“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action,” or so says James Bond. I don’t want to talk about enemies here, but I do want to talk about the action of political parties. Consider three recent Colorado stories involving Democrats and what they imply about the state of parties in Colorado.
First, as I’ve discussed previously, and as Westword and others have covered, Chris Hansen abandoned the voters who elected him to the state senate in order to take a high-paying CEO job at a utility company. He will be undemocratically replaced by Democratic party insiders.
Second, prior to the election, Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office accidentally released partial passwords to Colorado voting machines. No, we cannot expect perfection of our elected officials. But an outside evaluation found (in CPR’s words) that Griswold did not give “staff enough training in how to search for hidden tabs and meta data to ensure publicly accessible documents don’t include confidential or private information” and did not designate “staff to make a final security check of documents from the Elections Division prior to publishing them.”
Worse was how Griswold responded to knowledge of the breach. As Kyle Clark reported November 14, “Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office was not going to tell county election clerks and the public that they had accidentally leaked voting machine passwords.” Clark continues, “Griswold only notified the [county] clerks, and only changed the passwords, after that security breach was revealed to the media and to public.” Josh Zygielbaum, Adams County’s Democratic clerk, said he was “pissed off” by the lack of transparency, which he called “bullshit.”
To top off this story, Colorado Politics reports, “Democrats on the Colorado General Assembly’s Legislative Audit Committee rejected calls for an audit of that breach.”
Third, Democratic Senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis reportedly used a tax-paid aide to “do chores like yard work and bartend at a party at her home,” the Colorado Sun reports. Other former employees said Jaquez Lewis “withheld wages, set unreasonably demanding work schedules, and attempted to prevent them from communicating with other people in the Democratic political sphere,” CPR reports.
At least Democrats barred Jaquez Lewis “from having state-paid aides,” the Sun reports. And Democratic leadership even removed Jaquez Lewis from her committees and put in motion a forthcoming ethics investigation, CPR adds. So that is some accountability. Still, the Political Workers Guild of Colorado called for “the immediate resignation or removal of Sen. Jaquez Lewis.” But most leading Democrats seem content with a lackadaisical approach.
It seems obvious that Colorado Democrats don’t really think they have to care too much about accountability to the public. Sure, Democrats lost a bit of ground in the state house, but they still have a 43-22 margin, the Sun reports. Democrats won’t be able to unilaterally override potential vetoes of the governor (who, you may recall, also is a Democrat), but they still call the shots at the capitol.
What Democrats really need to stay disciplined is a viable opposition party. Instead, the Republican Party, despite some successes, largely has imploded. Daniel Belfontaine, chair of the Adams County Republican Party, explains how state party chair Dave Williams has “actively worked against many of our winning GOP candidates.” Worse, Williams used party resources to play favorites during the primaries, including to promote himself. He lost the U.S. House primary in the 5th Congressional District to Jeff Crank, who went on to win the seat.
Under Williams, the state GOP also has swallowed whole Trumpist conspiracy mongering about elections (somehow relevant only when Republicans lose), taken a virulently anti-LGBTQ stance, and driven out anyone with anything other than extreme abortion-ban views. Although popular in certain regions, the Republican Party of Colorado is wildly out of step with most voters here.
But the Democrats become complacent at their own peril. If the GOP ever gets its act together again, Democrats may learn the hard way that many of their positions are not as popular as the capitol tilt may seem to indicate, and that voters easily tire of shenanigans.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
