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November 22, 2013 08:35 AM UTC

Video: Paid Recall Worker Tells Voter To Lie About Residence

  • 67 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Check out this complaint posted to the Hudak recall campaign's Facebook page:

drunkcirculator​

—–

FOX 31's Eli Stokols again breaks a big story that's bad for the recall campaign against Sen. Evie Hudak:

A man being paid to gather signatures to recall state Sen. Evie Hudak can be heard encouraging a person who lives outside the lawmaker’s district to sign his petition with a fake address in an audio recording released Thursday by a group defending Hudak.

The Democracy Defense Fund, formed to defend Hudak, D-Westminster, sent out a YouTube video of an audio recording of a four-minute exchange between an unidentified petition circulator, who admits to being paid $3 per signature by Kennedy Enterprises, and an unidentified person who is really a DDF staffer with a tape recorder…

“If you write an Arvada address in there, it’s alright,” the petition gatherer says, apparently encouraging the man to lie about his residency. [Pols emphasis]

“So if I just wrote my buddy’s house, you think it would work out?” the man responds.

“The thing is, technically, only out of 100 names — or let’s say out of 1,000 names, only 630 of them have to be real registered voters for me to get paid for the whole job,” the petition circulator says.

“It’s basically six out of ten — makes it a little easier for me.”

One of the things that has made Democrats nervous as the recall signature campaign against Sen. Evie Hudak got underway were reports that organizers had adopted a validation screening procedure similar to the method against against Sen. Angela Giron in Pueblo. By pre-screening prospective petition signers against a mobile-accessible voter file spreadsheet to ensure they are registered voters living in the district, the recall campaign against Giron achieved a stunningly high validity rate for their petitions. As we've said, regardless of how you feel about the recalls, you have to acknowledge that this prescreening of signers was a game-changing development–and should be adopted by every petition campaign going forward.

So what's going on here? Why is this paid gatherer telling people who live out of the district to lie about their residence? Why does he so casually explain that he only needs a 63% validity rate to "get paid for the whole job?"

There have been a number of anecdotal reports, from talk radio interviews in addition to tallies from recall opponents watching petition sites, that suggest the Hudak recall campaign is having trouble obtaining the signatures needed to reach the ballot. We of course have no way of assessing the truth of these reports, but it's true that the threshold for success in Senate District 19 is substantially higher than it was for the two recall elections this summer. We do know that at least at one point of the Hudak recall petition campaign, on-site validation of voters as residents of the district was taking place.

But what we're seeing here, a paid gatherer willing to lie and encourage lying, with a validity quota of only 63% to get paid, obviously without the screening intended to ensure the kind of high validity rates we saw in the Giron recall, is the best evidence yet that the Hudak recall campaign is desperate. The impression the campaign has given is that they are using on-site validation, and as a result there's already a broad presumption of a high validity rate for whatever signatures they do turn in. This campaign has tried even harder than previous efforts to pass itself off as "grassroots" and adherent to high standards. Eli Stokols' last report, documenting a pro-recall worker assaulting a recall opponent cameraman, already put a dent in that impression.

Today, we know a lot more. Now we know that they've got guys out on street corners ready to say anything to anybody to get them to sign the petition, even lie and facilitate fraud. And that means the aforementioned presumption of high validity, and with it the moral high ground the Hudak recall campaign claims, may now be dispensed with.

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67 thoughts on “Video: Paid Recall Worker Tells Voter To Lie About Residence”

  1. I haven't looked into this, but isn't writing fictitious information on a recall petition criminal?  If so, wouldn't BOTH people in audio be guilty of committing an offense?

  3. To be fair, it's also within the realm of possibility that this can laid entirely at the door of a paid petition gatherer who is desperate to make a little more and really has no reason to care about the recall effort succeeding. Without evidence that the sig gatherers are actually receiving instruction from the campaign that it's OK to pump up their numbers by urging people to use false addresses the recall campaign can always say that this is just a rogue ( its always a "rogue" or an "isolated incident") petition gatherer. 

    That said, it does seem to be much more of an uphill slog, what with the large number needed and a highly visible show of support for Hudak. Petition gatherers wouldn't be tempted to be so blatant if they were having no trouble signing healthy numbers up. They may well have quotas they neeed to meet to keep their jobs. That's all encouraging for Hudak supporters

        1. uh-huh, glwt.

           

          Seriously- this kind of b.s. goes on everytime there are paid gatherers. Was it C-Springs or Ft Collins where that girl was filmed turning down voter reg for all but her guy's suppoters?

          It's all bull.

           

          But I'm glad that your irritation or annoyance has risen to the level of calling for serious consequence.

           

          1. It was Colorado Springs. And Romney's local operation was seriously discombobulated as a result.

            Lincoln Strategy, Strategic Allied Consulting, and Sproul and Associates, were some of the names this firm went by, and the RNC paid them $175K until the scandals became unmanageable.

            I'mdone a lot of  voter registration, and in spite of what Wayne Williams said to cover the young lady's mistake, you don't "prescreen" voters for political party before offering a registration form. That is partisan, and illegal.

            1. When I did voter registration as an Arapahoe County Dem HD38 volunteer for GOTV we were told that it had to be strictly non-partisan.  Our job was to register voters, period. 

              Of course choosing locations where your kind of voter is more likely to be a big demo is  another story. Probably why I was never sent to Cherry Hills. wink

               

  4. Evidently, this was a paid petitioner working for the Gun Owners group.  

    Tomorrow, there is a final GOTS breakfast in Arvade with the "big shots" from the Republican party….Buck, Brody, Tancredo and tea party folks…gathering to support the final effort….

    boyles has been promoting this as a way for the teaparty to take over the republican party and defeat the democrats.  one of the recall people of the show suddenly said that they were  non-partisan.  

    I hope that the dems retain control of the state legislature and pass some laws…clarifying the status of mail-in ballots for recall elections; preparing an amendment to the constitution restricting recalls to issues of criminal activity and/or malfeasance in office by elected officials. And, outlawing paid petititoners and requiring anyone working for any petition effort undergo a background check.  I also think people should floss twice a day.

     

  5. I’m not surprised a single bit these goons are lying and cheating their way to the recall. It fills my heart with glee to see their desperation and even blaming fellow republicans. I feel some cautious optimism that Hudak is going to win this. With any luck these radicals will go home empty handed and go back to masturbating with their guns while the grown ups take care of business.

  6. Recallhudaktoo November 21 financial report is out. They have $38,378.30 on hand after spending $43,793.80. $27,500 of this was to a company called TPM LLC, which doesn't exist in the business database, but has a residential address: 12316 SNAFFLE BIT RD, Peyton, CO 80831. This is about a half hour away from Kennedy Enterprises on North Park Road in Colorado Springs.  There is a TPM Staffing services in Colorado Springs, too.

    Bottom line: recallhudaktoo has a conservative sugar daddy paying petitioners, and they are not including it on their finance reports as an "in kind" contribution, although they should be doing so.

    Very few of the 1170 contributors to the recall effort live in Senate District 19: After downloading and sorting a csv file of the recall contributions and expenditures,  I found that out of 1171 small donors, only 240 had Arvada, 18 from Broomfield, 46 from Westminster addresses. This is about the same percentages found on the October contributors report.

    So, the recall effort is not funded from dissatisfied constituents of Senator Hudak's, but from people outside the district with political agendas.

    1. Given Bloomberg's involvement in the gun debate in this state, it takes a special sort of chutzpah for Dems to complain about out-of-area involvement/outside money 😉

          2. Do you ever mention the Koch brothers and the NRA in this context?  And if you didn't start the fire, I must ask which one do you mean?

            This is the same play with different characters and another Act.  I just hope the play doesn't end.    

      2. Hey, Elliot, I'm just stating facts. It isn't dissatisfied Hudak constituents funding the recall.

        I haven't even looked into who's funding on the anti-recall side – feel free.

          2. 65% of Coloradans.

            Background checks are good.  Or are you more of the even a background check is too much restriction on the native born 2nd Amendment rights kind of guy?

        2. When Elliot doesn't like the facts, "Johnny does it too" is one of his favorite evasions. Of course it's still apples to oranges. Locals may or may not be engaged on a large scale regardless of how much money is or is not also coming in from outside sources. As for Bloomberg, since nobody likes him once the word is out that he's funding in a big way I think it becomes more of a drag than an asset. It's so easy to campaign against that rich snotty New York City twerp. Kind of like those old salsa ads.  You gonna let that NYC slicker tell us real Americans what to do? That sort of thing.

          1. Correct.

            Thing is, I don't see this as a valid argument for Elliot. I'm not sure why he's weighing in on this, as the attempt to recall Evie has been dirty from the start, bungled as in infected with a huge amount of invalid signatures, and driven purely by interests out of District. The canary in the coal mine is the semi auto weapons systems being put up as prizes for the top signature gatherers.

            There's going to be a snag turning in the petition signature count, as Jeffco is going to require people to be District 19 residents, eligible to vote, even if not registered.

            A huge hill to climb to 19,000 signatures by 12/3, needing at least 8000 valid sig's in the next 11 days. Of the approximate 11,000 one gunzo bragged they have, only a maximum of 7500 could possibly be valid.

            Maybe they can collect 10,500 in 11 days, but it's a hill.

             

      1. That is the connection, Ralphie.  I saw the name, too, but when I looked him up on Facebook, Gummeringer's page is full of RMGO and NAGR promotions.

        Greg Gummeringer is promoting, possibly an officer of, the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). NAGR is a sweet little racket for Dudley Brown of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners- it's a national group, a very profitable "non profit" group, (over 7 million in 2012) more hard-core than the NRA, with a mission to: "educate gun owners and gun rights’ supporters on gun rights issues both at the local and federal level."

        I'll look into this further – for right now, it's odd that recallhudaktoo is sending $27,500 of its contributions to a company (TPM LLC) which doesn't exist at the address listed, but the person living at the address is an aggressive promoter of Dudley Browns multi-million dollar organization. 

         

         

        2. I would begin an aggressive investigation for RICO and fraud charges against these idiots and make sure they're done with guns and rotting away nicely for life in prison, where they belong.

           

          It's time for Republicans to start utilitizing what they pay for. And that's privatization of prisons, and a few here are the worst in Colorado, and that's where these felons belong to.

          2. I thought that when someone retired, that had to be indicated after their rank, for example, Lt. Col.(Ret.)

            The reason I ask is that, in the "olden" days, military personnel were really restricted in what kinds of political activities they could be involved with.  

            I was only familiar with Sgt.  …shows how old I am.

            1. The problem is, nobody knows how old the LinkedIn listing is.  People sometimes tend to forget they have LinkedIn, particularly if they're not actively seeking contacts, and leave their profiles un-updated.

            2. I don't know about age, dwyer. That was my dad's rank when he retired in '69. As far as I know, though, you are correct as to the (Ret.) going after the rank. It's basic protocol.

  8. Nice catch, Pols. What do you want to bet that they hide it now? All my postings on their FB page were hidden the day I was banned from posting on there. All I did was ask questions they didn't want to answer….

  9. Well, on the positive side, the recall committee's secret sugar daddy (RMGO?) is getting ripped off by their contractors to the tune of 37%.  Kennedy probably doesn't lose any money for rejected signatures, so they certainly have as much incentive to commit fraud as their drunken employee does.

    1. Spot on.

      The old saying "You didn't think this through, did you?" really appliies to this one.

      First, the gun activists failed to realize that the recalls that took down Ms. Giron and Mr. Morse were more the results of several dynamics merging all at once to form the "perfect storm". They over emphasized and over estimated thier own roles, and wrongly believed they could take thier bully/misinformation/sharp elbow strategy and win with it in a large District.

      Small SD's, with thresholds nowhere close to 19,000. More rural, "gun culture" havens, with virulently pro recall conservative multi-media outlets to bang home the message to a demographic limited in media access. 2 newspapers stocked with conservative opinionists that treated editorials as hard news. A surprisingly unmotivated Democratic base that simply didn't turn out when the mail in option was derailed by a hack republican judge, after last minute candidates poisoned the well.  

      Secondly, the news outlets haven't been over the top cheering the recalls like they were down El Paso way. While certainly not pro Evie, at least the outlets aren't actually pushing the recallers' talking points to the extreme.

      A very motivated Senator Hudak army has taken to the field every weekend and during the week to counter the kennedy goons and the low information gunzos manning the recall bunkers. Phone calls to constituents countering the half baked crap the recall(hudak)too scammers are putting out. That in itself caught the gunzos by surprise. No bully reacts well when punched in the face by somebody the bully thought was a mark. 

      The kicker might just be the smarmy tactics employed by the kennedy people and the rmgo goons, and the undignified and outright rude behavior of the petition takers as the time's gotten short. 

      Simply, rmgo in general, dudley brown specifically, the activists, and to a lesser extent the republican bigshots that have tacitly approved this clusterfuck underestimated kennedy's real motive……….to make a ton of money. It was a mistake, but the pinko coalition that came together for this should have realized kennedy is a money making concern, a for profit enterprise. It's even in the title.

      Not the first pack of goobers to be taken by a charlatan, won't be the last.

      1. Nice summary, Rocco. Got a question for you: Are you seeing or hearing (radio, TV, billboards) lots of pro-recall advertising? recallhudaktoo is claiming $7,087 in advertising expenses from Oct 5 to November 21.

        mj

        1. Sorry for the late reply, MJ, just now saw this.

          Thanks for the kind words, and no, I'm not seeing anything on TV, don't listen to a lot of radio except for 950AM oldies and 760 progressive talk where I'm not hearing anything. As for billboards, maybe somebody that gets out more could say, but I'm not seeing it.

          In short, I don't know where they're spending thier money other than for robocalls and for the kennedy concern. We got 2 last week and 1 this week.  Next time I'll pay attention to the end to ID the source.

          1. It's all good. Probably, the robocalls are the "advertising". Kurtis Lee of the Denver Post is also covering the recallhudaktoo money expenditures, including the mysterious $27,500 expenditure to a non-existent company at a residential address. It makes sense that this would be payment for the petitioners through Kennedy Enterprises, and that this is some kind of money laundering scheme, but I can't prove it.

            I'll let Kurtis Lee continue investigating –  he has more resources than I do. So far, I'm at a dead end with the residents of the house the money was sent to – all seem to be normal conservative folks. The men are veterans with memberships in the National Association for Gun Rights and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. They don't sit on the boards of directors of either NAGR or RMGO.

            The only other significant things I've discovered are that Dudley Brown, founder and CEO of RMGO and NAGR,  does not like paying taxes and filing paperwork. Both of his "charitable" organizations have been delinquent on taxes for 3 years at a time, and NAGR was supposed to re-register as a charity on November 15.  No contributions to either organization are tax-deductible, and emails from Brown may or may not tell contributors so.

            NAGR has contributed significant amounts of money to Rand Paul, Corey Gardener, and to various national politicians to shut down the Manchin-Toomey gun control legislation in Washington.

            So that's all I know  for now – taking a break from Brown's head – it's musty as hell in here.

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