Jefferson County voters may be familiar with the name Faye Griffin, in large part because her name has been on a Jeffco ballot since the dawn of time. The 75-year-old Griffin is both allergic to the concept of "term limits" and more than willing to let the rest of the GOP county government trade on her name ID in order to retain any elected position for as long as possible.
As we first noted last November ("Finish Your Damn Job, Faye Griffin"), Griffin is a serial office jumper. Currently in the middle of her second term as Jefferson County Commissioner, Griffin is running (again) for County Clerk & Recorder; if she is successful in November, she will have held 4 separate elected positions in one 8-year span, and failed to finish her elected term for the second time in five years. More importantly for Republicans, Griffin's constant movement should allow two other term-limited Republicans a chance at holding a new office without having to go through an actual election — a pretty sneaky way to get around those pesky "voters" in Jeffco.
If Griffin is elected Clerk & Recorder (which is likely because of her high name ID that plays a major role in a countywide vote), that will create an immediate opening for a spot on the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners. The term-limited Treasurer Tim Kauffman would then likely be appointed by a Republican vacancy committee…which would leave Kauffman's Treasurer seat open for another GOP vacancy committee selection (likely to be the term-limited County Assessor Jim Everson).
And thus, with the election of Faye Griffin, Jeffco Republicans can avoid open-seat election battles for two other county jobs. Furthermore, Griffin has indicated that she may retire soon, which would open a vacancy for Clerk & Recorder that would be filled via…a Republican vacancy committee!
You can see Griffin's many moves over the years in the list below (after the jump). This is frequent occurrence in Jefferson County — Kauffman himself was appointed Treasurer when Griffin left that office to run for County Commissioner in 2008. But as Republican control over countywide elections continues to fade in Jeffco, the powers behind the curtain are doing everything they can to hold on to any office at the "Taj Mahal."
Thanks for the Job, Faye Griffin!
– 1998-2006: Griffin elected twice as Jeffco Clerk and Recorder
– 2006: Griffin elected County Treasurer (4-year term)
– 2008: Griffin ditches Treasurer's office to run for County Commissioner. Republican-controlled Commissioners appoint Republican Tim Kauffman to fill remainder of Griffin's term as Treasurer.
– 2010: Republican Tim Kauffman elected to full term as County Treasurer
– 2011: Republican Commissioner Kevin McCasky resigns his seat to take a high-paying job leading the Jefferson County Economic Council (an Independent Ethics Commission later slapped McCasky with a violation for persuading the county to increase its contribution to the Economic Council without informing them that he was seeking the head job). Republican Party vacancy committee appoints John Odom to finish remaining two years of McCasky's term.
– 2012: Griffin re-elected to another 4-year-term as County Commissioner. Democrat Casey Tighe defeats Odom for District 2 Commissioner seat; Odom was so disinterested in the job that he was rarely seen in office and made virtually no effort to win election to a full term despite his name ID advantage.
– 2013: Griffin announces that she will run for Jeffco Clerk and Recorder again in 2014. For the second time in 5 years, Griffin intends to leave an elected position halfway into the 4-year term that voters approved.
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Pretty machiavellian for somebody who looks like she should be playing the nice neighbor lady on "Leave it to Beaver". Even the hair is still perfect that era.
You could be sporting that same look today, if you'd bought that same wig 50 years ago . . .
. . . what I want to know is which Neville is this one married to?
You are just so wrong about this thing. I have often said that Faye Griffin is the finest public official I have ever met. She serves the county because she loves the county. She grew up in the Clerk and Recorder's office where I first met her over 25 years ago. It was her dream to someday be Clerk and Recorder and it happened for her, because everyone knew that in Faye, we would have a fair elections officer who would run elections well and who was efficient and made her office efficient. When she was term limited, a number of us in the more moderate wing of the then Republican Party urged her to run against an incumbent County Treasurer who was using his office as a platform for his tea-party views. She won. and served her term there. At the end of her term, there was an open commissioner's seat and seeing the problems there, she ran for this as well. She won. Now you want to trash a person because she wants to go back to the job she really loves? What garbage. Faye could have run for a whole lot of things in her career. But she didn't. She loves Jefferson County and has spent her life serving it. She the good type of "Republican" you guys always pine for around here. There's never been a hint of scandal regarding Faye. She's always just done her job. And yet you viciously trash her. Shame. Shame. Take it back.
The revolving door of appointments that trails in the wake of Ms. Griffin's office-hopping is very interesting. I suppose if Ms. Griffin wanted to cement her career as an exemplary public official–and not also a political hack–she could finish out the terms in the offices she runs for.
Do I need to remind you that this has happened several times with Democratic office holders in Jeffco? How did Rachael Zenzinger get appointed? Really, I could go on and on. It's clear that you don't know the woman and are nothing but a Democratic hack. Just nonsense.
You might have a point if the subject were Democrats who you wish to canonize, but it isn't. So fuck off, you GOP hack.
Vacancies occur all the time — but it's not usually THE SAME PERSON creating the vacancy every couple of years. This is not a partisan issue. This is a Faye Griffin issue. And Faye herself candidly points out that she is job hopping for personal reasons.
Once upon a time …
Faye was a good County Clerk years and years ago. But no one is indispensable and she now looks like she is being willingly manipulated by Republican Party bosses to keep hold of power at the county court house. Faye told me herself that she didn't want to run for County Commissioner the first time — the bosses pressured her because she is well liked. Now, at her age to be running as a mid-term commissioner for County Clerk again has cynical politics written all over it. Her behavior on the Board of Commissioners has also demonstrated that she pretty much lets a dominant figure like McCaskey or Rosier determine her decisions.
Yes, even a nice person like Faye Griffin can over stay their welcome and end-up not acting in the best interests of the citizens as a whole. We really do need to clean out the long-in-the-tooth insider crowd at the Taj. It would be great if we elected John Flerlage to replace Rosier as County Commissioner and elected Michael Snow as a new County Clerk.
IndependentProgressive is right. Nobody denies that she's nice. And yes, she does love her county. It's just that she's been manipulated for so long she's not even sure that it's happening. As long as she's in office, people who aren't in office own her vote — and her decisions to run. The fix is to vote for Flerlage and Snow.
Oh, and by the way. Your rank speculation of how the dominoes might fall is just that and not even very educated rank speculation. The Jeffco Republican Party today would find both Jim Everson and Tim Kauffman to be RINO's and unacceptable. Remember who they appointed when old-line Commissioner Kevin McCaskey left office. Hell he lost to a democrat because he was so right wing.
John Odom didn't lose because he was a RINO. Odom lost because he didn't bother to do his job once he won the vacancy committee.
Craig–good point, that Griffin seems as the type of R that a D could appreciate, so why the public trashing. Question–the assessor is a property appraiser; the treasurer manages the money. What did these two do that would make other R's consider them to be RINOS??