Author Archives: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

After Trump was blamed for the Republicans’ midterm wipeout in Colorado, multiple leading Republicans gushed on public platforms about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who championed Florida’s notorious ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which is seen by advocates as a clear attack on LGBTQ rights.

Speaking on conservative radio the morning after this month’s election, state Sen. Paul Lundeen (R-Monument), who’s the new Republican leader of the state Senate, said the Republican brand is in “disarray,” and DeSantis represents “the emerging Republican brand.”

The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which was condemned by multiple Florida businesses, including Disney, bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public K-3 classrooms. Before it was passed, LGBTQ advocates warned that it was vague enough to potentially apply to all public schools — which turned out to be the case. When the Florida law was rolled out in late June, multiple schools in the state reportedly warned some teachers to remove photos of their same-sex spouses from their desk and flag course material which referenced LGBTQ identities. The bill has since become a template for similar anti-LGBTQ legislation in other states.

On the radio, Lundeen dodged a question about Trump being responsible for Republican woes, and instead praised DeSantis for his overwhelming election victory.

“Ron DeSantis spoke to and promoted and was very specific about the issues that Republicans care about,” Lundeen told KHOW’s Ross Kaminsky Nov. 9. “They care about affordability of life. They care about freedom from government intrusion into their life. They care about being safer in their neighborhoods and their communities. And they care, quite frankly, about having greater authority over their child’s education. So that’s the brand that Ron DeSantis ran on and won four years ago on — and won in a much bigger fashion last night. And I think that is the emerging Republican brand. Going back to the question of brand, I would like to think that we’re going because that’s what we campaigned on, and it didn’t stick.”

Likewise, Republican pundit Dick Wadhams wrote in Colorado Politics Nov. 13 that if DeSantis runs in 2024, “Colorado might be in play.”

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Colorado Republicans are saying they want to improve themselves, and a good way to move forward would be for the state’s top-money Republican, Phil Anschutz, to stifle the Colorado Springs Gazette’s impetuous and extremist editorial board, led by editor Wayne Laugesen.

The Gazette board, and especially Laugesen, are a far-right drag on Republicans who need the opposite.

It’s senseless for Anschutz to underwrite the production of rabid anti-abortion, flame-throwing opinions that play an oversized role in defining the Gazette and its affiliated platforms (Colorado Politics, Denver Gazette), which exist, at least in part, to promote conservativism to blue Colorado.

Thanks to the board and Laugesen, the brand of the Gazette is more along the lines of MAGA Trumpism than anything Colorado wants. While a good chunk of the editorial positions aligns with establishment Republicans, the ones that break through and define the platforms are Trumpist.

For those who follow Laugesen, it was no surprise that he turned up at the Jan. 6 insurrection and immediately commented that the culprits were “probably Antifa.”

Before Laugesen attended the Capitol riot (accompanying his wife and there to observe, he claims), the Colorado Springs Gazette had already — quickly and irresponsibly — raised the possibility of election fraud. A Nov. 12, 2020, editorial cited “allegations in multiple lawsuits” — which were all dismissed.

Laugesen, who never disclosed that his wife worked for Trump, sits on the Gazette editorial board along with Ryan McKibben, Chairman, Christian Anschutz, Vice Chairman, Chris Reen, Publisher, and Pula Davis, Newsroom Operations Director. So he’s not ultimately responsible for the self-defeating extremism that pours from the page.

He claims this board is hands-on, developing and approving editorial opinions together. Laugesen told the Colorado Springs Independent, “I have a hand in all editorials as do my five colleagues on the board.”

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(Here’s your sign — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Colorado State Board of Education candidate Peggy Propst is the latest Republican to sound the alarm over Colorado students she claims are dressing as “furries” and want “litter boxes in the bathroom.”

“We have furries in our classrooms, kids that come to school and believe that they want to be treated as a dog or a cat and have litter boxes in the bathroom,” Propst, A Republican, told Winn Tuscon, a right-wing radio show in Arizona Oct. 28. “And this is a real thing.”

Propst cited, “in particular,” parents from one unnamed school in Jefferson County who are demanding a litter box for their daughter.

The Jefferson County School District has denied that students are identifying as furries during the school day. And the allegations are seen by advocates as veiled attacks on LGBTQ students, particularly transgender students.

Nonetheless, the alleged presence of furries and alleged demands for litter boxes in Colorado schools proves to Propst that “parents have got to put their foot down” and demand tax dollars in the form of so-called “vouchers” to remove their students from the public schools — a move that opponents argue would undermine public schools.

Some classrooms in Jefferson County schools have had cat litter since 2017, in case students are locked in a classroom during a shooting. Jefferson County is the district that includes Columbine High School, where a massacre occurred in 1999.

Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl has been widely criticized for her steadfast — but unsubstantiated — belief, first reported by the Colorado Times Recorder, that Colorado “kids identifying as cats. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s happening all over Colorado and schools are tolerating it.”

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In a KOA radio interview Tuesday, Colorado congressional candidate Barb Kirkmeyer at first tried to dodge a question about whether she’d sign a bill banning abortion nationally, including in Colorado.

Then, after being pressed, she said, “Quite frankly, I’m going just to tell you. I support saving as many lives as possible. That’s where I’m at.”

For Kirkmeyer, the phrase “saving as many lives as possible” means banning abortion if possible. As she told fellow state senators this year in explaining why she voted against a bill that protected the right to an abortion in Colorado law, “A baby in his mother’s arms should be just as valued as when that baby was in his mother’s uterus.”

Yet, during last week’s debate with her Democratic opponent on 9News, when asked if she’s interested in a national abortion ban, Kirkmeyer replied, “at this point, no.”

She went on to say during the debate, “And I’m going to support whatever saves lives. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing to me. If there’s a way to save some lives, I’m going to work to save some lives.”

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

“I’ve always had this test as an elected official that, you know, if you can’t go home and look yourself in the mirror, you probably shouldn’t be doing it, right?” said Colorado congressional candidate Barbara Kirkmeyer earlier this year. “If your children would be embarrassed by what you’ve done, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. I’ve tried to live by that test.”

It’s a fair question, then, to ask why Kirkmeyer, as a Weld County commissioner, continued to reimburse herself for miles driven back and forth to work after Republican state lawmaker John Cooke called it “downright arrogant,” and a fellow Republican on the Weld County Commission, Sean Conway, stated flatly at the time, “I just don’t think it’s appropriate.”

The Greeley Tribune concurred the following year, writing that it wasn’t illegal, but, “We don’t think she should do it.”

Kirkmeyer took advantage of the reimbursements on a grand scale, collecting enough money to buy two new cars — on top of her annual salary as commissioner, which ranged from about $80,000 to $105,000 during her tenure in office beginning in 2009.

Her defense?

“I’ve worn cars out, worn tires out,” Kirkmeyer told the Greeley Tribune in 2017.

Over the course of her 11 years on the commission, from 2009 to 2020, Kirkmeyer banked over $73,000 in tax money for trips to and from work, according to a Colorado Times Recorder analysis of her reimbursement records — the first complete compilation of her expense reports submitted during her tenure as county commissioner from 2009 to 2020. (Expense reports from her first period on the board, from 1993 to 2000, were not reviewed for this article.)

The total mileage for her trips to work and back was about 130,000 miles.

That’s a lot of driving, to be sure, but Kirkmeyer’s critics said 1) she could have lived closer to the office 2) driving to work was part of her job, and, 3) it wasn’t fair for county commissioners to collect money for driving to and from work while other county employees, like sheriff’s deputies, could not.

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(So you don’t have to — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-ifle).

You get a sense of what’s coming in U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) new book, My American Life, when the jacket cover brags about her voting to “oppose the presidential electoral certification.” And a blurb from Trump promising that after “reading her story, you will love her as much as I do.”

That’s a big clue that you shouldn’t read this book.

And sure enough, there’s nothing in it for you, trust me, including the forward by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who writes that America “needs more representatives like Lauren.”

More representatives like Lauren?

No one in their right mind would arrive at that conclusion after reading this memoir.

Boebert uses her own life story — massaged with misrepresentations — to glorify some of the worst aspects of American culture, business, and politics.

Her job at McDonald’s is presented as her proof that all you need to do is work hard to succeed in America — even if you drop out of high school like she did. And later when she was working at an energy company, she didn’t need six weeks of parental leave. She was happily back at work after four weeks. “I’m sure Pete Buttigieg will be disappointed,” she writes.

The intense pain of her teen marriage, widely documented, is downplayed instead of used as a warning. “Love at First Sight” is the title of the chapter telling the story of meeting her boorish (and troubled) future husband when she was behind the counter at McDonald’s and he came in for a burger. “What are we doing later?” were Jayson Boebert’s first words to Lauren, who was 17 years old.

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Republican pundit Dick Wadhams says that newly minted Democratic lawmaker Kevin Priola’s decision to leave the Colorado Republican Party because of the party’s support of election deniers has “no credibility” because, in Colorado’s last election, the election deniers “got routed.”

State Rep. Colin Larson went further last week, calling Priola’s decision “political BS” because “[a]nyone in our party carrying the insurrectionist banner was roundly defeated” in the June primary election.

In a letter explaining his move, state Senator Priola, formerly a Republican, wrote that he didn’t want to be “part of a political party” that “continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen.”

“I was very struck in his letter about citing the election denier issue as one reason he’s leaving the party. Look what happened in Colorado,” Wadhams told KHOW’s Dan Caplis Aug. 23. “The election deniers, the conspiracy theories got routed. I mean, Ron Hanks, Tina Peters, Greg Lopez. And then I guess there were a bunch of local and state legislative primaries where the election deniers got beat. Colorado is a beacon in defeating election deniers and conspiracies. I don’t understand that. That had no credibility with me at all.”

No credibility? Political BS?

Is it credible for Priola to want to run from the Colorado Republican Party in the race to save democracy? Needless to say, if you’ve been following Colorado politics, the facts support Priola here. But in case you’ve been focused elsewhere over the past several years, I’ll explain.

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

During a wide-ranging interview with conservative pundit Jon Caldara, Colorado congressional candidate Barb Kirkmeyer said she’d reduce federal spending, in part, by transforming Medicaid into a block grant system, a move that could lead to cuts for low-income Coloradans who rely on the federal-state health care program, say experts.

“I think the other thing we could look at again the Medicaid situation. You know, I’ve been talking with folks about maybe we put that into a block grant, same as what we did with temporary aid for needy families, the Welfare reform stuff, and even with our child welfare, and looking at our child care programs as well,” Kirkmeyer told Caldara. “Looking at block grants. And then having states say, ‘This is what’s best to serve our constituents.’ You know, ‘Here’s the block of money.’ That’s exactly what happened back in late ’90s. Here’s the block of money that comes to the state. States, you still have to match. You don’t get to drop your match just because we are block-granting it to you. But we are going to give you more flexibility to meet the needs of the residents of your state.

“And I think that’s what we need to do with Medicaid.”

In her conversation with Caldara, Kirkmeyer first brought up her Medicaid proposal in response to Caldara’s question (at 18 min 12 sec) about what “on the federal level we should spend less on.”

“I think we need to look at the entitlement programs and get a handle on them,” replied Kirkmeyer. “… I think we need to look at the whole Medicaid situation.”

Converting Medicaid to a block-grant program is a longstanding goal of conservatives and has been denounced by Medicaid proponents as a stealth way to cut the program.

“Block grants are just code for cuts,” said Adam Fox of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative (CCHI), when asked by the Colorado Times Recorder about Kirkmeyer’s proposal. “We saw what would have happened if efforts to repeal the ACA would have been successful, because they would have block granted Medicaid and forced devastating cuts to eligibility and the services available. Block grants are just a way to eviscerate the benefits Coloradans need.”

The primary reason block grants would likely result in cuts for state Medicaid spending is that the Medicaid program, as currently designed, guarantees coverage to all eligible individuals. The program’s funds are not limited and can respond to “fluctuating need; eligibility criteria can be tightened (consistent with federal standards), but coverage cannot be rationed among eligible people on a first-come, first-serve basis,” as explained in a Kaiser Family Foundation report. Block grants, “typically limit the number of people served through priority lists, waiting periods, and by simply closing down enrollment. Individuals generally have no federal right to the services financed through the block grant,” states the report.

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(In the name of all that’s good and decent — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In his race for the state Senate, Tom Sullivan, who first ran for the state legislature after his son was killed in the Aurora Theater massacre and has made gun safety a top priority ever since, faces a Republican opponent, Tom Kim, who received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and appears to oppose the basic gun safety measures Sullivan has pushed into Colorado law.

On his campaign website, Kim makes no mention of his stance on guns or his “A” rating from the NRA, but in a May Facebook ad, Kim touts himself as a “gun owner and member of the Centennial Gun Club” and questions whether a fellow Republican supports the Second Amendment.

Kim and Sullivan are competing to represent Senate District 27, which is located in and around Centennial, southeast of Denver.

Kim’s top NRA rating, which was apparently awarded during his Republican primary campaign against JulieMarie Macklin, was based on Kim’s answers to an NRA questionnaire. That’s why his rating is “Aq” on the “Voting Card” below, with the “q” referring to the questionnaire, which was obtained by the Colorado Times Recorder.

Kim’s specific answers to the NRA’s questions were not found, but to obtain an “Aq” rating, based on the NRA’s questions, it’s fair to conclude that Kim answered many if not all of the questions to the approval of the NRA. “Aq” is the highest rating a candidate can receive without having a voting record.

One of the NRA’s questions, for example, asked if Kim would support “mandating the locked storage of firearms in one’s own home?”

Sullivan, who’s currently a state representative, was a co-sponsor of a bill, which became law last year, that required “firearms be responsibly and securely stored when they are not in use to prevent access by unsupervised juveniles and other unauthorized users.”

In another question, the NRA wanted to know if Kim would support any “new restrictions on the purchase and possession of ammunition beyond current law?”

Kim did not return a call to discuss the gun-storage law and to obtain his positions on other gun measures. Sullivan also didn’t return a call for comment.

For his part, Sullivan states on his website that, going forward at the Capitol, he wants to focus, among other things, “on firearm suicide prevention as well as public awareness around responsible firearm ownership.” He says he respects Second Amendment rights.

Kim’s top rating from the NRA means he will likely “not just try to stop the passage of [gun safety] laws but seek to repeal laws that have already been passed,” according to Tom Mauser, whose son died in the Columbine school shooting and is a spokesman for Colorado Ceasefire, a group formed to stop gun violence.

Mauser expects the NRA, which sent out a fundraising appeal three days after the Aurora Theater shooting, to campaign against Sullivan, whom Mauser sees as a “strong advocate” for gun safety and a stark contrast to Kim.

“The NRA has nothing to offer on the gun violence issue,” said Mauser. “They have nothing, other than they want to reverse what’s been passed, and they want to have more people carrying concealed [weapons]. They want to have more people carrying [weapons openly in public]. They want to have teachers armed. To the NRA, the solution is more arms, and I don’t think that’s where most Coloradans are.”

Prior to the pandemic, Kim’s gun club was known for its annual “Machine Gun Santa” event, in which members were invited to bring their children to pose for a picture with St. Nick and an arsenal of fully automatic weapons.

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(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman pretending to be homeless.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman is up in arms about homeless people coming to Aurora from Douglas County, despite saying last year that he hoped Aurora’s camping ban would result in Aurora’s unhoused population migrating from Aurora to “another community.”

“No jurisdiction should export their homeless to another jurisdiction without that jurisdiction consenting to that,” Coffman told KOA Morning News host Marty Lenz this morning, referring to a proposal to reintegrate homeless prisoners with family and in facilities in Aurora so that they don’t simply end up in Douglas County jail again.

“I just hope that Douglas County rises up to the occasion to take care of that population that’s in their community,” Coffman said. “And I believe that they will.”

Coffman told KOA he’s concerned about the wider homeless population in Douglas County, not just released prisoners, coming to Aurora. Douglas County commissioners have faced stiff opposition to building a homeless shelter.

Yet, Coffman has said he hopes Aurora’s camping ban will coerce unhoused people to exit Aurora. Under the Aurora ban, officials will forcibly remove people from encampments and offer shelter options elsewhere in the city. But Coffman and others do not think most displaced people will use the shelter option.

Last May, in a discussion of Aurora’s camping-ban proposal, Coffman told KHOW’s Dan Caplis that he hoped homeless people in Aurora’s encampments are “going to discover” that “Aurora, Colorado, is not the best place for them to be.”

“They will find –,” Coffman told Caplis, before breaking into a laugh and restarting his sentence, “they will find another community that will greet them with open arms and says, ‘Hey, listen, we’ll provide all these services, and we’ll require nothing of you. And you can, you know, live off the taxpayers.’”

Asked today by KOA’s Lenz if he thought Aurora’s camping ban might force homeless people to “shift to other counties,” Coffman replied with another laugh, “It seems that they move around in Aurora.”

Coffman has said the same thing before, yet he flat-out dismisses experts and various studies which advocate for a housing-first approach to effectively and efficiently address community challenges presented by homlessness.

Currently, Aurora has 130-150 shelter beds available to unhoused residents, offering over-night placement with group-living accommodations.

“The challenge with the homeless people in encampments is, not that many of them have taken us up on our shelter option that we provide for them. And they just tend to move from one location to another, whether that’s outside of Aurora or inside of Aurora.

“So far it appears that they are moving inside of Aurora.”