CO-04 (Special Election) See Full Big Line

(R) Greg Lopez

(R) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) Deborah Flora

(R) J. Sonnenberg

30%↑

15%↑

10%↓

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

50%↓

50%↑

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

35%↓

30%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

June 19, 2019 01:48 PM UTC

Will The Real "Recall Polis" Please Stand Up?

1 Comments
by: Colorado Pols

We’ve been following for weeks now the sordid developments inside the multiple committees who have organized ostensibly for the purpose of initiating a recall campaign against Gov. Jared Polis. Because of the extremely daunting logistics of recalling a sitting governor, especially relative to even the most generous estimates of the fundraising so far for the various committees, the odds of a successful campaign sit somewhere between miraculously slim and none.

What the Recall Polis campaign(s) do(es) represent, however, is an opportunity to raise accountability-free money from the conservative base still smarting from the landslide defeat dealt to Republicans in the 2018 elections. We’ve discussed in this space the glomming onto this campaign’s fundraising stream by local political usual suspects like the Independence Institute and former Secretary of State Scott “Honey Badger” Gessler. Both have been paid significant sums of donated money for “services rendered” to this longshot campaign.

The two original “Recall Polis” groups were estranged early on in the process, with Tom Good’s Resist Polis PAC having exposed some fairly eye-popping anti-Semitism on the part of leadership of the “official” Recall Polis group. Shane Donnelly’s “official” group responded via Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute by publicly scumbagging Tom Good for alleged misdeeds while working at the Independence Institute and firing one of the more blatantly anti-Semitic offenders, Judy “Israel Did 9/11” Spady.

If reading all of this helps explain why fundraising to the “official” committee seems to have stalled in the last month, it probably should. What responsible person would invest actual money into this tangled web of crackpottery and grift? The answer to that question, as we broke on Monday, is at least partly unknown–because in a finance complaint filed last week, it’s alleged that a good deal of the money raised by the “official” Recall Polis group may be unaccounted for.

Today, Marianne Goodland of the Colorado Springs Gazette published an important update to this ongoing story, with a new third “Dismiss Polis” committee having been filed in an apparent attempt to unite the warring factions under a common banner. This new committee is backed by the daughter of far-right GOP Rep. Kimmi Lewis., who claims to have a statewide network ready to get started on gathering a laugh-track goal of 900,000 signatures. We’ll be respectful of the Gazette’s paywall, but in addition to introducing this third legit-no-really-this-time campaign committee, Goodland also followed up on the complaint we wrote about Monday:

According to those reports, the [Official Recall Governor Jared Polis] group has spent more than $3,200 on fundraising, almost all of that to online donor platforms. Of the 75 non-itemized donations filed through the end of May, only one is identified as coming from Freedomfy. The platform’s website claims it raised more than $24,000 for the recall, but only $172 of that has been reported to the Secretary of State, and that was as a non-itemized monetary donation.

The issue committee has also spent $4,851 on consultants, with $3,000 of that going to attorney and former Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

In addition to unanswered questions about the multiple fundraising platforms this committee has used in just a couple of months of operations, it appears that contributions through the Independence Institute’s Freedomfy site haven’t been properly reported. Again, it’s necessary to wait for the Secretary of State’s office to do their due diligence before we say definitively that something illegal happened here–but the questions are growing quickly. And we’re certainly talking about enough money to be a big deal if much of it turns up missing.

Although this isn’t what anyone should considser a serious threat to Gov. Polis, before the end it could be the biggest political crime story in Colorado since Jon Keyser’s petition gatherer decided to start scribbling in names off the voter rolls. With that in mind, we’ll be staying tuned.

One thought on “Will The Real “Recall Polis” Please Stand Up?”

davebarnes says:

June 19, 2019 at 2:19 pm

Here is a question.
I know that during election campaigns that candidates pay lower rates for TV ads than PACs.

What about recalls? Would Jared pay a lower rate?

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Will The Real "Recall Polis" Please Stand Up?

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