June 14, 2012 02:41 AM UTC

Colorado's Worst Candidate Also a Finalist for Worst Person

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• by: Colorado Pols

(Bumped into Thursday because of late post yesterday – promoted by Colorado Pols)

It’s only June, yet we already have a runaway favorite for Colorado’s worst candidate in 2012. Republican Matt Arnold, running for a statewide seat on the CU Board of Regents, is not only making terrible campaign mistakes — but he’s also doing his best to make sure he comes across as an awful person as well.

You might remember Arnold for his classy Facebook post in March basically calling Sandra Fluke a whore. Or perhaps you remember Arnold for falsely claiming to have been endorsed by the Arapahoe County Republican Party in the June 26 Primary.

Arnold’s claim to fame is as the 2010 head of the “Clear the Bench” campaign to rid Colorado of those pesky “activist” judges. Rather, that was his claim to fame, because in a matter of months he’s earned an entirely new reputation.

Earlier this week Lynn Bartels at the Denver newspaper reported on the fact that Arnold has been campaigning around the state claiming that he has a Master’s Degree in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University. That sounds impressive, but it’s not true. When confronted with the fact that he doesn’t actually own a Master’s Degree, Arnold got testy, telling Bartels, “I was more interested in getting on with my life than trying to, quite frankly, waste more time in pursuit of academic BS that no one cares about.”

Sure, Matt. Nobody cares about that kind of academic BS, especially when the candidate is running FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOARD OF REGENTS.

Arnold went on to tell Bartels: “This is minutiae. What we ought to be talking about is who has the better ideas for reforming higher education in Colorado, and, quite frankly, I’m the only one who has put forward any ideas.”

Arnold is confusing an active imagination with “ideas,” apparently. This would be bad enough, but there’s more rough news out today. Arnold is apparently losing endorsements because he thought it would be a good idea to post private information on his campaign website about his Primary opponent, Brian Davidson, and three of Davidson’s supporters. Arnold is sad that people say mean things about him, so his response was to post home addresses, email addresses, and home and cell phone numbers of these people and encourage his own supporters (both of them) to harass Davidson and others.

Great plan. No way that could backfire.

As Bartels reports today, even John Andrews has pulled his support for Arnold’s campaign. Yes, the same former Senate President who has long been the driving force behind the “Clear the Bench” idea. When you become so embarrassing that John Andrews will no longer support you…well, you’ve crossed a few too many lines.