May 02, 2013 08:51 AM UTC

Minority Leader Libby Szabo, And Other Bad Jokes

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post's Kurtis Lee has a blog post up discussing the possibility that Colorado House Minority Leader Mark Waller may soon step down to pursue his widely-expected run for Attorney General in 2014. If that happens, attention would then naturally turn to the choice of the next Minority Leader. As Lee reports:

“Some have said it’s between Libby [Szabo] and [Brian] DelGrosso,” said Rep. Frank McNulty, R- Highlands Ranch, who served as House Speaker after the 2010 election. “At some point if he (Waller) chooses to run for another office, then the caucus would need to choose a new leader.”

We have to say that the possibility of Rep. Libby Szabo actually being a candidate for House Minority Leader at first seemed to obviously be a mistake–despite the fact that she currently holds the assistant minority leader post. But as you can read, either Lee mistakenly wrote her name in place of someone else multiple times, or it's not a mistake, and she might really be a candidate for the job.

It's difficult for us to find the right words to explain what an unqualified disaster that would be. 

Our first experience with Szabo came in her 2010 campaign for election, when we reported on her husband's "classes" at Faith Bible Chapel likening President Barack Obama with "the Antichrist." Szabo herself has unquestioningly voted on the hard right of virtually every issue. She is not, to put it mildly, known as an intellectual leader in her caucus, but she compensates for that with boundless energy and fierce loyalty. Szabo's speaking voice can be best described as a cross between former Denver radio host Craig Silverman's nasal whine and fingernails screeching across a chalkboard.

The worst moment of Rep. Szabo's career by far came this spring, when she appeared on FOX News' O'Reilly Factor, and accused Speaker Mark Ferrandino of "obviously protecting someone" after a bill instituting long mandatory sentences for certain sex offenders was killed in the House State Affairs Committee. Ferrandino's sexuality and support for civil unions were twisted into a bigoted allegation regarding this unrelated legislation. This resulted in, among other things, an outpouring of hate mail and even threats against Ferrandino personally.

Although seen by millions of conservative FOX News viewers nationwide, Rep. Szabo's unprecedented accusation of personal criminal motives against another sitting legislator went almost unreported in Colorado media. In fact, the Denver Post's editorial editor Curtis Hubbard did more to rebut this deplorable and totally baseless accusation than the Post's newsroom did–and even he inexplicably left Szabo out of his criticism of Bill O'Reilly, despite Szabo's charge against Ferrandino being by orders of magnitude the worst part. Without hyperbole, we believe this was truly one of the lowest moments in recent Colorado political history–and that's saying a lot.

Suffice to say, Speaker Ferrandino's graciousness in the face of this is better than could be expected of us.

And Szabo a serious candidate for one of the GOP's highest profile political jobs? It's beyond shameful.