Dan Maes just can't catch a break. Seems that the best he can hope for is that people will just STFU, or maybe that Paris Hilton will be caught with a bag of cocaine at the Wynkoop.
Certainly exposure is doing him no good. It would seem that name recognition is no friend of Dan Maes, when nearly each mention is in conjunction with something a bit... well strange might be the nice way of putting it.
Today we get a threefer:
1) Kansas Bureau of Investigation denying Dan Maes ever helped them in any undercover operation, Maes refusing to answer who posted such, ummmm, embellishments on his website (and his campaign spokesman quickly acknowledging that it was Dan himself);
2) Dan dropping an unsigned check into Freda Poundstone's purse (from his personal slush campaign funds) with Ms. Poundstone insisting it was never a campaign contribution and the Maes spokesman insisting a valid check will soon be in the mail; and
3) Water experts claiming that Mr. Maes' position on water policy is property theft.
The apparently damaging attacks on Republican guv candidate Dan Maes just keep coming. Hot on the heels of a front-page Denver Post story about allegedly catastrophic fundraising difficulties, which prompted Colorado GOP boss Dick Wadhams to call Maes opponent John Hickenlooper the luckiest guy in the world comes a Post report suggesting that Maes either embroidered or made up a story about his past as a Kansas police officer. Spokesman Nate Strauch energetically disagrees.
"It's absolutely being overblown," Strauch says about the Post story, which says Maes has backed off claims that he did undercover work for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation while a police officer in Liberal, Kansas -- a job from which he was fired after two years or so.
"It seems to be a question of what is the definition of 'undercover,'" he continues. "Apparently the Post doesn't think providing secure information to authorities is undercover, but I think most people would probably disagree."
Count me among the others, Nate. Claiming to be an undercover officer is not the same as 'providing secure information.'
Readers can find the latest on the Poundstone matter in the Ghost.
What he may not know is that in Colorado, water is property and it is divvied up based on what is called "prior appropriation." It doesn't matter where water falls, or where snow melts because it probably belongs to someone else. You could own land on both sides of the Colorado River for miles on end, for instance, and not have the right to take a single drop from the river - unless you owned the water rights to do so. In theory those rights could be owned by a city 50 miles from the river and a thousand miles downstream.
Essentially, water belongs to whoever claimed it first.
One water attorney, who asked not to be named, said that what Maes apparently wants to do "amounts to a taking of private property."
On top of this latest cluster that is the Maes derailment we have the UN bike conspiracy, explained by Mr. Maes himself.
Add to all that, and more, his pledge to gut up to 4,000 nonspecific jobs and his promise to 'beg forgiveness' from the oil and gas barons and the conclusion is clear. Governor Maes would make a mess of Colorado.
