President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 10, 2011 09:30 PM UTC
18 Comments
Colorado Ethics Watch is a very amateurish political hit squad. They have no credibility. Whether Gessler is within his authority or not, this challenge is most likely bogus and politically motivated.
If some other group – even the Democratic Party or Libertarians – had brought the challenge, I would be more interested. With this group, I not only am not interested but find myself being sympathetic to Gessler – and I voted for and campaigned for Bernie.
I’ve never been a fan of Gessler – he’s a self serving sleaze or Ethics Watch (On this one however I agree with them and Common Cause. Gessler is way, way out of line.
What say you about Common Cause, which is joining in the complaint?
Even if what you were saying about Ethics Watch were true, I wonder how Republicans would be acting if the Ethics Watch director were elected to be Colorado’s chief election officer. After all, being a political squad was actually Gessler’s job description. In that light, I’m kind of glad there’s someone out there watching him, even if a team of nonprofit lawyers are kind of outmatched by the state.
than Common Cause does in Colorado. Common Cause was been fairly timid on litigation and is ballot issue efforts have been plagued with terminally bad drafting errors that materially weakened their cause.
Also, a challenge to a proposed regulation is really less personal than the press releases suggest. This is very much an official capacity challenge to a quasi-legislative decision case, not a juicy scandal or case of bold misconduct. Any regulation, whether or not backed by the incumbent, has to get the AG office’s blessing (and presumably examination by the AG’s designated SOS handler, Bernie Buescher) before it went out the door. The AG’s office didn’t have to agree with the choices made in the regulatory decision or even agree that it was bullet-proof, but they had to at least agree that there was a defensible argument for the decision.
This doesn’t mean that Ethics Watch and Common Cause aren’t right on the merits, but while it is certainly true, in general, that “the Secretary of State has no authority to promulgate rules that add, modify or conflict with constitutional provisions” the argument isn’t so clear in a case where the courts have held that a particular constitutional provision violates the United States Constitution as applied, which is the situation that Gessler was presented with in this case and if somebody has to draw a new line, it is hard to say that the executive branch is less qualified to do that than the judicial branch or (insofar as this is a state constitutional rather than legislative provision that was invalidated) the legislative branch to fix what the courts have said was broken.
It would have been legitimate for Gessler to deal with the court ruling finding the $200 limit unconstitutional as applied with some sort of rule of reason that more closely tracked the court ruling language, but it isn’t obvious to me that he couldn’t create at least a safe harbor that is simpler and hence provides more certainty to people engaged in constitutionally protected political free speech – after all the SOS has limited resources and executive branch agencies routine develop policies to ignore minor matters to conserve resources.
If this particularly provision of the state constitution hadn’t already been declared unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution, I agree that CEW and Common Cause would have no case, but as it stands, they have to propose some other response to the court order that is so clearly mandated as a more appropriate response that this regulation was a legally appropriate one.
Gessler has overexceeded his authority so greatly that even CEW got it right.
to blow it off with a knee-jerk blanket condemnation of Ethics Watch.
Read the filings.
Yes, the invalidation of the state constitutional provision was an as applied challenge, rather than a facial invalidation of the provision as a whole. But, the logic of that as applied challenge applies to just about any small dollar issue committee, because the invalidating opinion basically applied a balancing test of compliance costs v. disclosure benefits, and the case that the state has an obligation to mitigate chilling effects from an unconstitutional as applied in a certain set of circumstances state constitutional provision is pretty compelling. The court decision making the finding of unconstitutionality did address chilling effects as a concern, and if a state official was sued in a civil rights case arising from an enforcement action where the state lost, the second time around that investigating official might not benefit from qualified immunity from liability.
CCC and CEW aren’t arguing that there is any alternative anyone could have taken that would have met the concerns raised in the court decision more appropriately, they are simply arguing that the SOS has no authority to address a class of cases has notice involve unconstitutional applications of the state constitution via a regulation rather than on an ad hoc basis. The CCC/CEW isn’t frivilous, but it isn’t really strong either. I’m not terribly supportive of CCC when it is arguing for something that does little to regulate big money and could have a negative impact on low dollar, grass roots political activism, which an issue committee with less than $5,000 of contributions (including in kind contributions) pretty much fits.
The first time I read the headline I assumed that somebody was investigating some female relative of our Secretary of State (wife? sister? mother? daughter?) by the name of “Sue Gessler.”
There are a lot of good resources here. I am sure I will visit this place again soon.
“If allowed to be enforced, this rule would make it even easier for issue committees to get a measure on the ballot while never disclosing who is behind this measure and how they are spending money to influence voters,” concluded Jenny Flanagan, Executive Director of Colorado Common Cause.
Yes she prefers the uber wealthy destroy the individual in plain sight.
Colorado Common Cause and Colorado Ethics Watch need to disclose their funding sources.
Until they do, they need to be ignored!
Enough of this DC attitude and 2 sets of laws.
I found out where Colorado Ethics Watch’s money comes from in about 30 seconds.
If you were a little smarter, you probably could too.
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