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August 28, 2011 03:46 AM UTC

Full Meaning of Gessler Slashing Larimer GOP Fines Yet To Come

  • 39 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic reports:

Editorial boards at the Fort Collins Coloradoan and at the Denver Post have admonished Secretary of State Scott Gessler for setting bad precedent when he decided that the scandal-plagued Larimer County Republican Party was merely negligent and not willful in allowing Chairman Larry Carillo to bilk party funds and ignore obligations to file campaign finance reports on $90,000 worth of contributions during the 2010 election season.

Gessler has made a career as a private attorney of opposing campaign finance regulations of all sorts and he has waged a steady battle against them as the state’s head of elections since he took office in January. With the Larimer GOP decision, he has provided a strategy outline for any political organization across the state looking to dodge responsibility for campaign finance wrongdoing. That strategy might come to be called the “Rogue Chairman Defense” or the “Carillo-Gessler Bail Out.”

The record of negligence in the Larimer case is not under dispute. There was no “good cause,” as Gessler put it in an op-ed, to fail to file six reports over the course of months. Throughout that time, the Secretary of State’s office was sending warning notices to the Larimer Party treasurer as well as to Carillo. That the treasurer, assigned specifically with the task of overseeing the chairman, had resigned and never been replaced was negligent. That the party never updated its staff listings to reflect the absence for communications purposes was negligent. That the party also failed to appoint an assistant treasurer was negligent. That this went on for years in an election cycle as money was pouring in and Carillo was skimming off the top is grossly negligent. What are the “good” reasons for that kind of falling down on the job?

Secretary of State Scott Gessler makes a wordy case how this large reduction in fines to the Larimer County Republican Party is justifiable, more or less by blaming the worst of it on former chairman Larry Carillo. But as we said before, and Tomasic notes above, you can’t lay these charges of years of fiduciary malfeasance on the chairman without reserving some blame for the Treasurer, or for that matter the roughly dozen people who were in a nominal oversight position over the chairman. Ex-Treasurer Terri Fassi resigned from her post, as did the previous Treasurer Matt Fries–but nobody ever asked questions about nastygrams piling up?

At the very least, what’s being excused by Gessler is more than simply being conned. This is excusing systemic negligence, and a situation that resulted in some $90,000 in political donations going unaccounted for during the 2010 elections. Wholly unrelated to the criminal actions of the Larimer County GOP chairman, this is just the latest in a long line of events that breed contempt for Colorado election law in general.

But for the moment, Gessler is probably fine absorbing the criticism he’s getting, deflecting with his little study showing how most violators are small entities who don’t have legal staffs–you know, we need to be benevolent to little guys who want to get involved in politics, right?

And to be completely fair, maybe Gessler really is the forgiving type when it comes to election law transgressions, and the Gessler era will be a wonderful period of learning and growth for everyone lucky enough to participate in the political process. After all, he was the GOP’s election law defense attorney. But between Gessler’s consuming determination to root out “at least 106” immigrants on the voter rolls, and his involvement with personally loyal attack groups like CoGAP to harass political opponents…well, you’d be kind of stupid to not fear the worst.

Either way, you’ll know the truth when a Democrat gets, or doesn’t get, the same treatment.

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39 thoughts on “Full Meaning of Gessler Slashing Larimer GOP Fines Yet To Come”

  1. There is no way that Democratic groups will get the same treatment.

    Gessler the weasel will find ta-dah:

    Democrats were willfully negligent.

    case closed.

    Republicans don’t have a clue what the word fair means.

    1. No wonder you didn’t make a good Republican.  In this case I think you are being too kind to Mr. Gessler.

      I don’t know Scott Gessler personally but it was a sweet deal for the Larimer County Republicans to pump all that money into Gardner’s election campaign violating campaign election law and then walk away without any real punishment for their campaign fraud.

      Republicans are obsessed with voter fraud but turn a blind eye to campaign fraud.  They did the same thing towards the Douglas Bruce amendments that were fraudulently initiated.

      It is like their obsession with the fellow who is receiving unemployment checks inappropriately but they ignore the millionaire who has a 300 million rail line built to his factory at taxpayer expense.  Obsess about the trivial and ignore the significant. Mr. Gessler fits this description of a Republican to the Tea.

      2. What money did the Larimer GOP pump into Gardner’s campaign? Actually, one of the big criticisms of the Larimer GOP over recent years is that the county party organization has done almost nothing to promote GOP candidates. Even though the Gardner and Larimer GOP offices were in the same strip center in 2010 (an area I affectionately dubbed “Red Square”) there was very little interaction between the two. The Gardner folks were far more likely to be seen at the state GOP’s unified effort in the same strip center. The Larimer GOP had, in effect, become something of a social club rather than a political organization.

          1. To start with, Larry Carillo stole about $17,000, according to the arrest affidavit. A lot of the expenses went to fundraising — almost $13K to the Hilton, another $7K to the Marriott, $5K to Ed McCaffery, the speaker at one of the fundraisers. Another $1,300 a month or so went to rent. There was not a single contribution to a Republican candidate that I could find. Other than maybe handing out a few campaign signs and bumper stickers to people who stopped by the office, and paying for rental space for caucuses, there’s not much evidence the Larimer County Republican Party did much to help elect candidates in 2009 and 2010.

            1. How much slush money went unreported?

              These folks could of had the college football alumni mentality and just done everything off the books and under the table.  Republicans are cheaters so how do you know they didn’t siphon off funds to do dirty tricks?

              1. every other county party in the state, both Democrats and Republicans, doesn’t have the college football alumni mentality and are running dirty tricks campaigns with secret slush funds?!? Because they wouldn’t report it if they were! It’s so alarming!

              2. The amended reports were filed this summer. I suppose your “how do you know” applies to any candidate, committee, party, etc. Campaign finance reports generally aren’t audited. But in this case,the LCRP hasn’t shown any particular proficiency for raising money or campaigning. Before the reporting issue surfaced, the biggest complaints I heard about LCRP came from Republican candidates, who said the county party wasn’t doing anything. There is a propensity in American politics today to believe the other side has some sort of evil superpower. In this case, all the evidence points to incompetence, along with allegations of a chairman with a gambling problem and other financial issues using party funds to try to stay afloat personally.

        1. Post some dwebby insult and ignore the real issue of transparency in politics.

          You could have done an equivalence argument that Democratic politicians are equally susceptible to stealing elections.

          You could have pointed to some victimization of a Republican politician for standing up for his integrity but that would knock out Romney.

          In the end just a feeble: “I don’t like you”.  I hope you didn’t attend public schools.  It will bolster the Christian Taliban argument that public schools are a waste.  What an embarrassingly bad reply.

    3. Every R pol you ever met is just a super person.  I think you may be a little easy! But assuming the best and being a loyal friend are not the worst qualities a person could have. That’s our Ali. The rest of us will just have to be that much more cynical and sarcastic to make up for you, I guess.  Hear that sxp?  You’ll just have to try even harder.

        1. for his handling of the Irene situation and I’ve said lots of nice things about Eisenhower. I’ve given other Rs credit where I thought it was due. There is absolutely nothing hostile in my message to Ali. Quite the opposite.  He knows perfectly well that I like him and that I liked him when he was still an R.

          I can’t pretend to have anything very nice to say about Gessler or another Ali fave, Doug Bruce, but I really do find Ali’s tenacious loyalty to friends an admirable and endearing trait. As for calling anyone an asshole, that would be more your style, Ralphie.  More NJ.  

          1. I took nothing hostile out of it, BC 🙂

            And yes – when I wrap my arm around someone’s shoulder and call them a friend (or champion on an issue, for that matter) I do my best to make it for life

            That said – I’m very very careful with criticizing others – I’d love to throw flames at more Republicans, but if a criticism isn’t necessary, than often, silence is far better (at least that’s what I learned in running)

            And second – I’ve had very targeted criticisms at many Republicans over this board, Fox News and the Huffington Post – if I can politely remind, I believe I wrote the diary in Nov of 2010 predicting why the GOP is driving itself to extinction and I still stand by that diary 🙂

            Regardless – I LOVE YOU BC!!!  

        2. His hyper-partisan activities as SOS would be roundly condemned by our conservative brethren if he was a Democrat.  Notice how they stopped complaining about activist judges as soon as they achieved a majority in the Roberts (sell out to the corporations) Court.

          Instead of asshole, I think cheaters is a better description for Republicans.  They don’t want to play by the rules or be fair to all their constituents.  For Republicans it is all about acquiring and keeping power at all costs and screw doing their jobs as impartial public servants.

  3. The original fine amount was unjust and illegal, of course Gessler should reduce the fine. He should reduce all of the bogus anti free speech fines.

            1. The very first words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.

              It also talks about free speech, of course.

              It says nothing about not paying your lawful fines when you do something wrong.  You might try reading it.

        3. do not be disrespectful. Do not refer to the Constitution of the United States as “USC”. Those are the initials of the University of Southern California…or an acronym for “uncommonly stupid conservative”…you choose.

          1. 1. You understood what I was referring to.

            2. The United States was established prior to California University, who copied who?

            3. You are trying to control my speech, thank God for the First Amendment.

            1. 1. EVERYONE uses USC as the acronym for the University of Southern California, and to my knowledge, NOONE uses it as an acronym for the Unites States constitution.

              2. Stupid question.

              3. We are trying to correct your speech, not limit it.

              Geez.

              1. but it looks like Mark G is insisting on being a humorless grouch.

                Dear Mark G,

                I am sorry to offend you so. I was merely trying to be funny. I realize that watching the republican party descend into oblivion must be difficult to accept. For me, it is a source of endless levity. I am sure it is breaking your heart(?) to watch the self-destruction.

                When the best you repubs can recruit is Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, it must be terrifying for you to realize that Barack Obama will be President of the United States until 2017.

                So….I forgive you for being a snarly, petulant, twit.   🙂    

        1. Yup, morons often refer to the United States Constitution and use the internet…

          “A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.”

          1. since you have very limited useful vocabulary. I deliberately used the word “moron” in the way you describe. Might have used “idiot” but then you may not have used a dictionary. Plus, I don’t think your intellect is that badly impacted. But, 7-12 y/o capacity, yep.  

          2. Than by Gray’s decision to call you a moron.

            Yes, someone with a mental age between 7 and 12 can do both of those things, if he or she is not weighted down by people who diminish his or her potential and expect nothing of him or her.

  4. than anyone else who enforces campaign finance law.  You can go back to Davidson and Beuscher to see fines dramatically reduced.

    The FEC too.  When the Colorado Democratic Party spent over $3M in illegal funds against Allard, accepted an illegal $10k contribution and produced a world record of shitty accounting – they got fined $105k out of a potential 7-figure penalty.

    You might attribute much of that to negligence, stroke, alcoholism, etc.  But unlike county parties and legislative candidates, the state party is a sophisticated political operation with professional fundraisers and accountants.  It is subject to heavy state and federal scrutiny.

    Ultimately, I agree that the Larimer GOP got off easily.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  I just want to put in perspective and remind everyone that this isn’t exclusive to Gessler vs. Dems.

    1. Gessler’s not different

      than anyone else who enforces campaign finance law.  You can go back to Davidson and Beuscher to see fines dramatically reduced.

      Examples for Davidson and Beuscher? I remember some reductions, but not the details. You seem to claim they are similar, so how about the details to support your claim that “Gessler’s not different.”

      The FEC? Please. That was designed to be ineffective–create gridlock–“you can’t convict our guys and we can’t convict yours.” Let’s set our standards higher. The Colorado system was designed to work. Gessler is an obstacle to it working effectively.

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