January 29, 2022 10:44 AM UTC

Talking Points Collide: The "Crimenado" Comes For Mayor Mike

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Aurora Sentinel is reporting on a fascinating development from that city’s new Republican-majority City Council, a majority engineered by former Congressman turned-Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman to give him a free hand to go as Ayn Rand as he desires in a grand experiment to see what happens what you put a bunch of card-carrying Republicans in charge of the state’s most economically and culturally diverse suburb.

As the Sentinel reports, newly-elected Councillor Danielle Jurinsky just took one of the central talking GOP talking points going into the 2022 elections, the alleged “crime tsunami” that Republicans from Heidi Ganahl on down the ticket can’t stop talking about, and applied it to her home jurisdiction:

When asked by KNUS host Steffan Tubbs during his afternoon talk show how the city could fix the problem of officer shortages and turnover within the Aurora Police Department, Jurinsky said, “We remove the chief immediately, and with her takes out the trash of the deputy chief of police, Darin Parker.”

…Telling Tubbs’ listeners, “You are not safe in Aurora,” [Pols emphasis] the new council member also accused Wilson and Parker of mistreating officers and turning a blind eye to misconduct, referring to Wilson as “trash.”

“She’s trash,” Jurinsky said. “Chief Vanessa Wilson is trash.”

So first of all, there’s reportedly a provision in the Aurora City Charter that says councilors aren’t supposed to call for the heads of officials appointed by the City Manager. But as we see from Mayor Mike Coffman’s reaction to Jurinsky’s comments, there’s a much more basic problem: Jurinsky just told the world that Mike Coffman’s city is “not safe.”

“While it is true that the crime rate has increased in parts of our city, the blanket assertion that Aurora is an unsafe community is just not true,” he said. [Pols emphasis] “Like other major U.S. and Colorado cities, there has been an unfortunate increase in crime. It is OK for us to acknowledge this without creating an unnecessary sense of fear throughout our community.”

Mayor Mike continues, and it’s once again very much not on partisan “blame the libs” message:

“Addressing crime and police retention requires a holistic approach with both short- and long-term actions. Regardless of any differences, as elected officials, we owe it to our community to work in a professional manner with our city staff to serve our residents, business owners, community leaders, and other stakeholders to find real and sustainable solutions for Aurora.”

A “holistic” approach? Elected officials “working in a professional manner” on “real and sustainable solutions?”

Folks, do you see what just happened here? Across the state, Republicans are shrieking at the top of their lungs about increased crime rates, and the universal prescribed response is to blame the nearest elected official–and in Colorado, the math is pretty good, that’s going to be a Democrat.

But not in Republican-controlled Aurora!

In Aurora, apparently we’re allowed to admit that the crime increase Republicans are terrorizing Colorado residents with is both nuanced in origin and not unique to Colorado, which means simply blaming Jared Polis doesn’t work. Once you acknowledge that the roots of this problem run deeper than the grass on a playing field for political football, the whole partisan fearmongering game breaks down.

For Mayor Mike, it’s glorious schadenfreude to see him getting burned politically by the conservative majority he just worked so hard to install. But for the rest of Colorado, there’s a much more important lesson to be learned here about the “crimenado” message Republicans are pursuing ad nauseum in the 2022 elections.

It’s hogwash, and when cornered they are compelled to admit it.