November 16, 2011 07:25 AM UTC

Gessler promises to appeal issue-committee-threshold lawsuit, if he loses

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• by: Jason Salzman

(“He is up for retention in a year” – promoted by Colorado Pols)

If Secretary of State Scott Gessler loses a lawsuit claiming he overstepped his legal authority by increasing the amount of money a group of people can raise before being subject to state campaign finace regulations, he will appeal the case, Gessler said Monday during a lecture at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute.

No decision has been handed down yet by a state court in the case, but Gessler told the audience last night that he “does not expect [the judge’s] opinion to be positive,” and if he loses the case, he will appeal.

GESSLER: The question is, since I have got two different court opinions on the issue committee threshold issue, how am I going to resolve that?  Here is what is going to happen. We don’t have an opinion from the Denver District Court. The court just decided he wanted to say nasty things about me in the newspaper. Frankly, I have never in ten years of litigation on very controversial issues, never seen a judge behave that way in the entire state of Colorado. I was very surprised by his comments and I did not support those….

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: What is his name and when is he up for retention?

GESSLER: He is up for retention in a year. Anyway, so I don’t have an opinion from him yet. I don’t expect that opinion to be positive based on his comments. So this I think is what is going to happen. First of all, we are going to appeal it. And I do believe that we will be able to point out, assuming the court comes out against us, the error of the courts ways. The second thing is, and I am pretty confident about this, is if we lose, the State of Colorado is going to be sued yet again on this issue. And again. Frankly, I fully expect that we will lose on this issue. And the claims board will have the opportunity to pay attorney fees yet again on this issue. It is an unfortunate state of affairs.  I am hopeful I can prevail on this, to provide guidance on this upcoming election. But if I don’t, I have no doubt that the federal circuit court will step in and provide guidance here for the state of Colorado.