March 02, 2009 11:59 PM UTC

Stone Knows Grandstand

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• by: Colorado Pols

More background on the recently-announced opponent to Dick Wadhams for the Colorado GOP Chairman position in leadership elections later this month, Tom Stone, from the Colorado Independent:

Before Republican Realtor Tom Stone rode into town in 1998, Eagle County was a largely nonpartisan place, leaning more to the right but a difficult place to tell the Dems and the members of the GOP apart.

Stone, who Friday threw his hat in the ring to chair the state Republican Party, ran a highly partisan race for county commissioner in ’98, then toward the end of his first term took things to a whole new level by publicly chastising Democrat Arn Menconi for a perceived lack of patriotism.

Menconi, at the time a longhaired founder of a nonprofit snowboarding program for at-risk youth, had declined to sign a Stone resolution giving unconditional support to President Bush’s war on terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Local veterans took Stone’s lead and launched a failed recall bid.

According to Vail Daily editor Don Rogers, who otherwise praises Stone for the mundane day-to-day work he did as a commissioner, that was a low point in the political history of Eagle County…

Worked out better than “Macaca,” of course. And after last week, you have to admit there are worse “low points” to, ah, point to on Wadhams’ watch than a little convenient post-9/11 grandstanding. Hell, everybody was doing that, right?