CO-Sen: Udall catches heat on Peru vote PDF Print E-mail
Written by Stumo   
Wednesday, 21 November 2007

Mark Udall (D) and Bob Schaffer (R) are vying for the Colorado Senate seat left open by retiring Senator Wayne Allard (R).  Udall is the current Congressman from the 2nd District of Colorado.  Schaffer was a Congressman from 1997 to 2002, and lost a GOP primary to Pete Coors in 2004.

Every member of Colorado's House delegation voted for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, including Udall.  Udall is being taken to task by some in state Democratic consitutents for the vote.

The political blog Colorado Confidential has this criticism:

Colorado's House members voted unanimously in favor of the measure, but some state residents don't understand why, because in 2005 four House members -- Democrats Diana DeGette, John Salazar and Mark Udall and Republican Tom Tancredo -- opposed CAFTA, a similar measure that relaxed trade regulations with a block of Central American countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. ...

"It's just a mystery," says Reed Kelly, a cattle rancher operating outside of Meeker, Colorado, on the Western Slope, when referring to the House of Representatives' vote on the Peru FTA. ...

Regarding the Peru vote, DeGette released a statement saying that "the Peru FTA is a step in the right direction of fairer trade. It offers a significant opportunity to raise the standard of living in Peru, with the agreement's core labor and environmental standards, while opening markets for American products and companies." ...

But other groups remain unimpressed by the measure's environmental and worker protections, claiming that they don't go far enough.

Schaffer was not in office during the 2005 CAFTA vote.  He has run into criticism for allegedly receiving bribes and conflicts of interest.  The accusations were leveled last August.  Whether the issue gets legs, or is shown true, remains to be seen.

The CO-Sen 2008 Race Tracker wiki page is here.

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