94 search results for "Mesa County Republican Party"

Civil War & Feeding Migrants to Wolves: Western CO Congressional Forum Gets Extreme

The forum for Republican candidates for CD-3 held at Appleton Christian Church, 2/12/24. (Photo: Sharon Sullivan)

Article by Sharon Sullivan, Feb. 14, 2024

This article is republished with permission from the Colorado Times Recorder. You can see the original article here. 

Immigration policy dominated the discussion among five of the Republican candidates vying to win Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District primary election in June, and it included some eyebrow-raising statements.

The candidate forum, which took place Monday night at Appleton Christian Church in Grand Junction, included all but one of the Republicans hoping to become their party’s nominee following Congresswoman’s Boebert decision to abandon her hometown district for redder pastures on the Eastern Plains.

While their positions on immigration varied, the candidates found more consensus around their doubts about Colorado’s election system. Four of the five participants spoke in favor of banning the mail ballots used by nearly all Coloradans, based on the debunked conspiracy that they have been used to rig elections. All but one of the candidates advocated for a return to hand-counting paper ballots, a process which has been proven to be less accurate and far more expensive than Colorado’s current system. Hanks, Andrews and Varela all promoted elements of another debunked conspiracy theory: that the Dominion Voting machines used by nearly all counties to tabulate their elections could be manipulated to rig the results.

CO Ballot Initiative #89 seeks to enshrine abortion rights in Colorado’s Constitution

Western Colorado is organizing to protect abortion rights, for real.

In 2022, Colorado enacted a statute to protect access to contraception and abortion, but because it’s just a statute, Republicans can still try to undermine the law by introducing bills and ballot measures to try to limit abortion access. So groups that support reproductive freedom are working to put Initiative #89 on the 2024 state ballot.

Tina Peters takes the 5th Amendment repeatedly in deposition about soliciting illegal campaign contributions

Tina Peters’ mugshot for her arrest on 3/9/2022

On September 29, Colorado Administrative Law Judge Timothy Nemecheck fined former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters $15,400 for illegally soliciting and accepting contributions to a 2022 re-election campaign for county clerk without first registering as a candidate with the State.

The fine was the end result of two campaign finance complaints filed in 2021 by Scott Beilfuss, who is now a Grand Junction City Councilman. The first complaint was dated August 16, 2021. Beilfuss wrote a single sentence:

“Tina Peters flew up to Mr. Pillows cybersymposium on a private plane provided to her and is staying as a guest of the Pillow foundation in a clear violation of accepting gift laws.”

Tina Peters is certain she will do no jail time for her conviction on obstructing government operations

Tina Peters’ mugshot for her arrest on 3/9/2022

KRDO TV in Colorado Springs is reporting that Tina Peters, who is now running for Chair of the Colorado Republican Party, believes her ongoing legal battles won’t hurt her ability to lead the Party if she is elected. She also believes she will not serve any jail time in connection with her conviction on obstructing government operations.

A jury found Peters guilty of the charge earlier this month. She is scheduled to be sentenced at 9:00 a.m. on April 10 in Courtroom 2 at the Mesa County Justice Center.

Peters told KRDO, “I promise you I’m not going to jail. This is not a jailable offense, so I’m not worried at all.”

Her conviction carries a potential sentence of up to 6 months in jail, a $750 fine, or probation and community service.

Bigger than Roe western slope march planned for Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023 @ 1:00 p.m.

Crowd gathering in front of the old courthouse before the 2019 Womens March in downtown Grand Junction

Fifty years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right, a march will be held locally in Grand Junction to demand that federal protections for abortion not only be restored, but be made even better than Roe allowed.

Last June (2022), the far-right Republican majority now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court stunned the country when it reversed 50 years of precedent in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, invalidating Roe v Wade.  The ruling end Americans’ federally-protected right to obtain an abortion.  It was the first time the Supreme Court has ever taken away a fundamental constitutional protection from people in the United States of America.

Rep. Janice Rich rescues homeowners locked out of common space

A bill that House Rep. Janice Rich introduced in response to the plight of Grand Junction residents who were unjustly shut out of their common space by an overzealous HOA, “Homeowners’ Reasonable Access to Common Areas,” gets signed by Governor Polis at the state Capitol in Denver on April 12, 2022. (Left to right: House Rep. Edie Hooton, Rep. Janice Rich, Gov. Polis, Sen. Tammy Story)

A year ago this blog highlighted the plight of homeowners who suddenly found themselves repeatedly locked out of their own common space park for months at a time by an overzealous homeowners association (HOA). The example was the Moonridge Falls subdivision in Grand Junction where, without consulting homeowners, the HOA locked the ornamental gates to the home owners’ small open space park in winter due to a sudden fear that ice on the 2-foot deep irrigation pond in the park posed a danger. No one had been injured on the pond, there hadn’t been any accident or incident involving the pond, the pond ices over every year and the park hadn’t been locked before as far back as most neighbors could remember.

Colorado introduces New “Tina Peters Bill” to stop insider threats to election security

Sen. Stephen Fenberg, President of the Colorado Senate, introduced the bill

A new bill introduced in the Colorado Senate March 11 appears to be tailor-made to address the behaviors exhibited by Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters that led to her 10 criminal indictments last week over election tampering, including seven felonies. If she’s convicted, she could go to prison.

House Bill 22-153 (pdf), titled “Internal Election Security Measures,” would shorten the amount of time newly-elected clerks have to get certified to run elections from two years to six months. The required courses include information in voter registration and list maintenance, accessibility, coordinated elections, mail-in ballot and in-person voting processes, voting systems testing, risk-limiting audits, canvassing, and election security.

Peters never got the state-required certification to run elections

Tina Peters in custody on $500k bond; Chair of the Colorado GOP urges Peters to suspend her campaign for SOS

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ mugshot for her latest arrest on 3/9/2022. She is charged with 8 felonies and 3 misdemeanors related to tampering with election equipment

Tina Peters was booked into the Mesa County jail this afternoon on $500,000 cash-only bond after surrendering at the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the Daily Sentinel, if she is convicted on all charges, and if they run consecutively, Peters could get a maximum penalty of 28 years in jail and $2.7 million in fines, and Knisley could get a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison and $2 million in fines.

Peters blamed her arrest on Democrats and establishment Republicans who dislike Donald Trump. She gave a long statement to the Daily Sentinel that said in part, “Using a grand jury to formalize politically motivated accusations against candidates is (a) tactic long employed by the Democrat Party.”

Tina Peters and Lauren Boebert discussed on Denver 9News show “Next with Kyle Clark” — and not in a good way


Denver news anchor Kyle Clark, host of “Next with Kyle Clark,” voiced strong opinions about Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and western slope House Rep. Lauren Boebert on his November 17 show.

Clark criticized Peters for going on “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell’s online TV show and claiming she was “terrorized” while law enforcement searched  her home on November 16th, while the Colorado State Attorney General issued a statement saying no force was used during the search, and in fact Peters remained home making breakfast while the search was ongoing.

D-51 School Board candidate Voter Guide for the 11/2/2021 election

NOTE: This article is longer than usual owing to the number of people running, the amount of information available on them and the need to put the practical meaning of Chamber endorsements in context so people can accurately grasp their significance. One photo in this article may be unsuitable for kids. Below is a brief summary of my vote recommendations for school board, if you don’t have time to read the whole article immediately:

Recommended Votes:

District C – Trish Mahre

District D – Nick Allan

District E – David Combs

—————————–

Following are summaries of the candidates running for District 51 School Board in the upcoming November 2 election. Sources of information included the candidates’ publicly available campaign and work websites, their campaign and personal social media, and other primary and authoritative online resources, including minutes of District 51 Board meetings and the website of Mesa County Libraries.

Grand Junction’s political landscape continues to trend more blue

A New York Times’ map of 2020 election results across the country shows more of our area trending blue than ever before.

A November, 2018 analysis of Mesa County’s political landscape found that based on the race for Governor, Mesa County was no longer a “hard-core red” county, and that our area was starting to trend bluer, towards Democrats. At that time, Grand Junction’s older downtown area had turned solidly blue, but was still surrounded by a sea of red, with few to no area races being competitive.

Getting bluer

An analysis of the 2020 election results shows the trend towards area voters leaning Democratic continuing, and accelerating.

Just how BAD of a candidate is Lauren Boebert for 3rd Congressional District House Representative?

Lauren Boebert, Republican candidate for CD-3, is such a far right extremist that she said she hopes “QAnon is real” (Youtube)

Lauren Boebert such a terrible Republican candidate for CD-3 that the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce has refused to endorse her.

You have to understand how the Grand Junction Area Chamber works in order to fully grasp how momentous this non-endorsement is.

Even the Tea Party Chamber doesn’t like Boebert.

Under Diane Schwenke, its president of the last 30 years, the G.J. Area Chamber in 2012 became a politically far right wing tea-party group that portrays itself as a champion of small business, while they actually put their political effort into lobbying for the big businesses that pony up their highest membership fees of $7,000/year.

This makes for some weird actions by the Chamber.

The Chamber has endorsed criminals for city council, they’ve endorsed people who can’t write a coherent sentence for school board, and they even endorsed a dental hygienist for Drainage Board who’d lived here 2 years, moved here from San Diego and couldn’t tell a drainage ditch from an irrigation ditch over a candidate who’d served on Palisade Town Council for 8 years, been mayor pro-tem, sat on the 5-2-1 Drainage Authority Board, sat on the Colorado Municipal League’s Executive Board for 6 years, had attended seminars on wastewater management and subscribed to periodicals about drainage just for fun. Why? Because the lady from San Diego opposed a fee the drainage district sought to fund much-needed updating of the valley’s troubled, outdated drainage system.

Anti-Trump sentiment emerging in Grand Junction

Truck seen on I-70B in Grand Junction September 6, 2020

Note: Comments are back! Thanks for your patience during the fix.– Anne

The body politic in Mesa County used to be in lockstep with the Republican Party, but no more. An increasing number of area residents are proudly displaying signage opposing Trump, and for good reason.

It’s becoming extremely difficult for anyone, even Republicans, to continue supporting the President, especially after the past week.

Anti-Trump garden flag seen in northwest Grand Junction

On September 3, Trump urged North Carolina voters to commit felonies en masse by trying to vote twice.

On September 4, the Trump Administration ordered an end to programs aimed at promoting racial sensitivity among government workers (pdf), calling them “un-American propaganda.”

AnneLandmanBlog Voter Guide for the June 30, 2020 Primary Election

Wondering how to vote in the upcoming primary election on Tuesday, June 30, 2020?

Following are AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations for how to vote on the Mesa County Democratic Primary Ballot. Wherever candidates are running unopposed, VOTE FOR THEM. They are Democrats.

Given the difficult mess our country is in now, especially at the federal level and local levels after years of Republican domination, it’s crucial for the country to change direction by electing Democrats to every office from top to bottom this year.

Here are the recommendations:

Wife of CMU Vice President given vacant seat on G.J. Regional Airport Board

John and Linde Marshall (Photo: Facebook)

Eight people applied for the open at-large seat on the Grand Junction Regional Airport Board, and it was awarded to just one, Linde Marshall, who happens to be married to Colorado Mesa University Vice President of Student Affairs, John Marshall. According to CMU’s website, Linde Marshall also works for CMU, in the office of University President Tim Foster.

The Daily Sentinel for some reason failed to mention either of Linde Marshall’s important connections to CMU and it’s powerful president and rainmaker, Tim Foster when providing descriptions of the candidates for the seat. The Sentinel only said Ms. Marshall is “a small business owner with a background in public relations.” Seems like important info to omit.

How Matt Soper can solve his problem (Hint: It’s not by staying silent.)

Matt Soper (right) and Yeulin Willett (left), who endorsed Soper to run for his seat in the Colorado House of Representatives

Republican Matt Soper has been oddly silent about the legal challenge to his residency requirement to serve as District 54’s House Representative in the state legislature.

Soper hasn’t responded to journalists’ questions about his residency, nor has he challenged the conclusion that he didn’t actually reside in District 54 for the required 12 months prior to the election. Reporters noted that Soper didn’t show up for freshman orientation at the Capitol last week, and a Colorado Public Radio reporter was unable to find him at freshman orientation this week. He isn’t answering phone calls or emails, and there’s no evidence he’s moved into the 10 Hartig Drive house that he claimed was his legal residence, even after he had the occupants of the house evicted as retribution for telling the Daily Sentinel Soper didn’t live there with them.

No one seems to be able to find Matt Soper, much less get a comment out of him about his predicament.

So does his radio silence indicate guilt?

Probably.

One Day Left to Keep Trump from Getting Your Voting Information

The Trump administration has made a breathtaking and invasive demand to all 50 states demanding they turn over personal information on every individual registered voter in the country. The administration wants names, addresses, birth dates, political party affiliations, records of elections in which people have voted and the last four digits of people’s social security numbers.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, plans to turn the information right over on July 16 without any argument.

But there is one thing you can do to stop the Trump administration from getting your personal information: ask the Mesa County Clerk to make your voter information confidential.

Reality Check: Does Your Political Affiliation Match Your Best Interests?

Here’s a question for Mesa County workers:

When was the last time your political party helped make your life better?

If you can’t think of anything, there’s a reason.

The dominant political party in our area has long been the Republican Party, but if you work for a salary or hourly wage, or have a small business, are registered as a Republican and think the Republican party has your best interests at heart, think again.