December 21, 2021 11:01 AM UTC

2021 Leaving Mesa County GOP Mad, Sad, And No Less Crazy

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland has a good story today catching up on the ongoing controversy in Mesa County, as a criminal investigation into a breach of election system security facilitated by Clerk Tina Peters continues in uneasy silence following FBI and local law enforcement having executed search warrants on Peters and several alleged co-conspirators just over a month ago.

While the world awaits the results of that investigation, Mesa County Republicans have settled into two firmly opposed camps: those who agree with the all-GOP Board of Commissioners that Clerk Peters messed up, and those who believe that conclusion makes anyone who agrees a mortal enemy of the God-given freedom to not accept election results one doesn’t like. And as you can expect, that conflict is playing hell with party unity:

What state investigators quickly pieced together was that Mesa’s Clerk and Recorder, Republican Tina Peters, had let an unauthorized person access the voting machines and be present for a secure software system update. That individual made copies of hard drives and took pictures — and now those images were up online.

What happened after the news broke, McInnis said, was a cascading series of mini crises. The machines were decertified, leaving county commissioners to quickly replace them before the November election. And then there were all the legal questions — and fights — to navigate.

“It’s been a major disruption in the administration office of the county. It’s been a major consumer of legal hours in our legal department. We have nine attorneys or something like that, but so it’s been a major disruption in this county.”

All of that legal time and other safeguards comes with a cost, which McInnis estimated could top a million dollars for what he called Peters’ “little fishing expedition.”

Unfortunately for Commissioner and Republican politician so locally beloved he got a canyon named after himself Scott “McLobbyist” McInnis, Mesa County Republican Party chairman Kevin McCarney has come to a somewhat different conclusion:

“It creates a problem for us as a party,” said Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney. “Having the county commissioners and the county clerk at each other’s throat, is not a good look for us. And it’s both sides’ fault. I’m not gonna lie. Both sides are at fault in this.” [Pols emphasis]

Chairman McCarney is in a tough position, of course. A large percentage of rank-and-file Republicans believe despite the lack of any evidence that the 2020 elections were stolen, so to acknowledge that what Peters did was wrong would put him on the wrong side of that noisy (especially in Mesa County) contingent. At the same time, the Colorado Republican Party’s chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown has advised Republican candidates to not wade into Peters’ case citing the likelihood of a crime having been committed. Even Rep. Lauren Boebert came away from an ethically questionable meeting with the Mesa County DA Dan Rubenstein assured that the investigation against Peters was being conducted appropriately.

With all of this in mind, how can “both sides” rationally be to blame here? It’s this: the all-GOP Mesa County Commissioners may be at odds with her today, but they supported Tina Peters when it suited them politically–just like they supported Lauren Boebert. Politicians who are more loyal to Donald Trump than they are to upholding American democracy are what led American politics to their acrimonious present state, of which “MesaGate” is just one symptom. And in that context, every Republican politician who benefited from Trump’s movement shares the blame.

That’s probably outside the scope of Chairman McCarney’s comprehension.

But maybe, just maybe, it’s what’s keeping Scott McInnis awake at night.