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June 14, 2012 02:41 AM UTC

Colorado's Worst Candidate Also a Finalist for Worst Person

  • 23 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

(Bumped into Thursday because of late post yesterday – promoted by Colorado Pols)

It’s only June, yet we already have a runaway favorite for Colorado’s worst candidate in 2012. Republican Matt Arnold, running for a statewide seat on the CU Board of Regents, is not only making terrible campaign mistakes — but he’s also doing his best to make sure he comes across as an awful person as well.

You might remember Arnold for his classy Facebook post in March basically calling Sandra Fluke a whore. Or perhaps you remember Arnold for falsely claiming to have been endorsed by the Arapahoe County Republican Party in the June 26 Primary.

Arnold’s claim to fame is as the 2010 head of the “Clear the Bench” campaign to rid Colorado of those pesky “activist” judges. Rather, that was his claim to fame, because in a matter of months he’s earned an entirely new reputation.

Earlier this week Lynn Bartels at the Denver newspaper reported on the fact that Arnold has been campaigning around the state claiming that he has a Master’s Degree in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University. That sounds impressive, but it’s not true. When confronted with the fact that he doesn’t actually own a Master’s Degree, Arnold got testy, telling Bartels, “I was more interested in getting on with my life than trying to, quite frankly, waste more time in pursuit of academic BS that no one cares about.”

Sure, Matt. Nobody cares about that kind of academic BS, especially when the candidate is running FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOARD OF REGENTS.

Arnold went on to tell Bartels: “This is minutiae. What we ought to be talking about is who has the better ideas for reforming higher education in Colorado, and, quite frankly, I’m the only one who has put forward any ideas.”

Arnold is confusing an active imagination with “ideas,” apparently. This would be bad enough, but there’s more rough news out today. Arnold is apparently losing endorsements because he thought it would be a good idea to post private information on his campaign website about his Primary opponent, Brian Davidson, and three of Davidson’s supporters. Arnold is sad that people say mean things about him, so his response was to post home addresses, email addresses, and home and cell phone numbers of these people and encourage his own supporters (both of them) to harass Davidson and others.

Great plan. No way that could backfire.

As Bartels reports today, even John Andrews has pulled his support for Arnold’s campaign. Yes, the same former Senate President who has long been the driving force behind the “Clear the Bench” idea. When you become so embarrassing that John Andrews will no longer support you…well, you’ve crossed a few too many lines.

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23 thoughts on “Colorado’s Worst Candidate Also a Finalist for Worst Person”

  3. It’s interesting how of all his gaffes seem to be entirely of his own making yet he blames them all on his opponent. Every time he pulls a stunt he blames Davidson when it backfires and blows up in his face – so he responds by pulling an even bigger stunt to teach that Davidson a lesson! It’s kind of like a feedback loop on a speaker.

  4. Anytime the sheriff has to call a candidate in response to complaints, it needs updating.

    Hey- Maybe when candidate Arnold said he was endorsed by the Arapahoe GOP , he meant ArapaGOP.   And maybe that is true.  Seems like the kind of lying d**cheb*g  arapagoph would go for.  

  5. Sure, this guy is a clown… but he has yet to eclipse Doug Lamborn for buffoonery.  

    BTW, he’s right on about Sandra Fluke… nothing to take the attention off of Obama’s dismal record by wagging the dog with a social issue.  

    Of course some dumb Republicans took the bait hook, line, and sinker.  

    Snadra Fluke is a moron who was obviously raised with an entitlement mentality.  As far as the faux “war on women” goes, males don’t get their Viagra for free either.  Seesh!

      1. I think people just want it made available under their coverage plan, which would have to be at least partially paid for by the insured.  I could be wrong but that is what I understood.

    2. First, the fact you just said something so ignorant while waving my Alma Mater’s flag in your name makes my flesh crawl.

      Second, Obama is the greatest President in my lifetime. Here’s a list of accomplishments. http://obamaachievements.org/list

      Third, Sandra Fluke was chosen to testify because she is an intelligent woman with a compelling story — a story to which 97% of American women — the number who use or have used birth control, can relate.

      Fourth, the War on Women is not only very real, but it includes a war on children. The only people who benefit under Republican policies are straight, rich, Protestant, white, male, business owners. The rest of us get screwed.

      I am sorry to share my Alma Mater with you 0970. I suspect you either were not a student there, or you were too busy kissing a photo of Ronald Reagan to have paid attention in any class.

    3. Seriously?

      1) Viagra IS, however, affordably covered by insurance plans. That’s all Fluke wanted.

      2) It’s not an “entitlement mentality” to believe that a medication that could save your life and/or prevent a great deal of pain should not become out of reach simply because some right-wingers have a problem with the idea that someone might someday have sex and not be punished-I-mean-blessed for it with a baby.

      3) You don’t know shit about how other people were raised. Keep your mouth off strangers’ parenting, lest ye be judged. Whatever you think of Sandra Fluke, she is an adult and deserves the blame and/or credit for her own character. I happen to think she’s an intelligent and brave young lady who will surely go far in life.

      I take hormonal birth control for medical reasons, and my insurance plan covers it. I feel that it is appropriate for my plan to continue to do so. Insurance would also cover it if I needed a thyroid pill daily or an antidepressant or nearly any other commonly used drug prescribed by a physician, including quite a number that are much more dangerous and easily abused than birth control. Guess that makes me a whore, but I’d rather be a whore capable of critical thinking than chaste and ignorant like you.

      1. But will quibble with you on Viagra.  My plan, Kaiser, does NOT cover it, though it will make it available at cost.  This despite the fact that I have diabetes, which is the leading cause of … well… embarassing moments for which Viagra is designed to ease.  

        1. I had Kaiser for a while. Went to the doctor a grand total of once while with them and he literally entered my symptoms into a computer program that any 12-year-old could use and prescribed what the computer suggested. I mentioned it, and he told me that Kaiser required him to use it instead of simply making his own diagnosis. I’d rather be diagnosed by a competent doctor I trust than a computer system, so I got away from the HMOs as soon as I could.

          Even in 1999, most health insurance plans were rushing to add Viagra coverage (it came out in 1998, right? I was 10 so I don’t really remember.)

          Looks like these days they are limiting coverage a bit more:

          As for Viagra, independent studies of coverage are sparse, but the ones that exist don’t show that the drug is covered more than birth control. In 2000, an article in Health Affairs reported that “[o]nly about half of all U.S. health plans reimburse members for at least some Viagra pills.” A 1999 Washington Post article reported that the drug company Pfizer, which makes Viagra, estimated the coverage rate at 40 percent. And a 2007 Mercer survey of large employers (500 or more employees) showed that about 30 percent denied coverage of erectile dysfunction drugs, and most of the remaining employers imposed limitations on coverage. A Pfizer representative had no comment when we requested more up-to-date information.

          I stand corrected on the absolute factitude of the claim that Viagra is covered. It is widely covered and nobody is trying to prevent it from being covered, however, while birth control is widely covered and many people are trying to reduce that coverage.

          Cafferty and O’Reilly are on record as saying Viagra should be covered and birth control should be out of pocket.

          I think the real thing that makes this such an infuriating comparison is the idea that having sex is a health concern essential to quality of life for men, but a damaging choice that women should be punished economically for. I’m all for sex. I think couples should have lots of it, especially when they’re at that age when Viagra is usually prescribed, ’cause that’s when your kids are out of the house and you have more time to get it on. Frankly, even if Sandra Fluke WERE a prostitute, if being able to have sex is an essential marker of good health, she’d still deserve affordable birth control to enable her to do it. If sex isn’t an essential part of good health, then Viagra should be considered a cost resulting from the lifestyle choices of men who want to have sex.

          (And, for the record, it’s messed up that your insurance won’t cover Viagra as a treatment for something as well-known as diabetes. Any OTHER circulatory issue as a result of diabetes is covered, right? Hmph.)

          1. and my doctors have been top notch.  

            It gives very good coverage for reasonable costs.  One way of keeping those costs reasonable is providing nonessential things like Viagra at wholesale cost to subscribers.  My diabetes drugs, in contrast, were subsidized.  Birth control, left to itself, is “free” or heavily subsidized by all health plans because it saves money.  Pregnancy is a hell of a lot more expensive than popping a few pills.  Only when the bishops start messing with the economics does birth control become controversial in a health plan.

            As for Viagra, the little blue bombs were about $10 a pop.  It’s going out of patent soon, I believe, and should drop radically.

              But if you aren’t willing to spend $10 for a bit of whoopee, well, take up cribbage.

  6. being able to get one or several Master’s degrees simply by claiming you have Master’s degrees, . . . and avoiding all that costly and time consuming “academic BS”???

    This could finally be the first something in twenty or thirty years that our elected officials are actually willing to do to drive down the escalating cost burden on Colorado’s university students.

    I’m making a list, right now, of the several advanced degrees I will be getting get if this ever becomes CU policy.

    1. I took a few classes after I got my Bachelor’s. I had no idea I could just go ahead and claim they count as a Master’s Degree, this is great!

  7. I read the “About Matt” part of his website. It doesn’t say what he does for a living.  It says he is in the reserves, but that doesn’t pay the bills.  I know he ran Clear the Bench, but I can’t see that being a real full time job. Did he just live off of donations?   What is his profession/career/job?

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