The campaign working to pass Amendment 80, a radical school choice amendment intended to usher in a private school voucher system in Colorado with as-yet unknown but potentially catastrophic fiscal consequences, gained notoriety this election season with a highly controversial text message blast to large audiences of Colorado voters last month falsely suggesting that the head of the Colorado Education Association, one of the initiative’s fiercest opponents, backs the measure. Another message a few days later proclaimed that “Democrats across Colorado” are voting for Amendment 80, similarly deceptive since the measure is the product of right-wing education ideologues and even the state’s pro-charter school Democratic Gov. Jared Polis stayed neutral, warning the measure could lead to expensive litigation to determine its lawful scope.
Over the weekend, dark-money group “Colorado Dawn” struck again–this time using the likenesses of Gov. Polis and Sen. John Hickenlooper to once again falsely suggest Democratic support for Amendment 80:
This time, however, the spam texters at Colorado Dawn may have bitten off more than they can chew. We don’t know the size of the phone list this deceptive text message was sent to, but here’s what Sen. Hickenlooper had to say in response to his 190,000 Twitter/X followers:
For campaigns who make the choice to deliberately push false information to garner support, the trick is always for that false information to spread faster than the debunking that inevitably follows–a task that becomes easier as the election approaches. For Amendment 80’s deliberately mendacious supporters, though, dragging arguably the state’s best-known Democratic lawmaker into their campaign of misinformation could be a falsehood too far. Hick’s high-profile pushback, which we expect to see at least as well-covered as the previous incidents, could reach more voters than the original text did.
If the only sales pitch you have is to lie about who supports you, what does that say about the product you’re selling?
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In case NotHopeful is reading – as a fairly rank-n-file Dem I'm criticizing Polis for going neutral on Amendment 80 right here, right now.
My wife read up on 80, turned to me and said, I think this is bad for public schools. She knows nothing of the background to all this. Had not heard anything up to this point (all election mailers go straight to recycling in our house), no outside knowledge any way.
And she came to the suspicion that this was aimed at taking money from public schools. She asked me for my take then and I gave her the background. But bottom line, I think most people looking at this themselves, will see it for what it is.
And vote NO!
Why is there such tepid responses to this crap. Sue, yell that you are suing, and yell some more. This is a time you should be righteously angry and ought to shake the stick.
Agreed, that's why sometimes I feel like we need a Senator Blutarsky to yell about stuff until his mouth froths like he's rabid. That said, there are 2 open campaign finance complaints against Colorado Dawn right now, though neither of them are about falsely representing high-profile people as in favor of Amendment 80.