Bob Schaffer

Two weeks after a Washington D.C. group began running anti-Bob Schaffer radio advertisements in Colorado Springs, El Paso County Republicans are fighting back with an ad of their own.

The El Paso County GOP ad was a direct response to an ad that started airing May 2 from the 527 group Campaign Money Watch that asks if Schaffer "look(ed) the other way" from forced abortions during his trip to the Northern Marianas Islands in 1999.

The El Paso GOP response ad, which began airing Wednesday, criticizes Campaign Money Watch's ad as "a bunch of bunk, spin, and half-truths woven in flowery language designed to make a good man look bad."

Both Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer released their first television ads Wednesday, but it was Schaffer's ad that's drawn the most immediate attention thanks to a mountainous mistake.

Schaffer's initial ad, entitled "Colorado Is My Life," the Republican U.S. Senate candidate says he proposed to his wife on top of Pikes Peak. But in the background of the initial ad was a picture not of Pikes Peak, but of Mt. McKinley in Alaska.

The Schaffer campaign quickly pulled the ad and released a revised television ad later on Wednesday.

Initial ad:

Revised ad:

More PolitickerCO.com coverage: Mark Udall: 'Unincorporated Boulder liberal'?

Is Mark Udall a "Boulder liberal," as Republicans have dubbed him? Or should the location in that GOP moniker be changed to read "Eldorado Springs"?

Udall, a U.S. Representative and the presumptive Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, is regularly listed in the press as being from Eldorado Springs. That is what his congressional and campaign offices say, too.

Udall's home, however, is in unincorporated Boulder, about halfway between Eldorado Springs and the city of Boulder.

The DSCC took another swipe at US Senate candidate Bob Schaffer today on the Mariana Islands controversy. In a press release issued today DSCC spokeman Matthew Miller rips Schaffer for allowing "human rights abuses to continue," while the Schaffer campaign manager, Dick Wadhams accused Schaffer opponent, Mark Udall, of being a hypocrite on the Mariana controversy.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer told the Pueblo Chieftain Tuesday that he supports a Congressional funding ban on a 414,000-acre expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site until the Army can justify it.

"I am adamantly opposed to the use of eminent domain by the government in this case," Schaffer told the Chieftain. "As far as I am concerned, the Army has not made its case for expanding Pinon Canyon. The Army is supposed to justify their reasons for the expansion (in a report to the Senate) and I am waiting for that report as well."

Who's up? Who's down? Check out our picks for this week's major political players, the winners and the losers.

Dana Perino: Photo by Getty ImagesWhite House press secretary Dana Perino will appear at a fundraiser for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer tonight in Cherry Hills Village, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Perino, who grew up in Colorado, will attend a reception at the home of Meg and Jamie Duke and a 7 p.m. dinner at the Cherry Hills Country Club, the paper stated.

As we do at the first of every month, today we update our Top Ten Power Positions in Colorado politics. Tom Wiens dropped off our board because he announced he won't be running for re-election. And the brother of another Top Ten politicker made our list for the first time.