Song playsIntro by hostWelcome to High Country - politics in the American West. My name is Sean Diller; regular listeners might know me from Heartland Pod’s Talking Politics, every Monday.Go to heartlandpod.com for information on all our political podcasts, and a link to support our work on Patreon. Sign up as an Official PODhead for just $5 per month to access all our premium podcast segments and political writing. To join the conversation on Twitter, find us at THE Heartland POD. Alright! Let’s get into it: NEVADA CURRENT: The Cowardly Lombardo.In his first public event since being elected governor of Nevada, Joe Lombardo refused to allow the Nevada Current and the Las Vegas Sun to cover what was billed as a victory speech. Shutting the Current out of his celebratory event was an extension of the Lombardo team’s practice throughout the campaign – along with multiple Republican candidates nationwide – to refuse to provide campaign statements, notices of events, or other information to the press. The campaign told the Current Monday morning that they couldn’t be allowed to cover the event because it was “at capacity for press right now.” Subsequent photographs of the event showed that statement from the campaign was patently false - with row upon row of empty seats in the sparsely populated high school auditorium where Lombardo gave his victory speech.Such mendacity from Lombardo and his team comes as no surprise. But most concerning going forward, is the prospect that as governor, Lombardo, his office, and publicly financed executive branch government offices under his purview, will refuse to provide independent journalists and other media organizations with public information.Lombardo’s campaign presented its candidate to the public as an upright lawman of character, honesty, integrity and strength. But subverting the people’s right to transparent and accountable government, and hiding from the press is just cowardly.COLORADO NEWSLINE: With Lauren Boebert slightly ahead in Colorado, the race to cure ballots is on.The extremely tight race between MAGA darling U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and moderate Democrat Adam Frisch became a contest of cured ballots this week, as the two candidates worked to rally their voters and ensure every one of their ballots is counted.On Tuesday afternoon, the difference between the candidates’ totals remained at over 1,000 votes: a narrow spread for sure, but still above the threshold that would trigger an automatic, state-funded recount. At the current numbers, if Frisch comes within about 830 votes, then a recount would be triggered.Vote tallies will change through the end of Wednesday as ballots continue to arrive from military and overseas voters, and as flawed ballots are “cured'' by voters. When tabulators reject a ballot, often due to a discrepancy between the voter’s signature on the ballot and the official state voter registration records, the voter has an opportunity to resolve, or cure, the problem and have their vote count.The Frisch team is trying to win cured ballots this week by getting the word out to voters about the curing process, encouraging use of the state’s TXT2Cure mobile phone-based curing system, and on-the-ground voter engagement.A Frisch campaign spokesperson said “A lot of the curable ballots tend to skew a lot younger, and others who don’t have as much experience voting. We think that we probably will perform better among younger voters, so we think that probably there’s more curable ballots for us than for Lauren Boebert.”The Frisch campaign also believes cured ballots from unaffiliated voters, not just registered Democrats, will skew their way.That sentiment was seconded by Matt Crane, a Republican who heads the Colorado County Clerks Association.Crane said. “Unaffiliated voters wanted to punish the hell out of the Republican Party in Colorado this year. And they sure did. It’s probably a better pool for Democrats to go and try to cure unaffiliated ballots than it is f