmarked for maintenance and construction of cultural facilities, including an update of…

This is National Wildlife Refuge Week, and the feds are encouraging you to “see what wildlife refuges are doing to conserve America’s wildlife heritage.” But when I asked if I could see Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, the regional U.S. Fish & Wildlife office declined that request, and instead suggested…

If Mitt Romney comes back to Colorado before election day on November 6 — and he will, since this state is still in play — he has an invitation for a “family meal” with the Aguirres at Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe. But if he accepts this invitation, he can leave…

Every party has a pooper, and in the case of the 16th Street Mall’s thirtieth anniversary party, that would be the New York Times, which published an article on Tuesday’s celebration — both online and in print — that some boosters think made the event look a lot like Mayberry,…

When I stopped by Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe last week for lunch, the restaurant was empty. When I returned this past Monday, it was jammed. The Colorado Forward Obama campaign RV was just pulling away — with a lot of Rosa Linda’s to-go food and Governor John Hickenlooper inside the…

The celebration started late yesterday afternoon in the neighborhoods around Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, as news spread that Walmart had pulled out of the project that Jeff Fuqua plans to put in the old University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. If the timing had been a little different, they…

One of my great guilty pleasures, How the West Was Won, came on very early Sunday morning. I first saw this star-studded blockbuster as a kid at a drive-in movie in northern Illinois, and its Cinerama scenery fueled an early obsession with the West. Fifty years after its release, much…

Colorado was the first state to make Columbus Day an official holiday, in 1907. And today, state offices will be closed to mark what remains a holiday — and was celebrated with a Columbus Day Parade Saturday. But that parade didn’t inspire the protests that have been regular sights over…

The 16th Street Mall turned thirty yesterday, and it’s looking better than it has in years, with the best yet to come as work continues on the Union Station project. The mall’s official birthday celebration will be Tuesday at Skyline Park — but some critics won’t be coming to the…

In the crazed build-up to the presidential debate, I stopped by one of my favorite neighborhood spots for food and fellowship: Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe. Turns out, I missed the news right under my nose. Back at the office, we were reporting that Mitt Romney had lunched at Chipotle –…

No matter how the presidential candidates do in tonight’s debate — whether Mitt Romney continues to do his imitation of Bert on Sesame Street or Barack Obama trips over his teleprompter — a clear winner has already emerged: The University of Denver…

The presidential debate won’t be at University of Denver until tomorrow night, but the great debate is already raging in Denver: Does a Walmart belong in the development going in the former University of Colorado property at Ninth and Colorado? And if it does, should it benefit from tax-increment financing?…

Six months ago Gaylord Entertainment Co. made its case to Colorado, explaining why a proposed 1,500-room, $824 hotel/resort/convention complex in Aurora was a good deal — good enough to justify the state offering big tax incentives. Today, the company that made that pitch no longer exists…

When Mayor Michael Hancock hosted his second “Cabinet in the Community” last month in northwest Denver, the officials on hand outnumbered the number of people in the audience. But that’s not likely to be the case tomorrow, when Hancock takes his show on the road to east Denver — where…

The University of Denver isn’t all about political debates. The Lamont School of Music is offering 250 free concerts this year, for example. And in Now Showing, Westword’s fall arts guide, DU arts administrators gave particularly intriguing answers to questions about the city’s cultural scene…

Plutonium lasts forever. So does the saga of Rocky Flats. By U.S. District Judge John Kane’s count, the jurors had spent 69 days sifting through the evidence, then another seventeen deliberating. “Through this trial, I had a clipping from one of the newspapers that said — the headline was ‘Rocky…

The first edition of Westword hit the streets of Denver in September 1977. Over the past 35 years, Westword has gone through many changes — as has the publishing industry in general, and the alternative-newspaper industry in particular. But our basic mission has not changed: to cover (and sometimes uncover)…

For a while, it looked like Walmart had Denver in the bag. But now, developers are going back to the drawing board…or at least the calender. After Denver City Council reps Mary Beth Susman and Jeanne Robb announced they opposed tax-increment financing for the project, the Colorado Boulevard Healthcare District…