Campaign Update - The Club 20 Debates

Now that the Primary election is over and the General Election is less than two months away, the candidates are in full campaign mode. The most recent campaign event on the Western Slope was the Western Colorado Candidate Debates event held on Saturday September 10, 2022. The event was held at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction and was hosted by Club 20* in partnership with the Colorado Mesa University Civic Forum and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and sponsored by Xcel Energy and Rocky Mountain Health Plans.

Sixteen debates were scheduled. The debates began at 8:00 am and ended at 8:15 pm. There were nine debates that affect Delta County. Those debates were:

1. House District 54 - Matt Soper(R) incumbent v. AliceMarie SlovenEmond(D).

2. House District 58 - Marc Catlin (R) incumbent v. Kevin Kuns (D).

3. Senate District 7 - Janice Rich (R) v. David Stahlke the Democrat candidate declined to participate.

4. Colorado Secretary of State – Pam Anderson (R) v. Jena Griswold the incumbent Democrat candidate declined to participate.

5. Colorado State Treasurer – Lang Sias (R) v. Dave Young (D) incumbent.

6. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) incumbent v. John Kellner (R).

7. Colorado Governor – Heidi Ganahl (R) v. Jared Polis the incumbent Democrat candidate declined to participate.

8. US Senate Joe O’Dea (R) v. Michael Bennet the incumbent Democrat candidate declined to participate.

9. Congressional District 3 – Lauren Boebert (R) incumbent v. Adam Frisch (D).

It is noteworthy to point out that four of the Democrat candidates declined to participate. This seems to me to indicate that these four Democrat candidates do not care about the Western Slope of Colorado – they have discounted the importance of the Western Slope voters. This seems especially egregious for candidate David Stahlke who is running for SD7 (Mesa County, except for the City of Grand Junction, and the Cedaredge area in Delta County). It is also worth noting that Jared Polis has NEVER participated in a Club 20 event, even when he served as congressman in CD2. Aside from not showing up for the debates, the performance of these incumbent Democrat candidates reflects an outright hostility for rural Colorado. Not only are they not representing your interests – they are acting AGAINST your interests. Their non-appearance speaks volumes to those of us in rural Colorado.

I am not going to go over each debate because unfortunately I missed most of them. I did watch the Congresswoman Lauren Boebert v. Adam Frisch debate. I will cover what I saw in that debate.

The Boebert v. Frisch debate was the closing debate of the Western Colorado Candidate Debates. The debate was moderated by Edie Sonn. (Sonn is a former Executive Committee member for Club 20 and works as Senior Director of External Affairs for Colorado Behavioral Healthcare Council. She also worked for Pinnacol Assurance, a worker’s comp insurance carrier, the Center for Improving Value in Healthcare and the Colorado Medical Society.)

The three-member panel for the debate was Andrew Olson, operations manager for Chevron; Tamara Ward, partner with Talama Partners and Nathan Steele, High Country Area Manager for XCell Energy.

The format of that debate was:

1. Opening remarks - three minutes for each candidate.

2. Questions and Answers. Six questions were posed by the three-member panel. Each candidate had 1 ½ minutes to respond and the first candidate to respond had 1 minute to provide a rebuttal to the opponent’s response.

3. Cross Examination. Each candidate was given five minutes to ask direct questions to their opponent.

4. Closing remarks – three minutes for each candidate.

The six questions asked by the panel were:

1. If elected to the U.S. House, what will you do to address the Colorado River crisis and ensure this resource is available for generations to come? (Asked by Andrew Olson.)

2. What will you do to keep federal funding investment flowing for the benefit of our rural communities? (Asked by Tamara Ward.)

3. If elected, what policies will you put in place to improve the health of our forests? (Asked by Nathan Steele.)

4. How can we best manage the risk to our economy and to our health from a changing climate? (Asked by Andrew Olson.)

5. How will you represent all the diverse communities in your large district, from oil & gas to those who rely on an outdoor recreation economy. Will you be responsive to those constituencies who may disagree with your philosophy? (Asked by Tamara Ward.)

6. The president set a nationwide renewable energy goal o reach 100% clean electricity by 2035. Do you support this goal? Do you think this is an achievable goal? And how can our country achieve such a goal while maintaining electricity affordability and reliability?

The event started out very lively with Congresswoman Boebert challenging the moderator Edie Sonn for supporting her 2020 opponent Diane Misch Bush during the Sonn’s review of the rules for the debate. Boebert noted that Club 20 had assured her that the debate would be non-partisan and Boebert was stating that Sonn surely was not. Sonn never actually responded to the Congresswoman’s allegations but deflected by responding that the debate was not about her, Sonn, but rather about the candidates. The Congesswoman eventually agreed to accepting the rules of the debate but noted that the moderator was not non-partisan.

I won’t go through each part of the debate in detail but rather I’ll give my overall sense of it. Congresswoman Boebert came well prepared for the debate and laid out her reasons for wanting to serve in Congress. She provided specific answers with examples to each of the questions asked by the panelists. She was fiery – as she always is, as those of us who have seen her at the many events, she has attended here in Delta County. Candidate Adam Frisch, on the other hand, spent nearly the whole debate attacking Congresswoman Boebert – in spite of Moderator Sonn stating in her introduction that the debate should focus on ideas and not personalities. He presented no ideas for dealing with the issues. In the six questions posed by the panelists, he responded by saying, “we got to figger” that out. But he will do it in a bi-partsisan, normal manner. After hearing Frisch say “figger” three times, I thought, that ought to be his nickname – Figgerin Frisch. In the other questions, where he didn’t have to “figger” it out, he simply attacked Congresswoman Boebert. I won’t go into his attacks, that just gives them legs, and they're not worth spending time, energy and ink on refuting them.

The debate can still be viewed on the Club 20 Facebook page. The Boebert-Frisch debate begins at 1:43 minutes.

The ballots for the November 8, 2022 General Election will be mailed out the week of October 17th. We need to focus on promoting the Republican candidates that will be on that ballot and providing the reasons why we need to vote for them. In general, the Republican candidates support the Commitment to Colorado. That commitment includes the following ten areas:

1. Make for Colorado Affordable.

2. Prioritize Public Safety.

3. Expand Educational Choice.

4. Conserve Our Environment.

5. Create Jobs and Career Opportunities

6. End the War on Rural Colorado

7. Honor the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights and Proposition 117.

8. Bring Accountability and Transparency Back to Government.

9. Build Strong Communities.

10. Protect the Rights of the Individual.

The full text of the Commitment to Colorado can be viewed on the Colorado State GOP website at https://commitment2colorado.com .

The Delta County Republican Central Committee will be promoting our Republican candidates by:

1. Sending a $500 cash donation to the eleven Republican candidates who are accepting donations from County Committees - done. Those candidates were:

2. Matt Soper – Colorado Representative HD 54.

3. Marc Catlin - Colorado Representative HD 58.

4. Janice Rich – Colorado Senator SD7.

5. Perry Will - Colorado Representative HD 57.

6. Lauren Boebert – CD3 Representative.

7. Heidi Ganahl – Governor.

8. Danny Moore – Lieutenant Governor.

9. John Kellnor – Attorney General.

10. Pam Anderson – Secretary of State.

11. Lang Sias – Colorado State Treasurer.

12. Dan Maloit - State Board of Education.

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Note that candidate Mike Lane is self-funded and candidate Joe O’Dea was not accepting donations from County Committees.

1. Holding voter registration drives – this is being coordinated by Helen Fox.

2. Radio ad effort – this is being led by Gary Hubbell.

3. Post card mail effort – this is being led by Gary Hubbell and Jamie Hart.

4. Canvassing to Get Out the Vote. We will be discussing this effort at the September Special Meeting to be held at the Surface Creek Community Church in Austin on September 20, 2022 at 6:30 pm.

I believe it is important that we all push to get our Republican candidates elected. The following 17 Republican candidates will be on the November 8, 2022 General Election ballot:

1. Mike Lane - Delta County Commissioner District 1.

2. Mark Taylor – Delta County Sheriff.

3. Terri Stephenson – Delta County Clerk.

4. Jolene George – Delta County Assessor.

5. Lisa Tafoya – Delta County Treasurer.

6. Lance Boren – Delta County Coroner.

7. Matt Soper – Colorado Representative House District (HD) 54.

8. Marc Catlin - Colorado Representative House District (HD) 58.

9. Janice Rich – Colorado Senator Senate District (SD) 7.

10. Heidi Ganahl – Colorado Governor.

11. Danny Moore – Colorado Lieutenant Governor.

12. John Kellner – Colorado Attorney General.

13. Pam Anderson – Colorado Secretary of State.

14. Lang Sias – Colorado State Treasurer.

15. Dan Maloit – Colorado State Board of Education.

16. Lauren Boebert – United States House of Representatives, Congressional District (CD) 3.

17. Joe O’Dea – United States Senate – Colorado.

In my next blog I will try to present specific reasons to vote for these Republican candidates and against their Democrat opponents. We all need to pitch in on this election – it is critical that we change the course that the Democrats have put us on. Both at the national and the state level. We are in control at the County level and we need to maintain that. Be at our October 20, 2022 meeting to participate in implementing our efforts to get the vote out for this November 8, 2022 election.

David Bradford Delta County Republican Central Committee Chairman

*Club 20 is a coalition of individuals, businesses, tribes and local governments in Colorado's 22 western counties. The group is organized for the purpose of speaking with a single unified voice on issues of mutual concern. Its activities include marketing and advertising, public education, promotion, meetings and events and political action.

PS – Remember we are still selling Raffle tickets for our Scholarship program. We’ll be selling them at the October meeting and they are available at the Delta HQ. Help support our Scholarship Program by buying a ticket and take a chance on winning the Mantis Shooting Training System or $500 cash. This is our primary Youth Outreach effort. db