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‘Yogurtgate’ and that’s a wrap

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Friday, April 27, 2012 10:16 PM

Editor’s note: This is the Journal’s weekly roundup of campaign news.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday paid his fourth visit to Colorado since September, speaking to a young, fired-up crowd at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Although Obama nominally was there to pressure Congress to keep student loan interest rates low, the visit will live in political history for “Yogurtgate,” an incident outside a college bar where a surprised student spilled a snack on the president.

Obama told the story at the beginning of his speech.

“More hazardously, she spilled yogurt on the Secret Service. The agent just stood there,” Obama said.

The student later told NBC’s “Today” that it wasn’t yogurt, but a fruit cup, and that she had put it on the ground and a photographer accidentally kicked it, spilling it on Obama.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, slammed Obama for taking the trip on the taxpayers’ dime.

“Our country’s facing some major economic and fiscal challenges, yet here’s the president wasting time on a fake fight to try to gain his own re-election,” Boehner said.

Ad wars: Spending in the presidential race ramped up in a big way in Colorado.

Priorities USA — a pro-Obama SuperPAC — and the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund are spending $1 million on ads in Colorado and Nevada that tie Mitt Romney to the oil industry.

On the anti-Obama side, Americans for Prosperity is spending $6 million in eight swing states, including Colorado, to tie Obama to the failed solar company Solyndra.

Gingrich out: Republican Newt GIngrich announced that he will suspend his presidential campaign next Tuesday. He had not won a primary since March 6 in his home state of Georgia.

Poll tracker: Obama and Romney are tied in Colorado at 47 percent each, according to a poll by Purple Strategies, a bipartisan political firm.

The poll talked to voters in 12 swing states between April 19 and 23, and the Colorado portion had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percent.

Countdown: 59 days until the primary election. 192 days until the November election.

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