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.
In 2018, Daniel endorsed Tina Peters for Clerk and Recorder, even though Tina herself displayed multiple red flags that Daniel completely ignored. Tina claimed to have a bachelor’s degree “with highest honors” from an unaccredited college that’s listed on QuackWatch.org. Tina had previously made a living promoting scammy health products and get-rich-quick schemes and had zero experience in, or knowledge of local government. Tina’s only “qualification” — and the only one that the Mesa County GOP took into consideration — was that she was a far right-wing ideologue. This was enough for Daniel and the local Republican Party. Electing Tina in spite of all these red flags and many more turned out to be the single most expensive, embarrassing mistake Mesa County voters ever made, and that’s saying a lot in light of the extraordinary number of Mesa County Republican officials who had already proved to be huge mistakes by committing crimes and engaging in unethical behaviors including assault, embezzlement, fraud, plagiarism, DUIs, double-dipping, shoplifting and more.
The second reason why Daniel is likely to be trouble if she gets elected is that she’s implicated in Tina Peters’ election tampering mess:
Peters attended a meeting of election-denying Sheriffs in Las Vegas July 12, 2022, where she told the audience she attended a dinner in May of 2021 after the election equipment was hacked, which certain other people attended as well. One of the people Peters dined with was Conan Hayes, who Peters had smuggled into the County’s secure election equipment room using Gerald Wood’s ID badge to copy the hard drives. Peters then also spilled said the other people attending that dinner were Sherronna Bishop, Lauren Boebert and “one of the candidates for county commissioner,” who could only have been Republican Bobbie Daniel.
Thus Daniel was aware that Peters and Hayes had illicitly tampered with Mesa County’s voting equipment but never bothered to report it to authorities. This could turn into a legal liability that could be a burden to the County during her term, costing the County lost time and legal expense while she deals with the mess.
Third reason: Daniel is an extremist.
Daniel is close friends with Sherronna Bishop, who was fired as Lauren Boebert’s campaign manager after praising the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group that has a reputation for violence. The Proud Boys was one of the violent extremist groups targeted by the FBI during its investigation of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and many Proud Boys members have since been charged with crimes related to the attack. Bishop is a strong election denier who claims
the January 6 attackers were innocent.
Daniel is also endorsed by Mark McAllister, who is probably the most openly racist person to run for Grand Junction City Council in recent history. As a City Council candidate, McAllister repeatedly drew scrutiny from the Colorado Times Recorder for posting false, xenophobic and racist memes on his social media. The Recorder wrote several articles about McAllister’s racist tendencies.
Daniel is also endorsed by extremist Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney, who defended Tina Peters to the hilt even after she failed to collect 574 legitimately-cast ballots from the ballot box in the 2019 election, and then refused to count them after finding them in 2020. McCarney KEPT defending Tina even after she was arrested and charged with 7 felonies related to election tampering. McCarney only recently dropped his support of Tina by writing a too-little-too-late letter-to-the-editor of the Daily Sentinel demanding Tina resign as Clerk because she’s cost the county over $1.5 million while doing absolutely nothing for anyone in the County.
Daniel is endorsed by Mesa County extremist Don Pettygrove, who on August 24, 2021 stepped to the podium at a Mesa County Commissioner meeting during the public comment period and actually said,
“Dominion machines are made in Venezuela specifically to corrupt elections,” and “electronic machines of any kind are an error.”
Bobbie Daniel is endorsed by GOP Chair Kevin McCarney (L), who defended Tina even AFTER she lost 574 legitimately-cast ballots and refused to count them when they were found, and AFTER she was charged with multiple felonies related to election tampering. Daniel is also endorsed by and local extremist Don Pettygrove (center), who thinks election machines are made in Venezuela “specifically to corrupt elections.”
Fourth reason: Daniel is scatterbrained
Daniel made yet another video with Sherronna on December 19, 2017 in which she agreed with the definition Sherronna provided her about the role of government, which Sherronna declared is “to make sure everyone’s natural rights are protected.”
The actual roles of a statutory county government like Mesa County (pdf) are law enforcement, providing social services on behalf of the state, building, maintenance and repair of roads and bridges; general control of land use in unincorporated areas, providing jails, weed control and a
Screen shot of Bobbie Daniel’s 2017 video with Sherronna
public health agency, and operating some other services that help society, like mass transit, cemeteries and a garbage dump. If Bishop and Daniel were talking about the feds, the main responsibilities of the federal government are creating and enforcing the rules of a society, defense, foreign affairs, the economy, and providing public services.
When Sherronna asked Daniel the question “What are ‘natural rights?,” here’s how Daniel answered:
“I see natural rights as protection of my mind and what laws, you know, and protection over intellectual property and our stuff, so you know whoever has Lucille’s bat can’t come and take all my stuff.”
Does this sound like a brilliant thinker to you? One who merits the responsibility of holding high local public office and pulls in a taxpayer-funded salary of over $90,000 a year, before benefits, to consider the serious issues that affect all of us?
Do we really need an extremist at the head of County government right now, while the County is still fending off hordes of reality-challenged, far-right extremists who come to meetings every week and harass the Commissioners for making sure our local elections are truly safe?
I’ll leave answering those questions to you.