October 22, 2009 06:52 PM UTC

Proxy Local Election Battles Rage, But Have Republicans Already Lost?

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Can’t see the audio player? Click here.

As you can hear (listen above) it’s getting really, over-the-top nasty in Douglas County’s normally-uncontroversial school board elections–the Denver Post reported earlier this week:

The Republican endorsement of four candidates for Douglas County schools has turned what is normally a routine nonpartisan election into a pitched battle.

On one side are four candidates backed by the Republican Party and on the other side are four who have support from the teachers union…

John Ransom, chairman of the Douglas County Republican Central Committee, said the party entered into the election as a response to the union’s involvement in race. The union gave $2,500 apiece to three of the four candidates.

“When you take money from unions in Douglas County, you can expect to hear from the Republican Party,” Ransom said. “We sought counsel before we did this. We feel the law is on our side.”

In the recording above, forwarded to us yesterday, you can hear state Sen. Ted Harvey asserting in maximum scary effect that the dreaded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the “radical leftist Obama group,” is ‘now targeting Douglas County’s kids.’

That’s a really fascinating thing to say because, well, for starters, it isn’t even remotely true–nobody has once seriously claimed that ACORN is in any way involved with this suburban school district board election. Harvey tries to justify this obscenely startling lead-in later in the call by referring to the “AFL-CIO union, which ‘sponsors’ ACORN.” ‘AFL-CIO,’ of course, sounds much scarier than the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (the only organization ‘targeting’ anybody, by having endorsed some of the school board candidates), and since the Douglas County teacher’s union is not itself the ‘sponsor’ of ACORN Harvey’s referring to, he chose the AFL-CIO by necessity–a vast international organization that you can be assured has never heard of, let alone cares about, any of this small-potatoes crap. Most of you get this without prompting, we just wanted to run through it so there’s no mistaking how brazenly, knowingly dishonest Sen. Harvey was with thousands of Douglas County voters.

And this leads us to our point, a point you can also read about today in the Longmont Times-Call–GOP Secretary of State candidate Scott Gessler, of all people, is personally representing several political action committees that are spending thousands of dollars on behalf of ‘nonpartisan’ city council candidates, so-far successfully challenging the city’s campaign-finance laws. Longmont residents have been bombarded by out-of-state push-polls and even Bob Beauprez robocalls on behalf of what everyone in town now knows is the Republican candidate.

This is where the Republicans used to excel: for years the GOP, working quietly in local elections and with the help of development tracks like the Republican Leadership Program, was able to keep their bench full of well-groomed contenders for higher office. One of the problems for Republicans is that system has broken down in the last few years, leaving the GOP with the twofold obstacles of crippling losses at the polls and a shortage of new candidates to start working up the ladder. You can understand the full-court press underway now pretty easily with this in mind, the GOP is desperate to prime the pump for their next generation of leaders.

Except it’s not working out so well this time, is it? The fact that you’re reading so much in the papers about the Republican Party’s open involvement in these local, nonpartisan races, that the whole world can listen to Ted Harvey make a bloody dishonest ass of himself, and like we said, everybody knows Katie Witt is a Republican angling for her next run at higher office with a brief stop on the Longmont City Council…that’s not how this is supposed to go down, is it? Even if they get some of their chosen candidates elected through brute asymmetrical force, do they risk seriously damaging them in the process?