Because What This Election Needs Is MORE Reality TV!

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by: Colorado Pols

Same diff.

You have to dig through a slew of entertainment pseudo-media stories to find legitimate coverage of the rumors that reality TV star Ben Higgins of The Bachelor fame is considering a run for the Colorado House of Representatives, as a conservative Republican in the heavily Democratic district now represented by House Speaker pro tem Dan Pabon. here’s what the Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning reports:

Higgins, 28, has been meeting GOP power brokers in the district this week, accompanied by political consultant Dustin Olson, founder of Olson Strategies, and so far he’s made strongly favorable impressions.

That’s according to Willie Pinkston, a business consultant and the current Republican candidate for the heavily Democratic seat. Pinkston, Denver Republicans say, plans to step aside and let the HD 4 vacancy committee nominate Higgins to challenge Pabon.

“I am very impressed with Ben,” Pinkston wrote in an email obtained by The Colorado Statesman. “Super great guy. I think he would be a very strong HD4 candidate and will support him.”

Pinkston added, “We have to continue to keep this a secret because it’s not official yet and Dustin wants to make sure the press doesn’t catch wind of anything.”

So much for that! Rumors of the hunky devout Christian no-longer-a-Bachelor tipping his toe into politics via a seat in the Colorado state legislature are now the buzz of the celebrity gossip world. One a scale of 1 to 10, one being your neighbor’s pedestrian sex life and 10 being a Kardashian family member actually doing something newsworthy, this is like a six or seven easy. And that means it’s the biggest thing in terms of global eyeballs reading about Colorado politics since…well, there is Jon Keyser’s self-immolation. But you get the idea.

Once the glitz wears off a little, though, this doesn’t look at all like a winning formula. By all accounts Higgins is a social conservative Republican about as far from a good fit for urban and diverse west Denver’s House District 4 as you can get. There seems to be some presumption that the incumbent Rep. Dan Pabon is vulnerable after to his DUI arrest earlier this year in downtown Denver, but there have been no complicating factors a la Laura Bradford’s legislative immunity scandal to aggravate that incident beyond something his constituents would forgive. Especially if they get a whiff of what the hunky (and taken) reality TV star actually stands for.

On the other hand, maybe the Trump/Higgins “reality TV ticket” is some kind of magic we can’t foresee?

Something tells us Higgins shouldn’t use that.

6 thoughts on “Because What This Election Needs Is MORE Reality TV!”

davebarnes says:

June 5, 2016 at 1:01 pm

I believe and hope that Dan will be reëlected.

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mamajama55 says:

June 5, 2016 at 8:16 pm

This is so insulting to the HD4 voters…the idea that a pretty face with no political experience can be a viable candidate. I mean, I guess selling an actor's hero persona worked for Reagan and Schwartzenegger, but are voters still that gullible? We're in Colorado, not California, right? Right?????

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1. JohnInDenver says:
  
  June 5, 2016 at 9:50 pm
  
  Reagan had been a leader of an influential group (his union), a spokesperson for a large business, and an active political surrogate. He was much more than an "actor's hero persona."
  
  Schwartzenegger had been a celebrity spokesperson for an anti-drug ad, chairperson of a Presidential Council, and of course, was married to a Kennedy. And he was elected Governor by less than half the voters in a special recall election.
  
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  1. BlueCat says:
    
    June 6, 2016 at 10:10 am
    
    Reagan also was elected the second time after signs of early stage dementia had become glaringly apparent during his first term. Confusing his films with reality, claiming to have been present at a concentration camp liberation, forgetting which South American country he was in, falling asleep at odd times, all predated his second election.
    
    So, yeah, voters were pretty gullible there. Unlike The Governator, who was quite competent, Reagan was always a vessel for the machinations of others. There was never much "there" there.
    
    Probably why he wasn't impeached for Iran Contra which was far more serious, a truly international criminal enterprise with the most serious national and international consequences, than Watergate, a completely unnecessary election dirt digging enterprise for an election the paranoid Nixon was in no danger of losing in the first place.
    
    By the time it broke far into Reagan's second term it was so obvious that he was just a befuddled bystander to his own presidency, his own administration, completely dependent on Nancy (who was dependent on her astrologer) just to get through his remaining days in office, impeaching him would have felt kind of like drowning defenseless little puppies.
    
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    1. Phoenix Rising says:
      
      June 6, 2016 at 1:30 pm
      
      George HW Bush was very likely the architect of Iran-Contra within the White House anyway, which could be why he pardoned so many of its players. He had the connections and the experience to pull it off. Reagan so obviously didn't have that.
      
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2. cpolind says:
  
  June 6, 2016 at 3:39 pm
  
  I don't live in HD4, but the GOP in this entire state insults me with it's criteria for picking candidates. If you put this Reality TV guy along with Jon Keyser, it looks to me like the Colorado GOP is trying to put together the next big "Boy Band" instead of doing its due diligence in finding viable political candidates who are actually qualified to do the job.
  
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