State Chair: Colorado on track to elect its first Libertarian to the State Assembly

Via the Libertarian State Chairs List:

It is with great pleasure that I forward the endorsement (below) by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel for our candidate in House District 54, Tim Menger.

I will also add that we have done a preliminary phone poll of likely voters, and of the respondents, only one-third chose one of the candidates (the rest being undecided or “not voting”), but they broke better than two to one in favor of Tim, so all I can say now is that while it looks promising, victory is obviously not locked in.

There are a number of stories the Daily Sentinel and the Denver Post have run over the past few months, as well as video by local TV stations, but I’ll let y’all hunt those down on your own 😉

Tim has declared his campaign to be “zero dollar” and is not accepting contributions. However, one of our activists, Frank Atwood, is spending his own money on electioneering (which so far has simply consisted of LP.org WSPQ door hangers with stickers featuring the names of all Libertarians on the ballot in HD 54 — ie Gary Johnson, Greg Gilman, Daniel Ong, and Tim Menger).

A reporter from the Daily Sentinel saw one of the door hangers at a rally we held last weekend and ran the WSPQ with an article on page 2 of the Sunday edition, which I scanned and posted at http://lpcolorado.org/LibertariansExplainTheirViews_20120930_65.jpg (and sent to The Advocates for Self-Government).

We also have a pretty good race being run by Matt Hess for a Douglas County Commissioner seat, and a few other races where we’d like to “bring the pain”, so if anyone wants to contribute to the LPCO’s electioneering efforts, under the Colorado Constitution, we can accept up to $2,825 from individuals (it increases each cycle with inflation) who provide us with the usual name, address, employer and occupation.

Jeff

Menger in District 54

By The Daily Sentinel
Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Libertarian Tim Menger knows his campaign for the state Legislature is an unusual one. As a third-party candidate, he entered the House District 54 race hoping to win 100 votes. Now he has at least a shot at actually winning.

To do that, Menger must defeat Republican Jared Wright, whose own election hopes have been hobbled by his self-inflicted scandals. There is no Democrat running.

We sincerely hope Menger defeats Wright. For one thing, as a third-party legislator in a House that may be closely divided between Republicans and Democrats, Menger could be in an enviable position of being able to seek support from both parties for legislative items important to Mesa County.

But by far, the most important reason we hope Menger wins is that Wright is simply not acceptable to represent roughly half of Mesa County in the Legislature.

He lied to this newspaper and the public about the reasons he was fired from the Fruita Police Department. He failed to tell Republican voters during the primary campaign about his personal bankruptcy, then blamed it on the economy, not his own spending practices.

Although he has started to attend some debates, Wright has basically been invisible for much of the general election season. That doesn’t bode well for constituents who might want to contact him, should he be elected and working in Denver.

Wright has declined to meet with the editorial board of The Daily Sentinel, which is certainly his prerogative. But his response to our request was to suggest the editorial board submit all questions to him in writing, and that this newspaper agree, sight unseen, to print all his responses verbatim.

We wouldn’t accept such conditions from any candidate of either party. Moreover, the purpose of an editorial board meeting is to engage in dialogue with the candidate so members of the editorial board get a sense of the candidate’s personality and character, not to seek canned responses to a predetermined set of questions.

Perhaps the biggest problem for this community, should Wright be elected, is that he would be toxic in Denver. Few people of either party would be eager to work with him, and his prospects for being the kind of powerful representative this community needs are nil.

The most important thing a lawmaker of either party can take to the Capitol is credibility, allowing other legislators to trust him and rely on him to do what he says. Wright has already squandered his credibility.

Menger, for his part, has no such baggage. He is a mostly down-the-line Libertarian. He’s committed to preventing tax increases and curbing spending. But he also believes consenting adults should be able to do what they want in most cases, without interference from government. That includes having civil unions with people of the same sex, smoking marijuana and carrying concealed weapons.

We don’t agree with everything Menger espouses, but we appreciate his willingness to meet with people in District 54 to listen to their concerns and explain his position. He would be a far better representative for Mesa County than Jared Wright.

Tim Menger

(facebook) facebook.com/TimWMenger

NEW BLOG ON LP SITE http://menger.lpcolorado.org

Jeff Orrok
State Chair, Libertarian Party of Colorado