The Mesa County GOP needs to apologize for creating, aiding and abetting the Tina Peters debacle

Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney defends Tina Peters at a “Stand for the Constitution” meeting at Appleton Christian Church in Grand Junction in September, 2021. Tina Peters’ wild, egregious election-lie fiasco has embarrassed Mesa County on a national scale. 

It was clear back in 2018 when she was elected that Tina Peters was unqualified to be Mesa County Clerk and Recorder. She had had zero experience in government or in the Clerk’s office, had never worked in public administration or worked on an election in any capacity.

At the time, the qualifications between the two candidates for County Clerk couldn’t have been more stark:

Tina was a former flight attendant, had dabbled in real estate, worked for a Hollywood talent agency, had done multi-level marketing for health magnet purveyor Nikken and had a degree from the now-defunct Clayton College of Natural Health, an online school that was shut down in 2010 after its students brought a class action lawsuit against it for breach of fiduciary duty

Republican Mesa County Commissioner Rose Pugliese backed Tina Peters in the 2018 election even though Tina was completely unqualified to be County Clerk

By contrast, her opponent, Bobbie Gross, had already worked in the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s office for over 10 years. Gross was manager of the Motor Vehicle Department, overseeing 19 of 30 Clerk and Recorder employees. She had co-directed the 2016 presidential elections for Mesa County, was already a Certified Elections Official and was about to become a Certified National Elections Administrator. Gross had in-depth familiarity with all of the functions of the office, and with Colorado’s rules and regulations that pertain to County Clerks. She was a long-time, seasoned, experienced employee of the Clerk and Recorder’s office, well-versed in all the functions of the Clerk’s office and ready to move up to the head position.

Yet for some reason, the Mesa County GOP persisted in backing the inexperienced and unqualified Tina all the way. Mesa County GOP Party Chair Kevin McCarney defended Tina even after she forgot to collect 574 ballots in a ballot box from the 2019 election that were discovered in 2020. McCarney even defended Tina after she refused to count those hundreds of legitimately-cast ballots and refused to ask a judge to include them in the final tally for the 2019 election. Instead of being as deeply concerned about election integrity as he seems to be now, McCarney minimized Tina’s loss of the 574 ballots, calling the matter “trivial” and “unfortunate” (pdf). McCarney and the Mesa County GOP kept defending Tina throughout the bipartisan, citizen-led effort in 2020 to recall her —  during the pandemic, no less — and kept defending her even after she had cost county taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by compromising the County’s voting equipment and letting the passwords get put on the internet in a pursuit of some crazy, imaginary election fraud that was many times over proven not to exist.

Now, after Tina’s increasingly crazy election-denier escapades have cost Mesa County taxpayers $1.3 million (and the tab is still growing), and after Tina was charged with multiple felonies related to election tampering, and after she lost her quixotic bid to run for Secretary of State, in a June 29 interview on Colorado Springs TV station KRDO, McCarney finally started trying to distance himself from Tina.

In a post-election interview, McCarney told KRDO he is “ready for the GOP to move forward instead of focusing on election accusations,” adding that,

“I was a huge supporter of Miss Peters early on, but she made it pretty clear that she was not about just elections, she was about herself,” said McCarney. “And I think when you have a candidate that’s about herself as opposed to principle, you’re going to have problems with that.”

Wow, not so fast, Mr. McCarney.

That’s a massive understatement, and you can’t get away with just leaving it there.

Mesa County citizens have endured unbelievable expense, embarrassment and suffering on account of Tina, and you and your dolt of a party are largely to blame.


Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney [Photo from video on AmericasMom.net]

Level-headed Mesa County citizens could see years ago that Tina wasn’t concerned with faithfully discharging her duties as County Clerk and Recorder. We saw then she was consumed only with herself. Now Tina’s focus is on boosting her profile as a national election-denier celebrity, on continuing to suck up her $93k/year, taxpayer-funded salary without lifting a finger to do any Clerk duties required by her office. She’s concerned with how she can continue to fleece her supporters out of money. She’s concerned with flying around in private jets, and giving talks around the country to idiots who continue to believe her lies. She concerned with how many hundreds of thousands of dollars she can get for her “legal defense fund” in violation of Article 29, Colorado’s anti-corruption law, that limits how much elected officials can make on the side to $65. She’s concerned with buddying up to her increasingly shrill, unhinged sugar daddy, “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell. She’s concerned with how to keep hobnobbing with the rich and famous at Mar-A-Lago, and with figuring out ways she can be seen with Donald Trump and how she can continue to spew her nonsense about stolen elections and continue to grift off her duped supporters.

The Mesa County GOP can’t just simply now walk away, say “Never mind” and expect us to forget and move on.

No way.

McCarney and the Mesa County GOP owe the entire county a huge apology for refusing to admit the obvious truth about Tina from the get-go, for being in complete denial about her utter incompetence, for defending and trivializing her loss of 574 legitimately-cast ballots, for forcing Mesa County citizens to pay — and keep paying — through the nose for her loony antics, while the GOP continued to justify and defend her behavior and blindly support her as she became more and more unhinged. The GOP needs to apologize to the local electorate for failing to timely advocate for Tina to step down from her elected office and let someone competent serve as Acting County Clerk until we can elect a new Clerk. The Mesa County Republican Party needs to apologize, too, for spreading hoaxes and misinformation, for itself promoting the lie of a stolen election, for defending Tina ad nauseum despite the way she lies, uses and slanders people, deflects responsibility for her illegal behavior, and continuously blames her misdeeds on others.

All of the citizens of Mesa county deserve a sincere, heartfelt apology from the Mesa County GOP for being a horrible, blind idiot of a party, for misleading local Republicans who bought into their nonsense and for getting all of us into this terrible mess with Tina. And McCarney and the GOP need to tell all of us why in the world anyone should ever trust your party for anything in the future.

Well, Kevin. We’re waiting.

  34 comments for “The Mesa County GOP needs to apologize for creating, aiding and abetting the Tina Peters debacle

  1. Libya declares force majeure on oil exports after weeks of protests and port blockades. This is major news on its own, but also needs to be considered from Europe’s perspective:

    – 6% of EU oil & gas imports are from Libya and were just taken off the table.
    – 34% of EU oil and 55% of gas comes from Russia, which is being throttled
    – Freeport terminal in TX was blown up and cannot send LNG
    – UK just announced they’d stop gas exports to EU if there were shortages
    – EU and UK are both frantically burning gas just to generate electricity now, instead of storing for the winter ahead.

    – Greenhouses, food plants and facilities are ALREADY SHUT DOWN due to the cost of energy — and somehow things keep blowing up! This is an absolute CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.

    Europe is being strangled and you guys sit here playing spellChekist , way out of your league.
    Own Joe, Just say it. Be proud
    .

      • this absolutely on topic ! Tina Peters threw herself into the maelstrom in no small part
        to prevent the reckless regime destroying vital systems worldwide.

        CDer- thanks for the level headed response. Always rely on a dem to violate their own ‘protected classes’ when it serves their immediate purpose, even if the attempt at humor is lame at best.

        You dont see how our own occupant of the WH’s war on energy as affecting you? Do you drive a car ? just wait a bit more, you will understand how interdependent the world markets are and how precarious it is . The Germans were warned often about their over-reliance on Russian energy and ‘renewable” fantasy plans. Now Germany is reaching crisis levels, and their electricity , already in the mot expensive worldwide, is up 6X

        • We should probably stop whining about gas prices in the U.S. Here is the price of gas, per gallon, in other countries around the world as of June 5th: Hong Kong: $11.21
          Norway: $10.82
          Denmark: $10.32
          Sweden: $9.33
          Netherlands: $9.11
          Israel: $8.30
          Germany: $7.89
          France: $8.57

          • Hongkong is a tiny dense island where only the richest bother to own cars.
            The omnipresent taxi drivers are slave workers, by the way.

            Europe is vastly different than US, with less distances involved in ordinary life.
            They are also failing as a region/entity due to insane & unworkable energy policies.
            Aren’t you paying attention? EU energy woes woud be headed here ( since they are manufactured.. .thre is plenty of energy available and zero true reason to not use it) but we are stopping all that climate nonsense. The US is on a cooling trend. Get your head out of your

            interesting side note; Russia funds the euro Green movement, in order to protect their near monopoly over EU energy ( hows is that working out for all involved ? just lol.)

            It amazes me a person living in a region inhospitable for eons until the energy age & helplessly dependent in the most energy-intensive era of history would scoff, and not understand the bigger picture, with energy prices needlessly spiking upward over contrived issues. Stick to banning deadly dihydrogen monoxide.

            Being FOR energy costs needlessly out of reach for the masses, is almost like you would approve killing off of inconvenient humans. oh yeah, you do that too. But anyway , how about them Georgia Guide Stones today ?

    • CrossDresser;

      You’re suddenly worried about the UK and the EU?
      Why? What do you care about a bunch of socialist losers?

  2. Thank you Ann for the sentiment of all Mesa County residents who are not part of the walking dead Trumpites!

  3. Tina Peters is on a small scale, what the Republicans have come to be, corrupt, incompetent, venal and money grubbing, with no concern for the functioning of government but are working assiduously to install a fascist, Christian Nationalist party into power, ending the American Experiment in representative government and becoming a close resemblance of Nazi Germany in the 30’s and 40’s.

  4. Tina Peters is the only person in Mesa County history to ever knowingly and willfully refuse to count hundreds of legally-cast ballots. Her so-called “reports” have all been completely debunked. There is zero evidence of election fraud in Mesa County, or nationally, that would have altered the outcome of the 2020 election. All of Tina’s mistaken claims arise from her lack of knowledge of how voting equipment works, likely a result of her failure to get certified to run elections during her 4 year tenure as Clerk, as required by law. And I’m going to have to remove your comment because it is full of lies.

    • speaking of censoring , is ☭ИИ issuing any statements on their lies namely

      2016: Russia collusion
      2017: Trump calls Nazis “fine people”
      2020: Trump says drink bleach to stop COVID
      2020: Hunter’s laptop is Russian disinformation
      2021: J6 is an “insurrection”
      2022: Trump tried carjacking the POTUS limo

        • You put into words the tremendous list of ways Tina Peters and her GOP boosters have lied, disrupted, sown dissension, grifted and connived. We’ll know the GOP has actually tried to reform when they put the brakes on the bots who respond so negatively to your presentation of the facts.

          • yeah , except all the MSM narrative talking points about are utterly fictitious.
            You exist in a fantasy land of orangemanbadisms

      • Is Gerald Wood lying about Tina? Is he another Deep State Operative?

  5. Back when Tina and her staff forgot to empty the ballot box outside of the elections office, and didn’t count those ballots, I sent an e-mail to Scott McInnis, calling on him to ask for Tina’s immediate resignation. He sent me back an e-mail telling me that I needed to let the investigation play out, and then if action was warranted, it would happen…I am still waiting, you spineless turd!!!!! Meanwhile, millions of dollars of Mesa County taxpayer’s money is flying out the window with this ridiculous nonsense. LOCK HER UP ALREADY! Who’s next?

  6. The GOP is now completely detached from reality, the cult transformation is complete. Facts and truth mean nothing to these people, American democracy is dead.

  7. McCarney didn’t speak out (rather weakly) until Peters lost the election for SOS very badly. That’s take next to zero courage.

  8. Here’s your reminder that the chances Cheney, Pelosi and the other idiots running the J6 show trial would never
    (never. nĕv′ər adverb
    Not ever; on no occasion; at no time.
    Not at all; in no way; absolutely not.
    Not ever; not at any time; at no time, whether past, present, or future.)

    would ne’er put Cassidy Hutchinson on national TV to tell a BS story about Trump going GTA on his own SS agents if they had known the agents would immediately speak up and demand to be allowed to correct the record.
    This was not bad luck. Somebody set these idiots up.

    • And there are other SS agents who will testify that they’d heard and seen the same things Hutchinson testified that she’d heard. So, we’ll see. 🙂

    • The chances of those SS agents actually testifying under oath to the J6 committee are near zero, zilch, nada, or never. nĕv′ər adverb… If they do testify all answers will be “I plead the 5th”. BTW, the committee wouldn’t have had Cassidy Hutchinson testify if they didn’t have substantial back up testimony and verification of what she knows and was going to say.

      • at this point Cassidy Hutchinson seems to be a false flag operator.

        She was trotted out for an emergency J6 shamitte hearing to say “orangmanbad’ yet again, and the commidiots all tut-tutted in practiced unison. … What they forgot To Do was verify her tale with anyone.

        Heck this kid didn’t even recognize her own hand writing ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

        And before the stadium-sized big big screen with the badbadman going GTA went dark, all Hutchinson’s major talking points were proven to be falsehoods. Cassidy set the j6 idiots up for a fail and they took the bait !

        Just Glorious .
        Enjoy the show

        • Wow, you guys can’t keep your talking points straight, can you?
          Despite your desperate prayers to Baby Jesus that the mean lady be proven a liar, there are many Secret Service members willing to corroborate her testimony as to what she heard. It’s not like the conduct she talked about is anything surprising, coming from a bloated, cowardly, wannabe dictator.

          More good news: Asa Hutchinson, the Governor of Arizona, is no longer backing the Cheeto Messiah (He’ll probably go for DeSantis, anyway). I wonder how Trump will handle that? Maybe he’ll run as an Independent. 🙂 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/governor-asa-hutchinson-abortion-arkansas/

  9. Cui bono? Find a motive, sobbers. Your pearl clutching is quite obvious.

    We are all so very tired of your puckered bumpurs over Tina Peters incurring this this shetstorm for no personal benefit, meanwhile the corruption of the left starts at joe buyden’s family and drips down to the lowest of the low. and thats pretty low, lol

    Did Tina do this for massive compensation from~say, a Soros character, just like Griswold did to gain office ?

    Or were her motives to investigate the election system falsification that Dominion effected ?

    tictoc demoncrats, the tide has turned. Head for higher ground while you can

    • No personal benefit? She’s got you snowed. Yes, she’s doing this for big compensation. She’s probably pulled in over a million in unrestricted funds into her legal defense fund, in violation of Article 29 of the Colorado Constitution, the anti-corruption law that limits what an elected official can pocket on the side from any source to $65. Oh, and she moved that fund out of state in an effort to evade the law. And she’s gotten weeks of free hotel rooms and free meals, a security detail, multiple free private jet rides worth about $100k. She’s fleecing people out of their money full time now over The Big Lie. All while at the same time she’s still pulling in her $93,000/year taxpayer -funded Clerk salary, plus a third more of that in benefits, like health insurance and Social Security contributions.

    • Tina tried to frame an innocent man; a supporter of hers, no less – in her failed attempt to prove election fraud.

      This is who you’re defending.
      No one has to worry about any limp threats from you; as you’re completely without honor.
      Just like Tina.

  10. Where does one start? With a well written and researched article such as this is one way. In a non-bizzarro world people who read this who were unfamiliar with the story would probably be shocked and appalled at the depravity of Republicans. Not these days as behavior such as this has become the norm across the country. If lying, cheating and stealing doesn’t work they’ll kill you is how this party of live zombies operates these days because it works for them real good.

    We know facts and history do not register with them. There is no changing of minds going to happen. They are proud of their ignorance and relish in the hurt their actions bring to those who don’t agree and threaten at will government of all levels across the country. People like us are the reason for all that they believe is wrong with our country. They have commandeered the flag to represent other values and make no bones about what they plan to do to government and us if they obtain power to do so. There’s no bs here it’s a fact.

    I think there has to be some new words to describe what’s happening as the ones we have just don’t cut it with what these people are doing.

    It will be very hard to even hold these people at bay let alone come out on top in respect to elections. Thank you for this and everyone LTFO!

    • you guys own Biden.
      Own his corruption. The terrible policy. The historical inflation. The horrific energy situation.

      Actually the CCP of China, Inc. , & Ukrainian kleptocrats OWN him,
      but you get the bill . Enjoy your recession! All the more amazing the come-back will be

  11. I suspect that the Mesa Co. GOP and more Mesa Co. voters would still support TP had she not used and thrown one of her own under the bus.

    It’s a mystery to me how the GOP/Chamber bunch repeatedly comes up with so many deeply flawed candidates to throw at Mesa County voters.

    • … and repeatedly and consistently, over decades. The flow of deeply flawed candidates coming from the local GOP is clearly a feature of the party, and not a bug.

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