July 29, 2025 08:32 AM UTC

Rep. Weinberg's Harassment Follies Take Troubling Turn

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post’s Seth Klamann updates on an unpleasant story we’ve been following in the Colorado House, after a failed bid by Republican Rep. Ron Weinberg to be the next House Minority Whip exposed longstanding sexual harassment allegations against Weinberg dating to before his service in the House. Fellow Republican Rep. Brandi Bradley further alleged harassment by Weinberg while serving in the legislature, which escalated into a public spat between Bradley and GOP House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese after Pugliese as usual took no action.

Today’s story contains new details about Weinberg’s inappropriate and reportedly at times just downright bizarre behavior, which could be interpreted as threatening even when it wasn’t expressly salacious in nature:

Four women who have known or worked with Weinberg in Larimer County — Tasha Carr, Nancy Rumfelt, Kristin Grazier and another woman who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation — told The Post that they’d blocked his phone number or knew not to pick up if he called late at night, when they suspected he had been drinking and was more likely to yell. Several people approached the Larimer County GOP to raise concerns about the lawmaker in summer 2023, a few months after he’d joined the legislature and departed his local party post.

Grazier, who succeeded Weinberg as county party chair, said: “It would be fair to say I’ve experienced bullying (and) abusive, offensive and disrespectful behavior.”

“It was more than once,” she said. “It was many times, and it was to varying degrees.”

But for all the distressing behavior reported in today’s story, the worst may be an alleged break-in incident into another lawmaker’s office that occurred in January:

[Rep. Bradley] accused him of copying a master key to unlock doors in the Capitol. She provided emails to The Post between Bradley and the Colorado State Patrol, which provides security for the building, referencing a January investigation into the matter.

In her January letter to Pugliese, McCluskie wrote that Weinberg had entered another lawmaker’s office without that legislator’s permission. He told leadership he did not have his own master key but had taken a key from a senior House staffer. McCluskie wrote that if Weinberg had a master key, he must turn it over. She called the matter “very serious,” warned that Weinberg might face disciplinary action and said it was “imperative that Rep. Weinberg never does this again.”

It’s important to understand the political limitations of the Speaker of the House to discipline members of the other party who behave badly, break rules of decorum, or even in some cases commit crimes while in office. If Minority Leader Pugliese isn’t interested in disciplining her caucus members, which she has made very clear in statements and a hands-off approach to repeated scandals among her members she is not, attempts to do so by the majority leadership are immediately cast as partisan. Pugliese might not want the responsibility, but other than the voters and law enforcement in the truly egregious cases, she is the oversight over her caucus. And when there isn’t any oversight, a caucus of publicly bickering adult children is what you get.

What we can say is that a lawmaker breaking into other lawmakers’ offices with a stolen master key should be a termination offense. It would be in any other job.