While I’ve posted on here a fair bit, my normal account is known as me to enough folks that I felt I needed to create another one to share this info. Because of my position, it’s best not for me to get involved in these sorts of things. But in this case, it’s important enough that I felt I had to at least do something to share this issue publicly.
As Wade Norris noted in a post last week, and as most folks probably know by now, political consultant David Sabados is challenging the Democratic Party Chair Rick Palacio for the job. The case for his candidacy seems to be largely that Dems lost some races this year, and that’s Palacio’s fault, and he’d do better. Sabados has carved out a bit of a career managing some lower-tier races (a few state house races, some school board races, etc), and of course there’s a certain irony to the critique given that David has been on the losing side more often than not.
But there’s a basic problem with David that ought to be more concerning to those of us invested in the success of Democrats in the state, and that’s that he’s – rhetorically – been a serious loose cannon over the past few years. And in the course of his campaigns that I’ve watched, he’s personally made some pretty extreme attacks on a lot of elected Democrats in the state. That kind of track record of rhetoric is just going to be a field day for Republicans and their opposition researchers.
I was thinking in particular that a few years back, a friend had sent me a thing he’d posted, saying something to the effect of, ‘geez, how crazy is this’. I went back through my email and found it, and I’ll share it below. In it, he’s attacking Democratic Denver mayor Michael Hancock and comparing him with Tom Tancredo. It is, based on my experience, pretty par for the course with David.
Of course, when I went back to his Facebook page (we’re friends on there) to see the post and link to it, it’s no longer there. In fact, as I scrolled through the page, it looks like he’s scrubbed it pretty thoroughly, deleting lots of the much more aggressive stuff I remember him having written (compared to stuff I’ve seen pop up on my feed from him, this is probably pretty tame). The fact is, he’s said a lot of reckless stuff attacking fellow Democrats. And ultimately, some of it’s going to be out there on the internet, Republicans will find it, and they’ll have a field day with him as chair. I don’t know how to track down that stuff, and only have the post a friend sent me, but I’m sure it’s not the only one that someone grabbed over the years, and I'm sure there are people much more sophisticated than I am.
Moreover, it seems to me that the fact that he went through and deleted these posts from his Facebook feed in itself seems like a problem, since he felt like he had to try to cover his tracks to hide what he's said in the past.
It also looks like he did the same thing on twitter, since his twitter account shows 32 posts, but a cache of the page from earlier in January shows 39. Not sure what the posts he deleted were, but again, it seems like a problem that we have a guy running for chair who had stuff that he felt he had to go back and delete. Having those kind of distractions (and just that kind of shady behavior generally) probably isn’t going to help Dems win in Colorado in 2016 – leaving aside any questions of whether he actually has the skills to do the job (which, given his local track record, I for one am not at all convinced of). Who knows what else he felt he needed to delete.
Current
https://twitter.com/davidsabados
January 10th, 2015
You must be logged in to post a comment.
BY: JohnInDenver
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: unnamed
IN: “Operation Aurora Is Coming,” Says Thrilled Aurora City Councilor
BY: Conserv. Head Banger
IN: “Operation Aurora Is Coming,” Says Thrilled Aurora City Councilor
BY: JohnNorthofDenver
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: notaskinnycook
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: spaceman2021
IN: “Operation Aurora Is Coming,” Says Thrilled Aurora City Councilor
BY: ParkHill
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: ParkHill
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: ParkHill
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: unnamed
IN: “Operation Aurora Is Coming,” Says Thrilled Aurora City Councilor
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!
Vic Meyers for Colorado Democrats!
One can decide for oneself (from http://topsy.com/s?q=from%3A%40davidsabados&window=a).
<< Curated by Me — I think these are the ones that aren't currently visible >>
Gee, stop the presses. Team Obama preferred their guy and Team Clinton preferred their guy and people tweeted about it. Any tweets about the earth being round? Watergate this ain't.
I guess Hillary's peeps never had anything bad to say about Barack's during the campaign. Is there a point here other than this is so important that you had to change your name, might you have worked on Romanoff's campaign as well and had similar tweets 4 years ago?
Thanks, Pcat, for the curated peek at the deleted emails. I now have more respect for David Sabados, although I will still vote for Vic Meyers.
It really does seem as though this is a deep fault line in Colorado Democratic politics – between Hillary and Obama supporters pre-2008, between Romanoff and Bennet supporters circa 2010, and so on. Those divisions linger on.
Yeah, we need to get over ourselves and move on, and mostly have done so….and at least our trackers don't have trackers (that we know of). We still dutifully, if not enthusiastically, rally around our appointed / annointed leaders, yearning for progressive firebrands all the while.
Dear Anonymous User,
I would address you by your given name, but apparently you think that you deserve your privacy more than I deserve mine. I was forwarded this by my mother, who was sent to this site when she stated her support for David.
I realize that you have been holding onto this screen shot for nearly 4 years, but the post is still visible and could have easily been pulled without my personal information. If you have any confusion about other creepy posts you have been hanging onto for years, check the date you took the screenshot and go to that date on his facebook page (assuming you are actually friends on facebook). Here is a screenshot of the same post from today (note his current profile picture, my current profile picture and the date).
I find it ironic that you are criticizing David for posting about what he believes in when you have gone to such lengths to disguise your identity when expressing your own.
Since you seem to be attacking David’s character and including my information, let me toss some additional information out here. Here is a photo of David and I during one of my recent chemotherapy sessions (the sweet hat is to help me keep my hair as there is a 3- 6% chance I could have lost my hair permenantly during chemo).
David is the kind of friend who has attended 5 of my 6 chemotherapy sessions (including one on his birthday this year). David is the kind of friend who has held my hand as I vomited, cried and scratched my way through a breast cancer diagnosis in the middle of graduate school. David's "you can do it" attitude would be a welcome addition to party leadership and I hope he has the opportunity to support Democrats across Colorado in the way he has supported me.
David is the kind of person who would not (during my time as his girlfriend) ever make plans directly following an election lest there be ballots to be cured in getting democrats elected. Where are your screenshots of Rick Palacio’s status updates from Italy in the days following the election in 2014? I cannot believe our state party chair was abroad when we didn’t know if Representatives Joe Salazar, Daniel Kagan, and others had held their seats. I understand the need for vacation time, but our chair should have been in the thick of things here, helping figure out what happened, rather than firing his ED and taking a vacation.
Congratulations on your top notch stalking skills and your inability to utilize facebook!
Allina C. Robertson
David’s Ex-Girlfriend and Biggest Supporter