We direct your attention this morning to a detailed and very well-written story on the life and candidacy of Republican Joe Coors, Jr., by reporter Lynn Bartels of the Denver paper. Due to a long-running dispute with the Denver paper we’re unable to directly quote any material from the story, but we encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.
We’re pretty sure that Joe Coors’ candidacy won’t survive this story.
Bartels begins with a detailed description of Joe’s early years, and time spent basically as an exile from the Coors family and its vast fortune over his decision to marry the woman he loved before attending college. In comparison to often-told stories about the rigid, perhaps even a bit sociopathic upbringing of most of the Coors family, Joe’s story really is interesting and indicative of character building. When Joe says he’s “not a beer,” there is a little more to that than simply not being involved in the core family business of brewing beer.
Unfortunately, Joe Coors is also unelectable.
We’ve made reference a couple of times now to a pair of similarly in-depth biographical stories from 1988 in the Los Angeles Times, which delved into the lives and worldviews of the Coors family and enterprising sons. One story presciently noted Joe’s brother Pete Coors’ desire to run for the U.S. Senate, which he unsuccessfully did do fourteen years later. The Times stories also talk about Joe Jr.’s split with the family, and eventual return to the fold.
That story is also where we learn, as Bartels dutifully brings up to date for the 2012 elections, that Joe Coors Jr. believes God talks to him on the golf course, and that he predicted Armageddon would occur in the year 2000. Although Joe had changed his views even by 1988, we learn that he once did indeed believe that AIDS was revenge by God on gay people–and that he still thinks homosexuality is, as the Times reported in 1988, an “abomination.”
More recently, as we’ve discussed in this space, Coors helped fund the “Personhood” abortion and birth control ban ballot initiative in 2010. Given the opportunity to respond, Coors says, according to Bartels, that he views himself as a “visionary,” not as “extreme”–whatever that means. Throughout the story, for as much humanizing depth it illuminates in Coors’ life, we can’t find any real attempt to respond to his firmly established record of electability-killing statements, views, actions like helping fund “Personhood,” any of it. He just says he’s “mellowed.”
Whatever that means.
Lynn Bartels has delivered in this story one of the most important pieces of journalism of the 2012 elections, giving CD-7 voters the most insight into this candidate they’re going to get before making their decision. Joe Coors is a real person with a rich life story, more nuanced than his family name suggests. And he has no business running for Congress.
What if the sane, middle of the road property owners in Jefferson County WANT a guy who’s waiting for Armageddon? Weigh in here, MADCO.
Personally, God talks to me all the time. In the frozen food aisle, about my waistline.
I will never run for Congress.
to hear the voice of your own personal heavenly confidant when it’s obvious that He’s already chosen you as one of His lucky winners in life’s chromosomal lottery . . .
. . . except for Willard — who’s thinking maybe God screwed him a little by not giving him a Mexican father?
Joe and I had the same childhood dentist, and now God talks to us both through our fillings. He says Armageddon has been rescheduled for December along with another plague on abominable homos, which I regard as visionary. I definitely want this man in charge of every uterus in CD-7.
I’m just keeping my shit anchored in reality y’all.
My fillings told me that the Mayans wrote it down wrong. And Jesus is on Holiday that week. Its been moved up to April 1, 2013.
We’re gonna need more than Harold Camping’s money to sell this.
Nevermind, we got Joe Coors! Now it’s all coming together.
To eat more Kasha.
Next time you’re in the frozen food aisle check out the Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken. MMmmm!
http://www.kashi.com/products/…
in what sense ?
Is he not a citizen ?
Not a Colorado resident ?
Not 18 ?
I know what you imply, and offer that you ought to be ashamed for thinking that, but do whatever you want.
I should know that.
I suppose Steve Ludwig is a solid progressive,
and an experienced incumbent, and a CU grad,
all good things for a candidate for CU Regent,
but he’s like 930 years old.
The ACP Candidate for CU Regent @ Large — Tyler Belmont — just turned 18 last month.
He’s headed to CU next Fall.
The Regents already have a process whereby students are supposed to be able to give input to the Board. It looks like sham pandering to me.
You can help put a student in a position to really get the CU system to listen to their student customers (the Board considers students their “product.”)
Or you can vote for the 930-year-old Ludwig, who makes cute commercials.
But the CU Board of Regents has enough conservatives to listen to. They don’t need another one on the Board, even an 18 year old one.
while engaged in my equilinamous effort at our local coffe shop. I think the article does more to make him seem like a family man. Most folks who read it I think will come away only remembering that he was ostracized from his family for marrying the woman he loved
unelectable. Think he’ll lose but not because of the tinfoil hat stuff.
Do you honestly believe Jefferson County voters will elect someone who thought he had a precise date for Armageddon? Or thinks God talked to him on the golf course?
I swear liberals are more afraid of GOP crazies than the ordinary people who just say no to GOP crazies. Joe Coors is not going to win. If he does, I am severely wrong about the community I have lived in for decades.
I think most Jeffco Rs will vote for him. I think Perlmutter will get Dems, most indies and some Rs and win the election. Isn’t that the way it’s gone in the past?
Once in a while, one person in the race is especially crazy, and loses a little bigger. Either way if the indies were looking for a reason to get off the fence, why not the guy who doesn’t hear God on the golf course?
but I think you don’t seem to realize that our resident kitty agrees with you on the outcome of this race
I respect all the good Dems here, we just need to stop making excuses for Republicans and start busting them down on their frightful records. We should never be the ones getting jaded about how frightful they really are. Joe Coors is crazy and extreme. What he stands for disgusts me, and I’m not ever going to get used to it.
Because if you expect any R to lose on account of loony beliefs in a safe red district you’re going to be disappointed. Just look at Bachmann for starters. That’s all I’m saying. Coors will lose because Perlmutter is the stronger candidate for the district and a popular incumbent. None of this stuff would be a problem for Coors in numerous districts across the nation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Candidates who have never held a lead, even a small one in their own internal polls at this stage and against an incumbent, rarely, if ever, roar to a win at the finish line. A Bachmann loss would be a pleasant shocker but it looks like the number of R twits in her district is still high enough to elect her again.
we’ll still be able to read the crazy shit she says and does. If she loses it will only be at http://www.citypages.com where they regularly run it
I’d do contribution. It’ll have to be a modest one.
Enough of this eye-rolling and “There they go again.”
Call ‘em out. Call ‘em out. And call ‘em out again.
And where’d ya get your degrees in psychiatry? I’m curious because you don’t seem to know what “sociopathic” means.
On the bright side, we’re apparently back to thinking you can get a colonoscopy by leaving a detailed video with your doctor. Whatever that means.
On Perlmutter’s behalf may I suggest having a conversation anchored in reality? One of the few politicians alive who can stand to have one and this is where you idiots go? I am glad to see you not arguing with the “liberal Colorado blog” thing. A rare bit of (accidental) honesty.
And for the same reasons. I’ll have a conversation “anchored in reality” about Joe Coors with my neighbors, and it damn well is gonna include Armageddon and AIDS as a plague on gays. What the fuck are you defending, anyway?
You and Libertad are kind of pathetic. And for the same reasons.
Where did I defend anything at all? Don’t worry, I don’t expect a real answer. I’m sure you haven’t even bothered to read the diary, or this far down.
Your lame-ass trolling doesn’t really make a point at all. Thanks for clearing that up. It’s cool to get high on weekends, but maybe you should stay off the blogs when you do.
God told him to return to the family fold, not lay up with a three wood off the tee and shoot for par.
The real crime is putting those chairs on that rug.