January 29, 2024 01:14 PM UTC

GOP Aurora City Councilors Apparently Hate Babies

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The latest interpersonal squabble on the Republican-controlled Aurora City Council, which in recent years has been a veritable Jerry Springer Show of bad blood and worse ethnic impressions, took an even curiouser turn last week after at least two of the would-be “family values” conservatives on the Council pitched a fit over a baby present at the council’s most recent swearing-in ceremony. As the Aurora Sentinel’s Max Levy reports:

Aurora’s City Council voted this week to boot everyone but select city leaders from the council dais during meetings after one member upset her colleagues by bringing her toddler to the council’s most recent swearing-in ceremony.

While Councilmember Alison Coombs described the Dec. 4 ceremony as a special moment that she wanted to share with her child, other council members said they were offended by Coombs’ baby knocking things over on the dais and, at times, crying…

Apparently the presence of a young child doing the things young children invariably do was too much for Councillors Stephanie Hancock and Danielle Jurinsky, for whom the crying baby in the room was a grievous affront to their due solemnity as elected officials–but does it seem like their anger is a little disproportionate?

“The night that I was sworn in, to have a screaming child on the dais is hard on the child — let’s think about the child — not to mention disruptive and distracting to those who witnessed the event,” Councilmember Stephanie Hancock said Monday. “It minimized the dignity, and the honor, and the professionalism of this body.” [Pols emphasis]

Sponsoring the changes to the council’s rules of order and procedure was Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, who said she “lost all trust” in Coombs [Pols emphasis] after the council member refused to participate in the meeting remotely rather than in-person with her 2-year-old child.

Ordinarily politicians kiss babies instead of complaining about them, never breaking character even when the babies throw up all over their Sunday best. In all our years in politics we’ve never seen elected officials get this angry about the presence of a young child, at least not publicly. We assume some staffers have been privately dressed down for handing a politician a baby to kiss only to be shrieked at, vomited upon or worse, but it’s just not good political form to enter in their permanent record how much you, you know, dislike babies. Especially when it’s your job to represent thousands of suburban families. And yes, some of those complaining had babies of their own once, but that certainly doesn’t prevent one from disliking babies.

We suppose the issue could be with Democratic babies, but then they’d have to explain how to distinguish them? We don’t see that ending well either.