January 06, 2022 05:11 AM UTC

Coram is Not the Savior of Democracy

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• by: Ckonola

I’ve been following Marina Zimmerman for quite some time. I have noticed that most publications have ignored her candidacy. That is somewhat understandable, since she is a new face on the scene and has not previously run for any office. I even saw the Big Line on this Blog-Space begging for Don Coram to jump into the race for CD3.

Don Coram is not the savior of democracy. Him entering the race certainly complicates things for Zimmerman, but nobody should be thinking that he is going to be the best Representative for CD3.

He has two things against him: 1) He owns coal mines that he promised to clean up in 2013, but no clean up has been completed and they are still polluting western Colorado; and 2) He was quoted in the Montrose paper just yesterday as saying, relative to January 6, “I think it was embarrassing. It was a radical fringe group on both sides that were there, and what ended up were emotions out of the way and all hell broke loose. That’s under scrutiny right now.”

To be fair, I sit on the board of Colorado West Pride, and we honored Coram as an Ally a couple of years ago. He has a Gay son who owns coffee shops in Grand Junction. At this year’s Pride Fest, Marina Zimmerman set up a booth and was well received by the local LGBTQ community. Don Coram was not there.

Most importantly, there are NOT two sides to the story of January 6. A bunch of Trump supporters tried to overthrow the US Government. That is treason. I believe that we must use every tool in the box to protect our democracy, and one of them is using our vote to elect candidates who do not believe that there is “a radical fringe group on both sides” who showed up at the door of the House of Representatives with battering rams.

Marina Zimmerman is the only Republican candidate in CD3 saying that. In fact, on Twitter yesterday she came out swinging, highlighting Coram’s comments.

Dividing the GOP vote in the Primary is certainly problematic for democracy. In a district that already leans right, three candidates will split the vote, which in my opinion leaves the advantage to Lauren Boebert. Her supporters are true believers of the nonsense promoted by Q-Anon. They show up at rallies with Sherronna Bishop (Boebert’s former campaign chair), at County Commissioner meetings, at school board meetings repeating the same old “Stop the Steal” nonsense that Coram is validating with his “both sides” idiocy.

I’m a realist, so I know the odds are against Zimmerman because Don Coram is better known, at least in one part of CD3. I’m hoping that there will be debates of the three candidates so that the unaffiliated voter, of which I am just one, can see that we have a real choice in this race: democracy or authoritarianism.