Perlmutter vs. O'Donnell last night.

Last night, I went to Golden to see the first debate between CD7 Congressional candidates Ed Perlmutter and Rick O'Donnell. Watching it, I felt Ed was fairly comfortable and O'Donnell was almost like a dear in headlights. I felt that O'Donnell in many ways spoke well, however much of what he had to say was lipservice. What really got me was the end. At the end O'Donnell mainly whined, pointed fingers and blamed Ed, and followed up by saying he was not going to whine, point fingers or blame people. In many ways it was interesting. There were parallels in what they had to say, and both had mentioned funding NREL, however Ed is on the board of trustees of the midwest research group, which funds NREL. O'Donnell's position on Renewable Energy is suspect. O'Donnell has been very defensive about Ed's attack on his Social Security position. While O'Donnell has tried to distance himself from remarks he made over 10 years ago, it seems as though he isn't doing so well. He has run ads saying that Ed Perlmutter is trying to scare people about his position on Social Security. During the debate he even tried laying it at Ed's feet. Rick O'Donnell failed to complete a candidate questionaire and one of the questions was on his position on Social Security. O'Donnell tried to make Ed's answer out that he wanted to make it so future generations did not get as much in Social Security and handed Ed a paper with his answer on it. Ed in turn read his answer on the paper and made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of short-changing future generations on Social Security and made it clear that he wanted the overall system to stay the way it is and handed the paper back to O'Donnell. Though it was far more eloquent than I could describe. On Iraq, Ed had a lot of good ideas and they were itemized, while O'Donnell was very vague. Ed spoke about orginized crime's involvement with immigration. Ed did very well. And today, I came home from work only to find that Ed is now ahead of O'Donnell by 17 points. 54-37. The campaign has been working very hard. And we are prepared to win.

Here's more on the debate: http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=719


And the poll here: http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=727