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January 27, 2010 01:58 AM UTC

Doug Bruce Pretends Not to Know What You're Talking About

  • 24 Comments
  • by: ThillyWabbit

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

The Gazette Reports:

Anti-tax advocate Douglas Bruce has sought to distance himself from three statewide initiatives that could limit the ability of local and state governments to raise taxes or borrow money. But records filed with the Secretary of State’s Office show that eight people who gathered thousands of signatures to get the measures on the November ballot lived in an apartment house owned by Bruce in Colorado Springs.

The eight people listed their address as Apartment A of 633 E. Boulder St. They have since moved out of the house and could not be located for comment.  

Bruce owns the two-story house on Boulder Street, according to El Paso County Assessor records. The house was built in  1905 and has a market value of about $74,000. [emphasis added]

Doug Bruce is poison, and he’s smart enough to know that. That’s why he’s distanced himself from his own initiatives. But he’s not smart enough to hide his tracks.

Enter Tyler Chafee:

“I think Doug Bruce has a track record that he doesn’t want to have attached to these initiatives,” said Tyler Chafee, a spokesman for Protect Colorado’s Communities, an organization of business interests and community leaders opposed to the proposals.

I suppose it’s possible that it’s a coincidence that Doug Bruce was housing the paid circulators for the local initiative that he proposed and which went down in flames, and that those same cirulators were also collecting signatures for the statewide initiatives that Bruce “[doesn’t] understand what you’re talking about” without his knowledge.

But probable? You decide.

Does Doug Bruce understand what you're talking about?

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24 thoughts on “Doug Bruce Pretends Not to Know What You’re Talking About”

  3. 1. Is it possible that they did not live there but Doug Bruce used that address to hide their residence? For example, if he was using homeless people?

    2. If they did live there just while gathering signatures, almost by definition they were paid for their efforts.

    This may be the smoking gun for showing money was spent to collect the signatures.

    1. The problem is that the fine is really low. We know the Eggmendment people sent out massive mailings last summer (they have pictures of themselves assembling the mailings on their website), but they don’t report the expenditures. They reported a sum total of a couple hundred bucks. No paper costs, no postage, nothing. And it doesn’t matter if those were donated in kind, they still have to be reported.

      The fine is $50 per day. They just consider it the cost of doing business.

          1. But it’s a general tactic of the right wing this year in every state. It harkens back to the Swift Boat people who just budgeted for the largest FEC fine in history as the cost of doing business.

    2. There may be certain kind of incentive compensation that are banned, but I seem to recall that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Colorado ban on paid petitioners in 1988.

      If an “in kind” payment of free rent wasn’t reported by Bruce, it might be a campaign finance violation, although a minor one verging on a technicality.  Allowing campaign workers to sleep free in property owned by their political patrons is not uncommon in practice on all sides of the political fence.

        1. If a petition campaign is funded solely from the person funds of an individual or a married couple, that individual or married couple isn’t an issue committee and isn’t required to make campaign finance disclosures.  

          Expenditures also don’t count if they are made by an organization for whom the campaign itself isn’t a “major purpose” (with the benefit of the doubt given to the organization) even if the clearly are related to a ballot issue and are substantial (also here).  

          In the case of a pretty decent sized organization with a well established purpose apart from supporting or opposing ballot issues, even paying circulators might not suffice to make the ballot issue a major purpose of the organization.

          It isn’t clear that these exceptions apply, but the law isn’t free of loopholes.

      2. is legal. Some one needs to inquire of the Secretary of state to see if this group had a VRD (voter registration drive) number last year. Find out who the agent was.

        Anyone can distribute voter registration forms, but the person registering is supposed to turn it in. To turn in large numbers of forms you need a VRD number. Petitioners can be paid by the day, hour or job. They cannot be paid by the number of names gathered.

        There are about 20 groups who have been certified this year. Three of them are 9-12 groups. Go to the Election Center on the Secretary of State’s web site and click on the voter registration drive link. The info is right there.

  4. Doug Bruce lied?  Anyone here surprised?  I don’t think his name is as poison as you think it is with the general public.  I bet if you polled his name ID would be down around 20%, and most of it from admiring Republicans.  A non-issue.  And I’ve been against all his BS since the 80’s.  Get on with it.  The campaign needs to focus on the really terrible things this will do, as if our experience with Amendment 1 wasn’t bad enough.  Can you say no fire department?  Can you say no delivery of your water and no treating of your sewage?  Can you say Federal Court order ordering governments to raise their taxes to comply with Federal law?  There’s more where that came from.

    1. When there’s the risk that every media story about one of these initiatives also mentions Doug Bruce and his arrest, his censure, kicking a photographer, his slum lording, etc., that’s poison.

      1. “They have since moved out of the house and could not be located for comment.”  Even rats leave the slum when no one provides sustenance.  

      2. Bruce wants these initiatives to look like they were the product of concerns by average citizens, rather than just the latest attempts by him to whittle away at government. It does color the press coverage, and that’s why he wants to stay out of it.

  7. He doesn’t believe in campaign reporting.  See the attached article from the Colorado Springs Independent:

    http://www.csindy.com/colorado…

    Bruce spews all of this BS about “the people’s rights” but he doesn’t want the people to know basic campaign financing that has anything to do with his own proposals, in clear violation of the State statutes and City Ordinances.

    He also tries to hide behind his 501c(3) but maybe the IRS should have a look at his activities.

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