Red-on-Red Warfare: GOP Usual Suspects Gang Up on Suthers

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by: Colorado Pols

Mayor John Suthers (R) of Colorado Springs.

As reported by the Colorado Springs Independent last week, another major Republican insider-run “grassroots” advocacy group is attacking former Republican state attorney general-cum-Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, who as our readers know had the temerity to ask the conservative voters of Colorado Springs for–gasp–a tax increase to fix that conservative bastion’s famously crappy roads:

IACE Action – CS, a 504(c)4 organization that doesn’t have to reveal its donors, is opposing Mayor John Suthers’ .62 of a percent sales tax hike on the November 3 ballot.

IACE Action is run by Laura Carno, a political operative who ran Steve Bach’s successful campaign for mayor in 2011. IACE, or I Am Created Equal, provided thousands of dollars worth of in-kind donations for the El Paso Freedom Defense Committee, the issue committee largely responsible for the successful recall of Democratic Senate President John Morse in 2013.

IACE has mounted a website that contains a video explaining why people should vote “no.”

It has not filed a campaign finance report yet for the November election. It did file two reports for the April city election. One reported no donations or spending. The other reported one donation of $3,452 from IACE Action, and spending to a Highlands Ranch company for digital media and to a St. Paul, Minn., company for robo calls.

Laura Carno.

Laura Carno and her “I Am Created Equal” 501(c)(4) advocacy group frequently runs cover for Republican causes and candidates from a “woman’s point of view,” most famously last October when she penned a widely circulated op-ed for the Denver Post that asserted women’s reproductive rights “are not in danger” from anti-abortion Republican candidates. That those candidates included a member of Carno’s advisory board–Bob “IUDs are abortifacient” Beauprez–was apparently lost on the Denver Post, but since they were in the process of making essentially the same absurd argument to endorse Cory Gardner, that little conflict of interest didn’t trouble them.

In a guest advertisement opinion column in the Gold Dome Thrifty Nickel Colorado Statesman today, Carno details her opposition to Mayor Suthers’ request for a five-year sales tax increase to pay for road construction in Colorado Springs:

No one disputes the need for road repairs. The dispute arises over how best to pay for them…

Americans For Prosperity Colorado hired Steve Anderson, a CPA with experience in municipal budgets, to review the city’s budgets and audits and propose options within the existing city budget to find an annual $50 million for road repairs — without raising taxes. Anderson came up with many ideas and Americans for Prosperity Colorado detailed these ideas for the mayor and the City Council.

But the mayor and the City Council aren’t interested in Anderson’s proposals. They want the tax increase. It might seem like an easier path for city leaders to raise taxes than to make difficult decisions in city government. But it’s their job to make difficult decisions…

As we discussed in August, the “alternatives” from Americans For Prosperity don’t stand up to scrutiny. Mayor Suthers told the Colorado Springs Gazette that AFP didn’t even talk to anyone involved in the city budget–either in the finance office or a committee of citizens tasked with reviewing the budget every year. According to Suthers, AFP’s suggestions were completely ignorant of basic realities about where the city gets and spends its money, even suggesting that the city “tax churches and nonprofits” instead of raising the sales tax.

Bottom line: you’ve got several competing Republican interests at work here, and the result may be nothing but bad news for Colorado Springs. On the one hand, Mayor John Suthers is in charge of a city with desperately bad roads–easily some of the worst urban road conditions in the entire state. For thinking conservatives, a run-down Colorado Springs with awful roads doesn’t do much to promote their worldview. Only a totally hardened ideologue would look at bad roads in a conservative Mecca and see a good thing, right?

But alas, this is a nationally-known conservative Mecca, and to raise taxes in the city of Douglas “Mr. TABOR” Bruce would be an admission that the reviled public sector sometimes does good and necessary things with our tax dollars. Besides the military, of course, that taxpayer-funded government entity Colorado Springs’ economy is utterly dependent on for survival–but we digress. If GOP-owned and operated Colorado Springs, the very birthplace of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights were to rise taxes on itself, people might start to talk. Indeed, the whole edifice of Colorado Springs’ hard-right talk radio “drown gubmint in the bathtub” culture might begin to crumble.

Or maybe not, but Laura Carno still got a check to go to war on fellow Republican Mayor John Suthers! Thus proving something else very important in today’s politics: the GOP’s paid operative “grassroots activist” industrial complex is never more than a disgruntled donor away from eating their own.

10 thoughts on “Red-on-Red Warfare: GOP Usual Suspects Gang Up on Suthers”

bullshit! says:

September 28, 2015 at 3:18 pm

Only a totally hardened ideologue would look at bad roads in a conservative Mecca and see a good thing, right?

As sad as it is, I wouldn't be so sure about this. There are ideologues who would gladly pay for new shocks and struts (personal responsibility) before shelling out a dime for the roads. They might even get off on the shitty roads for exactly this reason.

Does it suck? Yes. Are there people in Colorado Springs who really live like that? Yes.

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BlueCat says:

September 28, 2015 at 3:51 pm

Wonder what CHB thinks… maybe that there's no need, just cut some more waste? Save some more string? Make a bigger alumnim foil ball? Save your grease drippings? I mean there's not much left to cut in C Springs.

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Moderatus says:

September 28, 2015 at 4:17 pm

If this is wrong, then everything you do to criticize fellow Democrats into following the party line is wrong too. This is about holding elected officials accountable and I support that. No surprise that Democrats don't.

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1. exlurker19 says:
  
  September 29, 2015 at 1:05 pm
  
  BC was asking CHB, not you, Moddy. I have however noticed that if the young woman involved in whatever Repub dust up there is going on happens to be attractive, why, you leap even higher to her defense. Coincidence? Like Gibbs, I don't believe in coincidences.
  
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2. BlueCat says:
  
  September 29, 2015 at 1:25 pm
  
  If you actually read our comments or payed attention to news about Dems, you'd know there is no single Demp party line for every issue that everyone is required to stick to. Dem pols, Dem rank and file, and ColPols Dems disagree with one another in various combinations all the time. There is no Dem Borg to which we all must sacrifice our individual critical thinking.
  
  Certainly we don't all feel required to follow the most exrtremist in our midst, though very few non-centrists remain on the Dem side, as Rs have been doing until recently. Now those extremists (and you have to be very extreme to be an extremist in the 21st century GOP, the most extreme right in the history of the party) have been scaring the folks who thought that they were the users and the wackos were the usees. Laugh's on them.
  
  Apologize for any misspelled or partial words I have missed. No help fom the little red lines anymore.
  
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JeffcoDemo says:

September 28, 2015 at 4:35 pm

Can't they just turn off more sprinklers and street lights? How about stop lights, can't they survive with just good old libertarian do as you please in regards to intersections?

i would love to see the advice be taken into action, tax them churches! That would be so much fun to watch play out.

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1. mamajama55 says:
  
  September 28, 2015 at 6:00 pm
  
  Starting with Chaps' internet "church"and scam operation. 15% on 800,000 (his take in 2014) is $120,000. That ought to fix a few potholes.
  
  Chaps is still whining about being "stoned". Perhaps some nice edibles would loosen up his wallet, and that of his pastor. Chaps' home church, New Life Church., is one of the seven biggest megachurches in Colorado, with an average weekly attendance of 12,000. Chaps gave New Life a shout-out on the cover of his book.
  
  Assuming that the congregants all tithe about 10%, New Life brings in about five million a month (.10 x40K average income x 12,000). Hell, they could pave the Springs streets with gold and buiild pearly-gated communities. But they don't. Half their take goes to pastor salaries. Too bad they can't find any money to house the homeless in the Springs.
  
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flatiron says:

September 28, 2015 at 4:49 pm

re Steve Anderson. He has made news before:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article314851/Kansas-budget-director-apologizes-for-erroneous-number-in-Brownback-presentations.html

The director of the Kansas Budget Division issued a public apology Monday for an errant spending statistic that Gov. Sam Brownback has used for months to claim credit for state spending cuts that never happened.

The error was contained in a chart showing state all-funds spending 1965-2012, which Brownback has regularly used in a PowerPoint presentation at speaking engagements to opinion leaders across the state.

The chart showed state spending peaking at about $16 billion in 2010 — the final year of Gov. Mark Parkinson’s administration. The actual spending that year was $14.04 billion.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article314851/Kansas-budget-director-apologizes-for-erroneous-number-in-Brownback-presentations.html#storylink=cpy

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1. Davie says:
  
  September 28, 2015 at 5:18 pm
  
  Gee whiz, a Republican who is either incompetent at their job, or intentionally fudging the numbers to support bogus arguments about taxes, in Kansas no less. Who would have guessed?
  
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MADCO says:

September 29, 2015 at 8:11 pm

First, Suthers deserves this. It's a great demonstration of how he would govern the state if ever he could manage to get elected to serve in a position where that could happen. Hell, he might even advocate de-Brucing the state, as did C. Springs.

second, Dnver taxes snot of us and the roads are flat out dangerous. Would it be possible to blame the crazy people or Obama for how bad the Denver roads are?

now, C470, notably not paid for by development paying its own way, is about to get big remodel. And who's paying for that? Not the anti tax Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree and DougCo voters. And not the C.Springs voters who love to use it to avoid Denver as they go to the fun part,of the mountains.

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