The shady right-wing political front group Compass Colorado us using a new strategy against its opponents: filing frivolous ethics complaints against candidates, and then using the fact that a complaint has been filed to impugn the integrity of the candidate. Compass applied this strategy against Governor John Hickenlooper, who is running for a second term, last July. The group filed a complaint against the governor claiming he violated a gift-ban provision in a state ethics laws. Compass then put out a news release touting the complaint. But the state’s bipartisan Independent Ethics Commission rejected the complaint out of hand as “frivolous” before it ever set a hearing date for it. Compass Colorado promotes the news that a complaint has been filed against the candidate on its website and in press releases, but never mentions the complaint’s dismissal. Compass Colorado does not disclose its donors, its physical address or telephone number, or the names of its principles, staff or board members. Its executive director is Kelly Maher, a former Secretary of the Denver County Republican Party.
Main source: Denver Post blog by Lynn Bartels, October 31, 2013
There is a new & subtle form of Tyranny that’s come into the State of Colorado political system…via these bogus Recall Petitions. The groups responsible for pushing these Recall Petitions “abuse” the local community law enforcement dispatchers by making avoluminous number of phone calls, and the reason for
these calls are 90% frivolous (Henny Penny the Sky is Falling).
Those on the opposing side who are defending an elected official will now and then phone in a complaint to a dispatcher, but no where near the amount of iPhone calls from the right wing groups requesting local police to come out to their petition singining locations. And their use of social media–iPhones–for also slandering and character assassinations is appalling.
It’s an abuse reminiscent of George Orwell’s Animal farm-take-over by the animals’ story. The pigs started “changing the rules on the side of the barn”…and also raised the pup litter to grow up to be their subordinating law enforcement gang.
Why should sixty or seventy right wingers, with outside backing,
be allowed to “nullify votes” of approximately 80,000 Coloradoans who voted in past elections for Senators Giron, Mose, and Hudak?
These kinds of character assassination tactics were used in European countries by extreme right wing and extreme left wing thugs.