Kathryn Bedell, DVM, of Fruita, running against Ray Scott for County Commissioner, District 1
Don’t want Cody Davis or Ray Scott as Mesa County Commissioner?
Well now you finally have a better option.
Mesa County voters finally have a real candidate running for District 1 County Commissioner.
Educated, intelligent, well-informed, fiercely pro-agriculture and pro local-economy, Dr. Bedell is the best candidate so far for County Commissioner District 1.
Did you vote in the primary only to see your top candidate drop out before the votes were even counted?
Maddening, isn’t it?
And how many times have you seen a candidate “win” an election who got less than a third of the total vote count? Who wants a candidate holding office that two thirds of the electorate didn’t even want in office?
These situations make the case for ranked-choice voting, a fairer system of voting that is increasingly being used across the country.
And it’s no wonder.
Tina Peters’ own qualification to be County Clerk were that she was a retired flight attendant who had worked for a construction business for a number of years and home-schooled her kids. [Photo: Facebook]
All these vacant positions must put the Clerk’s office in a pretty dire situation, considering that it’s fully staffed at 32 employees.
You’d think the Clerk would be scrambling to hire qualified people to fill these open positions, especially in an election year, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The Job Openings web page for Mesa County lists vacancies in the Clerk’s office for Customer Service, Motor Vehicle and Elections Managers. Some of these positions have been unfilled for months.
But it doesn’t seem to be due to a lack of qualified applicants.
Tina Peters might have more legal exposure than previously recognized for having lost 574 ballots from the 2018 general election.
Colorado laws governing the conduct of elections include “neglect” and “failure to perform duties” among the list of behaviors by elected officials deemed punishable by fines, imprisonment, or both:
“1-13-107. Violation of duty.
Any public officer, election official, or other person upon whom any duty is imposed by this code who violates, neglects, or fails to perform such duty or is guilty of corrupt conduct … and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished as provided in section 1-13-111.”
Tina Peters arguably violated, neglected and failed to perform her duty to count all ballots turned into the County in the 2018 general election.
Contrary to what the Mesa County Republican Party has asserted, this is not a trivial matter.
Embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R) may have violated Colorado laws governing elected officials’ conduct of elections. (Photo: YouTube)
The Mesa County Republican Party is trying to minimize the severity of Tina Peters’ loss of 574 ballots from the 2019 general election. Peters left them in a collection box, forgetting to count them. The Mesa County GOP characterized the matter in a February 24, 2020 press release (pdf) as “trivial” and “unfortunate.” The GOP said it was not trying to “diminish the significance of the errors,” and at the same time claimed the matter had been subject to “irresponsible sensationalism” because “no ballots were tampered with or lost,” and “no vote was changed or altered.”
The Republican Party has long made election integrity one of their prime issues, but apparently not so much when one of their own fails to count a significant number of legitimately-cast ballots.
It’s no wonder the GOP is trying to minimize the loss. The ramifications for Tina Peters could be severe, up to and including recall, and/or criminal penalties including fines, imprisonment or both.
Tina Peters, Mesa County Clerk and Recorder, neglected to collect and count 574 ballots in the 2018 general election. Mesa County residents have started a petition demanding she resign.
An online petition is up at Change.org demanding Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters resign her office in the wake of her shocking lost ballot scandal.
On Tuesday, February 18, 2020, the County Clerk’s office found 574 ballots cast in the 2018 general election still sitting in the stainless steel ballot collection box in front of the Clerk’s Elections Division office at 200 S. Spruce Street in downtown Grand Junction.
At first Peters took full responsibility for having forgotten to collect the ballots, which earned her some good will, but in a day or two she was blaming an unnamed former Clerk’s office employee for the error, enraging the public and flushing any good will she had gleaned by taking full responsibility.
The Daily Sentinel published an editorial February 22 demanding Peters resign.
Peters claimed the missing ballots wouldn’t have changed the outcome of any of the elections, but did not demonstrate this to the public.
A 2016 caucus in a local elementary school cafeteria
Note: the date of the caucuses has been corrected in the title of this article. They are on Saturday, March 7.
We voted in Colorado’s presidential primary by mail already, but Democrats still have to pick a candidate to run against Republican Senator Cory Gardner (R-Invisible.)
That choice will be made through caucusing, which is a lot trickier than voting in the primary. Here’s what you need to know to participate in the Democratic caucuses coming up on Saturday, March 7:
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was elected despite having zero experience as a government clerk.
The Daily Sentinel reports that when Mesa County Clerk employees went out to collect the early Democratic primary election ballots from the silver box in front of the County building downtown, they found more than 500 ballots from last year’s election sitting inside, unopened and uncounted.
I hate to say it, but…
Back in June, 2018 I wrote a blog about the candidates running for County Clerk that year. I pointed out that Tina Peters had absolutely zero experience in the clerk’s office, while the other candidate, Bobbie Gross, was a ten year veteran of the County Clerk’s office in charge of the entire DMV and its employees, had co-directed the 2016 presidential election in Mesa County, was a Certified Elections Official and was about to become a Certified National Elections Administrator by the end of 2018.
The choice was clear.
Results of a news quiz printed in today’s Daily Sentinel demonstrates the backwards thinking that is the hallmark of conservative, right-wing Republicans.
A short blurb in the Sunday, Feb. 8, 2020 Daily Sentinel offers a lesson on why Republicans are such harmful elected officials.
The Sentinel has a regular weekly news quiz on Fridays, and gives the results in the following Sunday paper. An item today stood out for what it demonstrates about the ramifications of conservative Republican views not just for the western slope, but for society.
History shows that if Republicans had their way in the last century, most of America wouldn’t have electricity.
Chip Page. His name on the ballot is “William Chip Page.”
* OGRE is an acronym for “Old Guard Republican Establishment.”
Voters unhappy with the longtime direction of Mesa County politics and tired of the same old people running for office can finally breathe a collective sigh of relief. A new and viable candidate has entered the 2020 race for Mesa County Commissioner District 3, which comprises most of the eastern side of the county, generally east of 30 Road. The current commissioner, Rose Pugliese, is term-limited out.
Proposition DD on the November 5 ballot would legalize gambling on amateur and professional sports and tax the proceeds at a rate of 10% to pay for “water projects,” purportedly projects proposed in the Colorado Water Plan. I wasn’t sure how to vote on Prop DD until I did some research on it and put some thought into. What I found convinced me to vote “no.”
Here’s what I found out:
In case you haven’t had a chance to tour Grand Junction High School prior to the November 5 election, the following photos were taken inside the school on a tour on Saturday morning, October 19, 2019. What the photos cannot relate are the odors in some of these areas, which were quite objectionable. Ventilation was lacking in many areas. Measure 4A on the Mesa County Ballot will fund construction of a new Grand Junction High School. The current building was constructed in 1956. AnneLandmanBlog urges a “YES” vote on Measure 4A for fund a new school:
Classroom on the east side of campus
Wondering how to vote in the upcoming election on Tuesday, November 5, 2019?
Following are AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations for how to vote in the 2019 Coordinated Election Ballot for our area for 2019.
I reached my conclusions by attending Q and A programs about the issues, touring Grand Junction High School, talking to Mesa County School District 51 School Board members, researching Secretary of State reports about the funders who are promoting and opposing the ballot issues and researching information related to the ballot issues (e.g. societal costs associated with gambling, the condition of the Las Colonias land with respect to mill tailings remediation there) and by taking into consideration what I know about local history that is pertinent to the issues.
Rick Wagner’s column in the October 16, 2019 issue of the Daily Sentinel
In his column in the 10/16/2019 issue of the Daily Sentinel, local lawyer and perennially annoying right-wing political columnist Rick Wagner asks why Proposition CC on the current ballot is identified using double letters. “Have we run through the alphabet once already?” Wagner guesses, apparently attempting to infer something negative about the state ballot. He doesn’t answer the question, and is content to not to find out the real answer.
This demonstrates a common problem with right wing argumentation: They are an incurious bunch and think information doesn’t matter. Don’t know something? Gloss over it, make a joke, make some incorrect innuendo. No one cares, no big deal.
Wagner thinks his readers should just take his word for whatever he says.
Burkey Park on Patterson Road is a dry vacant lot with a trash can and split rail fence, but is prized by neighbors for open space and the longtime promise that the City would one turn the parcel into a developed park. The Burkey family donated the land to the City in 1967 on the condition the City would turn it into a park.
At their public hearing on Wednesday, September 4, 2019, Grand Junction City Council will hear an agenda item to rezone Burkey Park to allow construction of medium-high density residential development on it.
The City plans to rezone Burkey Park from its current zoning of “Recreational” to R-8 zoning to allow residential construction of a density of eight dwelling units per acre. This density would most likely be attached dwellings like condos, duplexes and townhouses. The City bills the rezone as “medium density” development, but the R-8 designation is actually labeled medium-high density in the City Code.
The 18 acre parcel located on Patterson Road between 29 1/2 and 30 Roads was donated to the City by the Burkey family in 1967 on the condition that the City would one day turn it into a park. The City never fulfilled its promise, though, and instead let the parcel languish as a weedy vacant lot for more than 50 years, while pouring taxpayer money into other odd areas, handing over $500,000 (pdf) – $750,000 every year to Colorado Mesa University for a period of 15 years.
Salaries for each of the three Mesa County Commissioners for the month of June, 2019
Mesa County has two job openings right now that pay $87,300/year gross salary with additional generous perks and benefits, and that require absolutely no experience and no required level of educational attainment. That’s a pretty good wage in Mesa County for someone with no experience and no particular educational attainment, since the wages here are so low compared to the rest of the state. (The average weekly wage in Denver in the last quarter of 2018 was $1,414. In Mesa County it was $895). The opening is for two new county commissioners. The only requirements to be county commissioner — literally — are that you have to be a minimum of 18 years old and have lived in either County Commissioner District 1 or District 3 for at least one year. That’s it. In case you don’t believe me, the photo above gives the salaries for each of our three county commissioners for just one month — the month of June, 2019. The information was printed in the legal notices in the Sunday, August 11, 2019 issue of the Daily Sentinel. You can see the minimal requirements for the job yourself posted on Mesa County’s website. Multiply the above salary by 12 to get your new annual gross salary if you land this job ($87,500/year). Oh, and did I mention it’s also free to apply? You can even have a criminal record and it’s okay. This position can be held for up to 8 years.
Wondering how to vote in the City of Grand Junction 2019 election?
Following are AnneLandmanBlog’s recommendations for how to vote in the 2019 City of Grand Junction April 2, 2019 Regular Municipal Election.
I reached my conclusions about which city council candidates to vote for by listening to interviews, knowing the candidates personally or knowing something about them and their history in town, and considering factors like how well-funded their campaigns are. Decades of living in Grand Junction helps put this in context.
Rick Brainard, one of the best-funded candidates who ever ran for Grand Junction City Council, was backed to the bitter end by the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce and the Old Guard Republican Establishment
Were you around for the 2013 City of Grand Junction election?
If not, then you really missed a doozy.
That was a year in which Grand Junction residents learned some big, important lessons about city council elections.
Here is one of them:
The best-funded candidates for city council are often the WORST people to sit on city council.
