Wow. Whoever could have predicted? Tina Peters spent her first day of freedom (June 1) continuing her election conspiracy mongering. The next day, two of three Republican candidates for governor made clowns of themselves during the 9News debate. It has to be almost embarrassing these days to be a Democratic operative given the pathetic state of the opposition party.
Peters’ delusions
Cheyanne Daniels has the Peters story for Politico. Peters joined the podcast of Steve “Flood the Zone with Shit” Bannon to say, “I know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one’s really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for, and that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped.”
Daniels notes, “She did not provide evidence for her claims.”
Despite Peters’ cries of victimhood, she richly deserved her criminal conviction. The April 2 Court of Appeals summary decision reviews the “jury verdict finding her guilty of three counts of attempt to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with requirements of the Secretary of State.” That court affirmed Peters’s convictions although it called for resentencing (a moot point given Jared Polis’s clemency).
The court also offers an extensive review of the “evidence admitted at trial.” Those wanting to learn the details should read it. The upshot is that Peters gave unauthorized people access to voting machines. Part of the text reads, “Peters directed [Sandra] Brown to show [Gerald] Wood around. But instead of Wood, Peters brought in [Conan] Hayes, who used Wood’s badge. Posing as Wood, Hayes made a ‘forensic image’ of the elections server.”
Hayes, wrote Jerod MacDonald-Evoy for the Arizona Mirror, imagined that “Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss was fraudulent,” and he was “part of a web of people connected to election fraud claims across the country that include Michigan, Colorado and Arizona.”
As Kyle Clark reported for 9News, Peters’s “attorney and allies said their next step is criminal charges against Colorado’s top Democrats, including Secretary of State Jena Griswold.” Absurd.
The painful debate
It also must be a little embarrassing for Barbara Kirkmeyer to have to fight for the Republican nomination for governor against Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Scott Bottoms and Victor Marx (or maybe it’s the other way around). Thankfully I was able to speed up the video of the debate to minimize the pain.
Kirkmeyer started off by (reasonably) blaming Democrats for the state’s “structural deficit,” although she was vague about how she’d “whip our budget into shape.”
Bottoms came out of the gate claiming that Democrats have “destroyed pretty much everything in our state,” and he asserted “we are not a constitutional state anymore.” I agree that some Democratic laws have conflicted with the federal Constitution, as the Supreme Court has in some cases ruled (under its Constitutional authority).
Marx began as usual, by using many words to say nothing: “I’m not a politician . . . the difference between being a politician is one of the reasons why we’re here . . . I’m a leader, I have experience working with government, I’m a negotiator, not a debater, that’s the difference I think we’re going to see tonight.”
But then Marx actually raised some real issues: “The housing [is not] affordable anymore. Teenagers graduate from high school and they leave, they can’t come back because of the cost of living. We’re not safe like we used to be. And they [Democrats] have certainly overreached and taken our freedoms away, and liberties.”
So the debate got off to a pretty good start for the candidates. But queue Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” because we’re going off the rails. Kyle Clark (who moderated the debate with Marshall Zelinger) said, “Scott Bottoms and Barb Kirkmeyer, you have both said that you will not support Victor Marx if he is your party’s nominee for governor. Mr. Bottoms, you have described Mr. Marx as a con man.”
Bottoms replied, “I also said he was corrupt, and I also said he lies and he lied to me personally quite a few times. . . . He conned my church. . . . He came and told me that he rescued . . . 45,000 people in over 100 situations, 30 countries, and that was a lie.”
Marx deflected and said Bottoms was being “mean” and flinging “accusations without evidence” because he got his “feelings hurt.”
Kirkmeyer said Marx is unqualified, unfit, and “a fraud.”
Marx insisted that he has helped “tens of thousands of people over the years,” he name-dropped several people, and he chalked up Kirkmeyer’s skepticism to personal bias. Marx said, “This wasn’t supposed to happen. An outsider, who no one knew, wasn’t supposed to step into this race and ruin your next step of being a professional politician.” Marx also said he’d support either Bottoms or Kirkmeyer if they won the primary.
I concede that Marx, just in terms of stage presence and his “aw shucks” persona, is the more genial candidate.
On the issue of affordability, Kirkmeyer said she’d overhaul state boards to scale back regulations and get waste-water permitting up to speed, and she pointed to her efforts to rein in property tax increases. Marx pointed to high taxes, fees that are “strangling us,” delays in home-building permits, and high government spending. Bottoms advocated deregulation and lower property taxes.
So they each gave part of the answer, but none of the candidates dared touch a key driver of high housing costs: extremely restrictive local regulations on the building and use of housing, which many conservatives support despite their pro-liberty rhetoric.
Stone Cold Stunner
Clark’s next question for Marx was the debate equivalent of a Stone Cold Stunner: “Mr. Marx, you have said that your qualification to be governor is that you are a CEO who builds solid teams. But I’ve noticed that when errors happen, you blame your teams. Your campaign website falsely claimed that you had rescued more than 45,000 women and children. You won’t say what the real number is, but you blame the website builder. Your social media account falsely claimed you’ve gone on more than 130 rescue missions. You won’t say what the real number is, but you blamed your media agency. You sent out mailers falsely claiming to be a retired Marine. You blamed the printing vendor. Your campaign finance filing was such a mess you had to refile the whole thing, and you blamed a young math teacher working with your campaign. . . . What should voters make of your teams’ basic errors and the way you deflect responsibility?”
After accusing Clark’s editors for previously releasing a biased interview, Marx again deflected: “Here’s the number of kids I’ve rescued: Not enough. That’s it.” He suggested that offering a more substantive answer would create “safety issues.”
Bottoms had maybe his best moment when he admitted he’d made an error. When Clark challenged him on his claim that more than 45,000 Tren de Aragua gang members were in Colorado, Bottoms replied, “I went back and talked to federal authorities . . . this week, and they said I got that wrong.” He said the larger number refers to the total number of Venezuelans, but there are a “few thousand” gang members here. Bottoms said, “I got that one wrong, I misunderstood what the ICE agent was saying.”
But Bottoms was not able to confirm his previous claim that some Colorado sheriffs said they were preparing to deputize more people to deal with the threat of Venezuelan gang members.
And a bit later, Bottoms said “we might need to put some mayors in jail” over so-called sanctuary policies.
Kirkmeyer gave a great answer as to why governors ought not punish communities by withholding funding (where they can) over policy differences with local politicians. Marx offered some comfort that, as governor, he would would be motivated by his Christian faith without shutting out others of different beliefs.
What a disaster
When Clark asked Bottoms about his alliance with Joe Oltmann, Bottoms declined to distance himself from some of Oltmann’s violent rhetoric but said he disagrees strongly with Oltmann about the “state of Israel.” Although Bottoms said he could not “get behind” Oltmann’s characterization of Jared Polis, Phil Weiser, and Jena Griswold as a “Synagogue of Satan Jews,” Bottoms did say he expects criminal indictments of Weiser, Griswold, and possibly Polis “for sedition,” which is crazy, dangerous nonsense. Bottoms also said Oltmann “probably” would have a role in his administration, which by itself should be disqualifying.
After that, Clark’s question to Bottoms about how he’d square the numbers after eliminating property taxes seemed rather beside the point. Suffice it to say that Bottoms did not square the numbers by a long shot.
Soon Clark returned to Marx: “You claim that you’ve been all around the world armed to the teeth rescuing women and children from captivity, that you’ve stopped human smugglers at the Mexico border . . . that you as a civilian called in a U.S. military air strike that killed 70 ISIS fighters, that you were the first American into Gaza during the war with Israel, that you’ve done 150 high-risk missions. . . . How should voters decide whether you’ve lived one of the most extraordinary lives in human history, or whether you’re a liar and a fraud?”
Needless to say, Marx did not have a good answer.
Even turning up the speed to 1.75 times normal playback, I have never in my life been more happy to witness the closing moments of a debate. What a disaster (except for the moderators, who gave a master class). Even Kirkmeyer, who came off as basically decent and competent (because she is), was sullied by the experience of sharing the stage with other two. Can the Republican Party of Colorado ever recover?
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
