Tag: Politics

New website up for the effort to recall D-51 School Board President Andrea Haitz

Click the image to go to the new website for the Andrea Haitz recall effort

The public can now keep track of the effort to recall School District 51’s Board President Andrea Haitz by going to SignForKids.com, where people can find out where to sign petitions, get trained in how to gather signatures, donate to the effort or volunteer to help. The organizers need to gather 15,000 valid signatures of registered voters within the next two months.

The website states the public’s grievances against Haitz:

  • Andrea Haitz was elected to the District 51 Board in 2021, promising transparency.

  • Instead, Haitz has turned local control of school dollars over to extremist organizations, turned fundamental parts of her job over to expensive lawyers, denied student pleas for mental health services, and used her office for family political gain.

  • The biggest decisions at District 51 are now being turned over to outside interests and fringe extremists who don’t represent Mesa County families.

City of Grand Junction election results, 2023

Below are the results of the April 4, 2023 City of Grand Junction election. These are marked on the City’s website as the final election results. There will be a ballot curing period of 8 days following which the official final results will be viewable by going to this link on the City’s website.

Referred Measure 1A is the Community Recreation Center and 1B was to lengthen the lease on a parcel of City-owned land.

Winners of seats on City Council are Cody Kennedy, Jason Nguyen and Scott Beilfuss, and incumbent Anna Stout skated to re-election running unopposed.

The Community Recreation Center measure passed by almost 4,000 votes. Voters also passed the measure to lengthen the lease on City-owned property.

Local Business owner weighs in on rec center, affordable housing, the workforce, development

Octopus Coffee on Horizon Drive

Alexis Bauer owns Octopus Coffee on Horizon Drive. Last week she emailed me to talk about the proposed community recreation center on the upcoming April ballot. (We differed on what we think about it. I am for it). As we got into a longer conversation, Alexis sent a follow-up email in which she offered a variety of  insights from her standpoint as a western slope resident and local business owner. She talked not only about the Rec Center, but also other issues facing Grand Junction, like the housing shortage, the cost of doing business, her experience with the local workforce, City Council’s recent approval of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and what it portends for the City, the buzz she hears from customers, and more.

I found Alexis’s insights interesting and felt they deserved a wider forum, so with her permission I am sharing her email to me below, edited slightly for clarity, in hopes others find it enlightening as well.

D-51 School Board President Andrea Haitz violates School Board Ethics Code

Andrea Haitz’s Feb. 15 mass email violates an ethics rule that says school board members must refrain from using their board positions for partisan gain

District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz violated the School Board’s ethics rules by sending out an overtly partisan, political mass email February 15, 2023 using her position as School Board President to promote her husband Greg’s bid to get a seat on Grand Junction City Council this April.

Andrea Haitz

Haitz wrote,

I am writing to you today because, despite our victory, the LEFT is still here seeking majorities in local government to make Grand Junction the Denver of the Western Slope.

We can put a stop to this by voting for conservatives in the April 4th Grand Junction City Council Election like my husband, Greg Haitz, who is running for District B. [Underlining emphasis in original.]

Haitz’s email violated Mesa County Valley School District 51’s Code of Ethics for School Board Members (pdf), Policy BCB-E, which says school board members will

Avoid being placed in a position of conflict of interest and refrain from using my board position for personal or partisan gain.

Grand Junction City Council candidate rundown 2023

For this article, I drew from publicly available sources, including the candidates’ own websites and social media accounts, newspaper articles, the candidates’ financial disclosure statements filed with the City of Grand Junction, background-checks done on TruthFinder.com, and public records requests to the Grand Junction Police Department (GJPD) for records of any contact the candidates had with local law enforcement agencies. I felt the law enforcement piece was necessary after seeing Mesa County voters elect people to public office who were later involved in theft, falsifying time cards, embezzlement, assault, plagiarism, DUI, double-dipping, election tampering and other offenses.

These City Council candidates are asking voters to hire them for a job. City taxpayers pay their salaries. The candidates should be background-checked.

What’s the deal with Republican Mesa County Commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel’s book?

Bobbie Daniel’s May, 2016 self-published book, is 273 pages and is now out of print.

In May of 2016, Republican Mesa County Commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel self-published a book, “Solutions from a Nobody: Using Founding Principles to Solve Modern Problems.” She wrote the book to present “clear and important ideas to fix what ails America.” She spent ten years as a hairdresser listening to her customers and put a lot of time into thinking about the problems they talked about. Daniel wrote this book to provide solutions to their problems.

First of all, kudos to Daniel for bothering to think about societal problems at all, let alone try to come up with solutions. Most people never bother, so that’s worth something.

Country singer John Rich hosting fundraiser for Boebert; tickets are $2,000 – $12,900

Notice for John Rich fundraiser for Boebert published in the Tennessee Journal

Country singer John Rich is hosting a high-dollar fundraiser tomorrow evening, October 20, for CD-3 Rep. Lauren Boebert at his 17,000+ sq. ft. mansion in Nashville, Tennessee. The fundraiser also features former NRA spokesperson and writer for Breitbart News, Dana Loesch. 

Tickets start at $2,000 and go up to $12,900 for “gold sponsors,” who for that price get admission to a cocktail reception and a chance to take a photo with Boebert.

Mesa County Commissioners give Republican commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel a huge advantage using taxpayer-funded resources

Election denier Bobbie Daniel (R), Republican running for County Commissioner, with her friend Tina Peters in 2018, before Tina was elected Clerk and was indicted on multiple felonies related to election tampering.

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022, in its opinion section the Daily Sentinel endorsed Republican election denier Bobbie Daniel for County Commissioner, saying she was “prepared to step in ready to work on day one.” But the Sentinel failed to ask the big question of how it happened that Daniel had become so prepped for the position.

It happened because Daniel has been groomed for months, maybe years, for the job by sitting Republican Mesa County commissioners, who have been using taxpayer-funded resources and taxpayer-funded County time to make sure Daniel gets a huge leg-up over her opponent in the race.

Trump makes the crazy claim that he can declassify documents “even by thinking about it.” Republican Mesa County commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel continues to support Trump.

Republican commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel speaking at a Trump rally in Grand Junction on 10/18/2016. She remains a Trump supporter despite his insurrection, his crazy claims about being able to declassify documents with his mind, his alleged theft of highly sensitive, top secret government documents, his ripping off of charities, fleecing his supporters for money, and many other alleged crimes.

In a TV interview this week with Fox News host Sean Hannity, former president Donald Trump claimed he can declassify any top secret government document he wants at will, “even by thinking about it.”

It is, of course a completely loony claim, and most Americans can recognize it as such.

Trump was referring to the hundreds of classified and top-secret, government documents he had hidden in his Florida home, that the FBI seized on August 8 while executing a duly authorized search warrant aimed at retrieving them. Unauthorized possession of government documents is a crime.

Bobbie Daniel recently retweeted this photo claiming Biden is not the legitimate U.S. President. Daniel remains a strong Trump supporter despite his attempted coup against the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, and his continuous lies about elections aimed at undermining American democracy

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump willfully encouraged insurrection, incited violence against the United States and lied to the American public by claiming the November, 2020 election was “rigged.”

He’s been able to convince many Mesa County citizens to believe this lie. Among them are Bobbie Daniel’s friend, crazy Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who now stands accused of committing serious election tampering crimes while trying to prove Trumps false claims about elections are true.

Red flags indicate Daniel is a Tina Peters-linked choice for Mesa County Commissioner

Left to right: activist Sherronna Bishop, “No-Work-Clerk” Tina Peters and Bobbie Daniel, from a 2018 YouTube video Daniel made to endorse Tina Peters for County Clerk. Daniel said Tina had “a wealth of knowledge” and assured us we’d be “in really good hands ” if Tina became our Clerk and Recorder. We know how that turned out, and Daniel hasn’t yet apologized to Mesa County citizens for her disastrous endorsement.

Republican Mesa County Commissioner candidate Bobbie Daniel is showing all the signs that she’ll be yet another potentially disastrous elected official in the vein of Tina Peters if she gets elected as county commissioner.

There are a number of reasons why. The first is her remarkably poor judgment:

Bobbie Daniel endorsed Tina Peters for Clerk.

Keep the momentum going! Help elect sane candidates in Mesa County! Dems plan two more literature drops, seek volunteers to help

Mesa County voters have had enough of Tina Peters’ pillow talk

Mesa County Democrats had about 50 people turn out for their last literature drop event last weekend, a tremendous success.

The literature drops are aimed at educating voters in Mesa County about alternatives to voting for Republicans, who have racked up a remarkably long record of failure as elected officials, and caused Mesa County taxpayers much grief and expense.

Dems plan two more literature drops, seek volunteers to help.

Want to help defeat extremist Republican candidates in Mesa County? Pitch in Saturday, 9/10, to help elect rational candidates in November

This political map shows how the Grand Valley vote has changed since the 2016 election. Every single area on the valley floor has trended towards being more Democratic. If we can keep the trend going, we can finally stop electing embarrassing, unethical, unqualified, costly and irrational candidates who lie and commit crimes while in office, like Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.

Mesa County Democrats will gather for a big canvassing event September 10th and are asking everyone’s help to get the word out about which state and local candidates belong to the only remaining political party that deals in reality.

Boebert: Banning assault weapons will make people eat dogs

Lauren Boebert, Republican House Representative for western Colorado, appeared on “The Gorka Reality Check” on Newsmax yesterday evening and said that if an assault weapons ban is enacted in the U.S., people will start eating their dogs, because that’s what happened in Venezuela.

Boebert is currently running for a second term in the House. She dropped out of high school in 2004 to have a baby and got her G.E.D. in 2020, one month before the primary election. She’s running against Democrat Adam Frisch in the November, 2022 general election.

The show is broadcast on Newsmax on Sunday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Lauren Boebert votes against bill to reauthorize U.S. to combat international human sex trafficking

House Rep. Lauren Boebert (L), with her former campaign manager, Sherronna Bishop.

On July 26, 2022 Colorado House Rep. Lauren Boebert voted against the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2022 HR 6552, which continues funding the Department of State and Department of Justice to combat human sex trafficking internationally through fiscal year 2026.

The law has been in place since 2020.

The bill sailed through the House on a vote of 401 to 20. The 20 who voted against it were all Republicans and included Ken Buck of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Louis Gohmert (R-TX).

Tina Peters losing support locally


Support for Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appears to be waning among her “base” in Mesa County as people discover Peters is willing to lie and sacrifice other people to further her own ends.

The Daily Sentinel reported today that enthusiasm for Peters among members of the far-right group Stand for the Constitution (SFTC) appears to be waning. The group, previously a strong supporter of Peters, invited Peters’ opponent for Secretary of State, Mike O’Donnell, to speak at their most recent meeting. The meeting was sponsored in part by Andrea Barber, the sister-in-law of Gerald Wood, whose identity Tina Peters stole in order to smuggle a third person into the Elections Department to copy voting machine hard drives.

Former G.J. City Council candidate Mark McAllister speaks in support of Tina Peters at an August, 2021 rally organized by Stand for the Constitution in support of Tina Peters, while a supporter holds a sign that says “I Trust Tina Peters.” (Photo: YouTube)

Peters’ actions swept up Fruita resident Gerald Wood into the criminal investigation of Peters’ election tampering, forcing Wood to have to prove to authorities he was not present at the time Peters had the hard drives copied.

Oklahoma is just the beginning of what life will be like under Republican rule

In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed the nation’s worst abortion ban, making it the first state to effectively end women’s right to have an abortion, and making this article, that I first published on May 20, 2019, even more relevant.

Oklahoma Republicans just passed a mind-blowingly strict law that makes abortion illegal in virtually every circumstance, effectively terminating the right of women in the state to control their own bodies and reproductive fate.

Oklahoma wasn’t alone in this, either. Other Republican-dominated states are also enacting extremely strict laws that effectively make abortion illegal, with some banning the procedure as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Republicans base these laws on their belief that a fetus is a fully legal person entitled to all the rights and privileges that all legal American citizens enjoy.

But if actually put into effect, what do these beliefs really portend for life in America?

State of CO investigating Boebert’s 2020 mileage reimbursements & payment of tax liens on Shooters Grill

Lauren Boebert, shown at upper left in a 2019 Facebook post, holding the same flag flown by right wing extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021

The New York Times is reporting that the State of Colorado will investigate allegations of campaign finance fraud by CO House Rep. Lauren Boebert involving her excessive 2020 mileage reimbursements and subsequent payoff of multiple outstanding tax liens on her restaurant, Shooters Grill, in Rifle, CO.

In 2020, then-candidate Rep. Boebert reimbursed herself from her campaign fund for over $30,000 worth of mileage that she claimed to have traveled between April and November of 2020, during the pandemic, and then appeared to have used the funds to pay off tax liens against her Rifle, CO restaurant. The number of miles she claims to have driven was enough to circumnavigate the globe 1.5 times.