Americans have a rich history of working together to achieve common goals, and current challenges require that we reinvigorate that spirit of cooperation.
Our First Amendment recognizes a citizen’s natural right of free expression because our founders understood a robust exchange of ideas is essential for the development of effective public policy and a stable society.
Unfortunately, many in America today seem to think that disagreement in policy preferences is bad, and feel the point of debate is to get the other person to agree with their ideas. This has resulted in political debate taking an almost religious tone as one speaker expects to convert the other to their way of thinking.
Rather than act as policy missionaries, seeking either validation or conversion from others, we should accept these exchanges as an honest attempt to understand each other.
One of the ways that we demonstrate respect for each other is to understand we are all unique individuals, with different values, priorities and experiences. Just as no two faces are the same, no two minds are the same. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and only through welcoming ideas from all perspectives can we reach the best solutions.
The current environment of political and social division is hampering communities from working together as successfully as past generations.
In many cases, independents have developed a bias toward our two-party system, while Republicans and Democrats have developed a bias toward each other. When we allow our bias to interfere with listening to understand, and we’re trying to convert others instead of understanding each other, the division and predictable poor results will persist.
Locally, our challenges are significant and necessarily require that we embrace the efficiencies that are only possible through working together in good faith.
As we move forward to address our local challenges on matters such as school security, housing, and regional transportation let’s put effort into setting our biases aside and considering all ideas. Only by working together in an inclusive model that respects everyone’s ideas can we meet the challenges ahead.
Reasonable people can disagree on all sorts of ideas and still interact in good faith to find areas of agreement and achieve solutions that reflect the best of our collective thinking. The Routt County Republicans look forward to a robust exchange of ideas and working together to address our challenges. We invite everyone to join the discussion!
Republican Pam Anderson handily defeated two other candidates, including indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, in Tuesday’s secretary of state primary in a major rebuke of Peters’ 2020 election denialism.
The Associated Press called the race on Anderson’s behalf at about 8 p.m. At that time, Anderson had received 45% of the vote, to Peters’ 25%. Mike O’Donnell, a nonprofit administrator from Yuma County, had 29% of the vote.
Anderson, a former Jefferson County clerk, will face Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, whom Republicans have accused of politicizing the office that oversees elections and business filings.
The secretary of state contest drew national attention as a test of whether GOP voters would embrace the election conspiracies espoused by Peters, who ran on claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Peters is accused of crimes in a breach of her county’s election system that she allegedly orchestrated.
Anderson, who also led the Colorado County Clerks Association and has worked as an election consultant, pledged during the primary to be a nonpartisan administrator.
“Colorado Republicans have nominated a professional, competent, experienced leader,” Anderson said in reaction to her victory. “And that’s a big deal. On the campaign trail, there are people of good conscience that have questions (about elections). We need someone who can answer them and not vilify people.”
Griswold, responding to Anderson’s win, touted her success at various voting reforms, including more ballot drop boxes and a statewide ballot tracking system.
“Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or unaffiliated voter — I will uphold your right to make your voice heard at the ballot box,” she said in a statement.
At Peters’ watch party at the Wide Open Saloon in Sedalia, a few dozen supporters gathered as the returns came in. When the first results were posted — showing Peters well behind — supporter Rich Wyatt stood to rally the crowd.
“Our people didn’t even vote until today,” he said. “If the vote is rigged, you’re going to see crazy stuff. Hold on tight. The wind’s going to blow, but we’re going to get through the storm.”
Peters, gathered with supporters, refused to accept defeat and claimed without evidence that the outcome had been manipulated. She said Colorado voting officials were “cheating” and had “flipped” the vote totals.
“It’s not over. Keep the faith,” she said.
Anderson will face an uphill battle against Griswold’s well-funded campaign. The Democrat has raised nearly $3 million and has at least $1.7 million in TV ad time booked for the fall
Anderson’s victory comes despite spending $124,000 less than Peters, who spent $183,000.
In addition to her campaign cash, Griswold will likely benefit from the $603,000 in cash held by super PAC Defend Democracy Fund, created to support the Democratic candidate for secretary of state.
But there are likely to be outside groups supporting Anderson as well.
During the primary, Defend Colorado spent nearly $495,000 on digital ads supporting Anderson and opposing Peters and Griswold. Citizens for Election Integrity spent more than $99,000 on TV ads opposing Anderson.
Peters was one of several GOP secretary of state candidates across the nation embracing false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. She spent campaign cash to visit Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in May, and she held a campaign fundraiser in April featuring Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has widely promoted election conspiracies. On Friday, she attended a Grand Junction event featuring Lindell and other election deniers.
In March, a Mesa County grand jury indicted Peters in an alleged breach of her county’s election system, charging her with seven felonies, including attempting to influence a public servant and criminal impersonation, and three misdemeanors. The charges did not prevent Peters, who denies wrongdoing, from running for office.
GOP Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown and others urged Peters to drop out of the contest after her indictment by a grand jury in March.
O’Donnell hedged on whether the 2020 election was stolen, instead focusing on what he said were issues with voter registration and emphasizing the office’s work with businesses.
Joe O’Dea is running for the US Senate to attack inflation, cut the debt, support the police and military, and end the cycle of petty partisanship in Washington, D.C.
Joe will put country ahead of party. And O’Dea supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage because on social issues like these, his philosophy is simple: “You live your life, I’ll live mine.”
As the polls tighten, Michael Bennet is getting desperate. Bennet’s running a TV advertisement about Joe’s position on abortion — it’s untrue.
Joe was adopted as a baby. This issue is personal to him. Take a minute to read this Q and A that describes Joe’s views and why Bennet’s ad is so dishonest.
And when you’re done here, do your own research. Google: Joe O’Dea abortion. All of the major national publications have written about Joe and abortion extensively.
QUESTION: WHAT’S JOE’S VIEWS ON ABORTION?
Answer: Joe O’Dea supports Roe vs. Wade and opposes the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn it. At multiple debates and public forums during the Republican Primary, O’Dea said he opposes a ban on abortion, and would vote to codify a woman’s right to choose early in pregnancy and in the case of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Joe’s record on abortion is indisputable. Just ask Google.
“O’Dea is a rare Republican supporter of most abortion rights.”
“Joe O’Dea stood before hundreds of social conservatives and uttered words they were unaccustomed to hearing from a Republican candidate, let alone someone running for the U.S. Senate: “I know my position on abortion isn’t the same as all of yours.” O’Dea, a businessman who has spoken publicly about his support for abortion rights, told the crowd that he backs a ban on late-term abortions and government funding of abortions. But, he said, the decision to terminate a pregnancy in the initial months is ‘between a person and their God.’”
“…a relatively moderate candidate supportive of some abortion rights…O’Dea does not favor abortion bans early in pregnancy, and he supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and certain health circumstances.”
“And while many Republican candidates support restrictive abortion policies, even in bluer-leaning states, that is not universally true. If Colorado Republican Joe O’Dea wins the Senate primary, that would scramble the typical politics of abortion in that race: O’Dea, a businessman, supports the right to an abortion in the early months of pregnancy.”
QUESTION: DIDN’T DEMOCRATS SPEND MILLIONS ON MAILERS IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY SAYING JOE O’DEA SUPPORTED ROE VS. WADE TO KNOCK HIM OUT OF THE GENERAL ELECTION?
Answer: Yes. Michael Bennet and the Democrats are desperate, dishonest, and pure hypocrites. Democrats sent mail in the June 2022 primary that called Joe O’Dea “pro-abortion” and said “He supports a national law to guarantee legalized abortion.”
QUESTION: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN O’DEA’S AND BENNET’S POSITION ON ABORTION?
Answer: O’Dea opposes elective late-term abortion, opposes taxpayer funding for abortion, and supports a parental notification requirement like the one in place in Colorado and most other states.
Bennet does not support any limits on late-term abortion. It is not clear whether Bennet supports a parental notification law for minors like the one in Colorado.
O’Dea says both political parties — and especially Michael Bennet – are too focused on social issues, and not focused enough on kitchen table issues like inflation, the cost of energy, and crime. O’Dea says both Democrats and Republicans want to keep the controversy alive, while most Americans support abortion rights early in pregnancy while wanting reasonable limits on late-term abortion.
QUESTION: HOW CAN THIS BE? MICHAEL BENNET IS RUNNING A TELEVISION AD SAYING O’DEA OPPOSES A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE.
Answer: Michael Bennet’s re-election prospects are souring because the public is worried about inflation, the growing national debt, and crime. With President Biden and the Democrats losing support, Bennet is trying to change the focus of the election by twisting O’Dea’s words and flat-out lying about his position.
In the words of Tayler O’Dea, Joe’s daughter: “Michael Bennet is a sleazy politician who will say anything to win an election.”
QUESTION: BUT MICHAEL BENNET SAYS JOE O’DEA TALKS ABOUT BEING ENDORSED BY PRO-LIFE LEADERS.
Answer: In a letter from pro-life leaders endorsing O’Dea, they openly acknowledged Joe’s support for abortion rights and push their fellow Republicans to rally around Joe anyway, knowing a centrist candidate like O’Dea had the best shot at beating Bennet.
“Joe’s position on abortion is not the same as our own. Joe does not support a ban in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother or early in the pregnancy. Some of us do not agree with this part of his position.”
Indeed, O’Dea won national headlines for a speech he gave to the Western Conservative Summit, where O’Dea told a room full of pro-life advocates that he disagreed with them on abortion, and called for them to rally to his campaign anyway because of their agreement on inflation, the debt, securing the border, and energy independence.
“Joe O’Dea stood before hundreds of social conservatives and uttered words they were unaccustomed to hearing from a Republican candidate, let alone someone running for the U.S. Senate: ‘I know my position on abortion isn’t the same as all of yours.’”
QUESTION: WHY DID JOE O’DEA OPPOSE THE RECENT COLORADO ABORTION LAW?
Answer: O’Dea opposed the new law because it went significantly farther than Roe vs. Wade by authorizing elective late-term abortion in Colorado. Abortion rights were never in jeopardy in Colorado anyway, and the law simply went too far. O’Dea supports a national law legalizing abortion early in pregnancy and in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother along with limits on late-term abortion. He says the country needs to find a balanced approach to end the political fight surrounding abortion so that women can have certainty and so that the country can move forward.
QUESTION: WHICH SUPREME COURT JUSTICES WOULD JOE O’DEA HAVE VOTED TO CONFIRM? SENATOR BENNET SAYS THIS IS A KEY DIFFERENCE.
Answer: This is a key difference, but here especially, Bennet is trying to deceive voters. O’Dea has said he would have voted to confirm a number of Justices appointed by Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump.
“I would have supported conservative justices including Neil Gorsuch, more centrist, institutionalist justices including John Roberts, and Democratically-appointed justices like Elena Kagan because they all had the qualifications, record, and temperament to serve.”
O’Dea believes the Senate needs to end the partisan blood sport surrounding judicial appointments. Bennet’s approach to confirming Supreme Court Justices is case in point of what is wrong — Bennet has opposed the confirmation of every Republican nominated to the Supreme Court, and supported every Democratic nominee. Everything is about political party to Bennet. On all things, he just votes the party line.
Judges and justices decide literally thousands of cases and controversies. Confirming judges based solely on the party registration of who appoints them is a recipe for partisan gridlock in the judicial branch of government, too.
It isn’t the way the system is supposed to work. The President of the United States’ job is to appoint and the Senate’s constitutional duty is to “advise and consent.” In O’Dea’s view, that responsibility is an up or down vote to confirm qualified judges with a record and temperament to uphold the duties of the job.
Commentators, historians, and legal analysts on all sides have said reflexive partisanship in the appointment and confirmation process is threatening the independence of the federal court system.
Joe O’Dea’s commitment to ending the stranglehold of partisanship in Washington, D.C. extends to judicial confirmations.
How does Sonja Macys’ ideas of applying Climate Action Plan driven policies to the Routt County Master Plan deliver affordable housing and regional transportation?
Everyone knows the Climate Action Plan (although approved by the Steamboat City Council which Kathi and Sonja were both members) has no fiscal cost associated with it. In other words, it prescribes a lot of boiler-plate climate fluff that makes people feel good about the possibilities of affecting the direction of the climate without consideration for the impact on the economy and our way of life.
What Routt County needs is a balanced approach in policies that will deliver solutions that realistically and responsibly balance our environmental and economic needs. We don’t need unrealistic promises that will never be delivered and will cost our low and middle income families the ability to afford living in Routt County. As a city council member, Sonja Macys has a long history of making promises she could never keep, and she never met a tax increase she couldn’t support. Sonja Macys’ will continue the same approach while expecting different results.
That’s insanity.
As a Republican, Kathi Meyer will represent the other half of Routt County besides those of the Steamboat Springs liberal elite. She will bring “all-the-above” solutions and balance to restore economic opportunity and prosperity to Routt County’s small businesses and citizens.
June 1, 2022 – Affordable housing, childcare, inflation, and economic growth are all central issues in Routt County. And each of those issues are tied to what many in Routt County believe is the center of gravity about our future – climate change. It is important for each of us to understand, the arguments we make for addressing these central issues are made in the context of the Left’s “Green New Deal” and our county’s “Climate Action Plan”.
What the “Climate Action Plan” doesn’t provide is global context. How can a small, regional effort provide any impact when countries like China, India, South Korea, Japan, and many others are moving in the opposite direction? In 2020, 350 new coal-fired power plants were under construction in these countries and many others.
Climate change is real. What’s not real, or at best unlikely, is that humans are the greatest contributing factor to climate change. Carbon emissions are one of several contributing factors of climate change. There are many other factors, including ocean currents, solar radiation, thermal absorption, clouds, volcanic phenomena, the earth axis, sun-spots, and others that are well beyond human control.
What is told to us about the human contribution to carbon emissions is also misleading. Science tells us that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for decades. Even if we were able to shut off human carbon emission tomorrow, the amount of carbon remaining in the atmosphere would remain a contributing factor to climate change. Other phenomena on earth would continue adding to atmospheric carbon levels as well, and thus we would only be reducing carbon increase. What’s more, carbon levels in our atmosphere have been at much higher levels in the past and our planet has been warmer, which has resulted in longer growing seasons and potentially more food abundance.
Climate scientists rely on computer models to make their predictions. While computer models and simulations of atmospheric behavior have become more sophisticated, they have also become less reliable. Our predictions of weather rely on many of the same models, and we all know first-hand about the accuracy of weather predictions. Ironically, some experts tell us that the more data that is fed into these models, the more sensitive they become to inaccurate data that feed the variables performing the calculations. What’s worse, the output of these models is what the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other government agencies use to make policy. Recall when in 1989 that U.N. environmentalists used these model predictions to claim that if global warming was not reversed by 2000, entire nations could be wiped off the planet creating coastal flooding, crop failures, and global “eco-refugees”.
Twenty-two years later, no nation has been wiped off the planet and there are no “eco-refugees”. As a matter of fact, the survival rate for humans from environmental disasters (floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.) has increased over 95% in less than a century. This is thanks largely to our global use of fossil fuels. This cheap, available, and reliable energy has allowed tens of millions of people to continue living in harsh climates through improved air conditioning, dependable heat, efficient food production, ubiquitous electricity, reliable transportation, improved construction, and rapid communication. And over the last few decades, fossil fuel has become cleaner and more available through improvements in technology.
What does all this mean for Routt County? Routt County has adopted an aggressive “Climate Action Plan” that seeks to move our communities from cheap and reliable energy to expensive and unreliable “green” energy. This effort is not only misguided by the idea that humans can alter the course of climate change, it comes at an unsustainable price to low and middle income families who struggle to live here. Add this reality to the current inflation and fuel shortages, many Routt County residents will no longer afford to live here. Businesses will become too expensive to operate, families will not be able to afford rent and utilities, and people will move. And when people move, so does the tax revenue and everything that makes us a community.
As Republicans, fiscal conservatives, and realists who understand the true impact of energy economics, we must remain educated on the costs of “going green” and the negative impact on future economic growth in our Routt County communities. And we must be prepared to show our government leaders what this impact will cost our low- and middle-income families as this “Climate Action Plan” is implemented.
