I thought it was pretty fun. Some of the speakers overused rhetorical hyperbole, a lot
I was impressed by the main candidates. The frontrunner for the nomination for State Treasurer, Hasan (2nd generation Pakistani, interestingly enough) was very reasonable I thought. He didn't talk about issues irrelevant to the office, like abortion, like his opponent did.
The AG was nominated by acclamation, given that he is an incumbent. He was very good, though he went over the top on the healthcare lawsuit.
Somehow I missed the SoS nomination speeches, but it's probably the least important office the convention dealt with.
McInnis gave a great speech, he is clearly the frontrunner to win the nomination. He seems pretty moderate, given the overall climate. His only serious opponent, a guy named Maes, was far to angry I thought.
For the Senate nominations, the only two serious contenders there were Tidwell and Buck (Norton did not attend). Tidwell was very angry and extreme, there's no way he could win. Buck was a rock star. He had a huge organization. He gave a great speech. He criticized Republicans as running as conservatives and then expanding government (big plus IMO), he didn't pander to the military nor any other group, and overall came off very well (he's pretty charismatic).
The only other speech of significance was Mike Coffman, who was one of the first speakers (Lamborn's son was graduating that day, so he was absent). Coffman gave a great speech. Fiery, but not bitter or hateful. He had a good line about his family planning a vacation to Arizona, the crowd went nuts
Arizona wasn't mentioned that much though, which I think is a good thing. In fact, all the serious candidates advocated going after corporations that hire illegals, not the illegals themselves.
There was a fair share of Hispanics at the convention. I'd say about 3%-5%, and I even saw a few blacks. The vice-chair of the party is actually northern African I believe, and their were a handful of Hispanic leaders there as well.
Overall, they were far more reasonable than I thought. Only Tidwell and Hasad's challenger pandered to the tea party, and neither will win. The tea party didn't have much of a presence (though two Colorado tea party leaders were among Buck's 15-ish endorsers when he spoke).
(I thought it was amusing how they called Hickenlooper, HickenRitter
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