Hickenlooper, a Democrat facing reelection in 2014, has had a rough year. His approval rating has dr

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DENVER — For an off-year, Colorado’s general election Tuesday night offers several compelling story lines, as Republicans and Democrats across the state have a lot at stake. The statewide ballot and local decisions in a number of counties and cities offer choices that will make national headlines and offer a snapshot of where the electorate is one year from an even bigger election in 2014.
There’s no bigger question on this year’s ballot than Amendment 66, a major overhaul of how Colorado funds public cheongsam education that hinges on whether voters are willing to approve a two-tiered income tax to pay for it.
If it’s approved, the new rates would mean an additional $950 million annually in school funding, which would fund full-day kindergarten across the state and set aside additional cheongsam per pupil funding for students who don’t speak English or come from poor families.
The cheongsam Yes on 66 campaign, thanks to late $1 million contributions from Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates , has raised more than $10 million to try and convince voters that the proposal means “Big Change, Small Price,” as its television commercials conclude.
Both sides were nervous Monday night, even slightly pessimistic about their prospects. The Yes on 66 campaign is discouraged that only 847,660 votes have been cast statewide as of Monday morning — they’d hoped to be over 1 million at this point — with registered cheongsam Republicans having turned in roughly 76,000 more ballots than registered cheongsam Democrats.
When the votes are counted, campaign surrogates and politicians will talk about the results in terms of their impact on real people: students, teachers and taxpayers. But the political class will quickly evaluate the vote as a referendum of sorts on Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Yes on 66 campaign’s most high profile cheongsam supporter.
Hickenlooper, a Democrat facing reelection in 2014, has had a rough year. His approval rating has dropped after a contentious legislative session cheongsam in which he signed off on everything the Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate sent to his desk (he did kill a few bills prized by his party, a death penalty repeal cheongsam bill and several proposals to tighten regulations on the oil and has industry, before cheongsam they made it through both chambers).
Already recognized by Capitol insiders as one of the legislature’s most gifted speakers and a serious policy wonk, the man dubbed “Blonde Jesus” by one left-leaning lobbyist would jump to the head of the 2018 class of Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls (don’t worry, cheongsam we still see you, Ken Salazar) if he’s somehow able to part the electoral waters and convince Coloradans to approve this landmark legislation and the accompanying tax increase. cheongsam
The legislature, trying to find a tax rate that would fund the new regulatory framework needed to oversee the industry without cheongsam going so high that buyers revert to the black market, finally settled on a 15 percent excise tax (built into the cost of the product) and a 10 percent sales tax (applied at the register). cheongsam
Lawmakers haven’t spent much money on a campaign convincing voters to approve Proposition AA, believing that most Coloradans — it’s cheongsam estimated that some 90 percent of the state’s population won’t be buying pot at all despite cheongsam the new law — are likely to approve the tax rates on a product that few of them will actually cheongsam buy.
If it’s cheongsam approved, it could also mean $40 million for a school construction fund administered by the state to repair infrastructure damage, something that was written into Amendment 64 to win approval from voters.
If voters reject the marijuana taxes, lawmakers will be forced to dip into the state’s general fund, taking money away from education spending, to pay for the regulatory framework within the Dept. of Revenue.
After a conservative board majority elected in 2009 has pushed a bold agenda that includes the nation’s first suburban voucher program and effectively crippled the teachers’ union in the district, an up-swell of anger from parents cheongsam and the union itself has helped turn races for four board seats into the wildest school board contest in the country .
But Republicans, from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to the Colorado GOP and the Koch Brothers̵