August 15, 2018 10:59 AM UTC

Post Finds Its Voice To Call Out RGA's Immigrant Baiting

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• by: Colorado Pols

After the sudden departure of the former Denver Post editorial board editor Chuck Plunkett earlier this year, the opinion section of the Post was without its institutional voice for several months. The Post resumed publication of editorials a few weeks later after new editor Megan Schrader, ex-Colorado Springs Gazette reporter, returned from leave. The first few offerings from the new Denver Post editorial board were not very satisfying, with a particularly insipid defense of Cory Gardner in mid-July that made eyes roll.

But today, the editorial board weighs in strongly in condemnation of the Republican Governors Association’s recent attacks on Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jared Polis, making incendiary claims about Polis’ stand on immigration:

Groups like the RGA and Better Colorado Now, are going to try to make this election for Colorado governor about immigration. We hope Colorado voters don’t take the bait. This race should be focused on the important issues that a governor can actually control like education and transportation and what this state should do with a windfall of cash…

Oddly the door hanger also says Polis “even wants to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.” Of course he does. It was good public policy with bi-partisan support when Colorado lawmakers voted in 2013 to allow recent graduates of Colorado high schools to attend state colleges with in-state tuition regardless of their legal status.

…It should make all Colorado voters, regardless of how they feel about immigration and Trump, a bit nauseated that the RGA and Better Colorado Now are using this wedge issue with such dishonesty. [Pols emphasis]

The editorial notes correctly that Walker Stapleton personally raised funds for Better Colorado Now before he formally launched his campaign–which made a farce of the idea of an “independent expenditure committee,” and most certainly makes it fair game to hold Stapleton responsible for the group’s communications now. This was one of the original examples of Stapleton’s fumbling of the most basic principles of a modern campaign–and we expect it won’t be the last time it comes back to haunt him.

For all the consternation over the Post’s milquetoast or even mercenary opinions through the years, with the seminal example remaining the paper’s credibility-straining endorsement of Cory Gardner in 2014, we’re glad to see them drawing a bright line against the factually-challenged attacks on immigrants that have become even more routine in the Donald Trump era than they were before. Newspapers no longer have the commanding audience to serve as a binding moral authority, if they ever did.

But today’s politics need all the moral checks and balances we can get. More like this please.