Three things stand between you and a government that does whatever it wants: elections, transparency, and limits. Knock out two and the third can't hold the line alone. Colorado's 2026 ballot is a live test of exactly that. ๐งต
Transparency lets you see what they're doing. Limits stop them no matter who's in office. Elections are the backstop: throw the bums out. But elections are the weakest of the three. Here's why.
Man takes down police over Flock point by point, "You all are shooting yourselves in the foot and losing the public's trust."
"We can't regulate ourselves out of this situation. The only way you can align with the public on Flock is to turn the damn things off."
You're invited to two events.
๏ฟฝ๏ฟฝ Oct 2: Candidate Forum (LWV)
Arvada United Methodist Church, 6โ8 PM
๐ฅ Oct 11: Community Town Hall
Wheat Ridge Rec Center, 3:30โ5:30 PM
Free for all. Bring the family. Food, drink, and a coloring table provided. We'll also have live music by Annie Laury, a violinist for the Denver Philharmonic!
Ask your questions. Get the facts.
Don't miss the LWV Candidate Forum this Friday, October 2nd from 6-8pm. I will be speaking in a moderated forum with my opponent. Address at the link below!
Tonight, 7 to 9 PM: come meet me and Murl Hendrickson (JeffCo Treasurer) at The Barrel Room at The Gallery, 1350 Colorado Mills Pkwy, Lakewood.
Drinks, food, and answers to your questions. Everyone is welcome, so bring your neighbor. #HD23#copolitics@Murl4Liberty
JeffCo social & candidate mixer TONIGHT, 7pm at The Barrel Room at The Gallery in Lakewood.
Good food, good drinks, good company. Meet Ross Metler (HD23) and Murl Hendrickson (JeffCo Treasurer) and ask them where your money goes.
Consider donating to help their campaigns!
@Ross4CO (HD23) and @Murl4Liberty
A majority of Colorado voters now belong to no party at all. At yesterday's meet and greet, voters asked about party affiliation once or twice, and only after we'd discussed the issues most important to them. Every conversation started with a problem, not a label. That's the Colorado I'm running to represent.
Here's a question I recently got from a voter - and it's a good one: when should a legislator vote against the majority of the people they represent?
Honest answer: rarely, and never quietly.
On most bills nobody knows what "the majority" wants, because nobody asked. The real job is reading the fine print, showing my work, and being reachable before the vote, not after.
The exceptions: when the bill breaks the constitution, or when the fine print hands the bill to people who never got a vote. Then I vote no, explain why in public, and you get to fire me in two years.
Where do you think the line should be drawn?
Just a reminder that TABOR is on the ballot this year. Again.
We are lucky to have this constitutional amendment and the citizens' ballot initiative process here in Colorado.
Did we keep our word to the people we sent, and hold ourselves to the standard we demanded of everyone else? Those are not partisan questions. They are the questions the anniversary exists to ask.
25 years since 9/11. A generation grew up inside the wars and emergency powers that followed and was told all of it was temporary. Remember the 2,977 perished first. Then a few honest questions.
Are we safer, or just more watched? Did the emergency measures end when the emergency did? Congress finally repealed the 1991 and 2002 war authorizations last December. That is the first clawback of war powers since 1971. It took 23 years.
It sickens me to see children's futures jeopardized for political gain. Last Friday, more than 180 Colorado schools saw students walk out over ICE. The spark was genuinely a kid: a 16-year-old turned an Instagram post into a 200-school movement in a matter of days. The swift and dramatic escalation of this protest should command your attention.
But by the time several hundred students reached La Alma-Lincoln Park, the "student-organized" story had a lot of adult manipulation lying just beneath it. The Youth Coalition co-hosted with the Brown Berets of the Tepetlรกn. Tables lined the park for established Denver political organizations, including Denver Communists and other socialist-aligned groups that are fixtures at these events. State Sen. Julie Gonzales personally redirected the march after Denver Police declared it an unlawful assembly. And headlining from the stage was Melat Kiros, the Democratic nominee for Colorado's 1st Congressional District and a self-identified Democratic Socialists of America member, telling a crowd of high schoolers, "you have always been at the front line of progress."
Video from the event shows violent hostility toward at least one journalist (my friend @BreakTheChainsM ) on scene beginning near the Denver Communists' table. Separately, and independently confirmed by three different outlets, a man carrying an "I heart ICE" sign was doused with water, had his sign destroyed, and was struck in the head with a thrown metal bottle as students chased him down. A hispanic woman filming the event was knocked to the ground and kicked. Denver Police confirmed five assaults, three hospitalizations, two vandalism citations, and put this on the record: "this was an unpermitted demonstration organized without a safety plan, which contributed to an unsafe environment for participants."
Here's what should bother every Coloradan: Sen. John Hickenlooper, Rep. Yara Zokaie, and Kiros herself all rushed to publicly praise the walkout AFTER the violence had occurred. Yet not one of them have said a word about the assaults, the hospitalizations, or the fact that grown adults with real political infrastructure, sitting legislators, established organizations, a Congressional nominee, let a march made of minors absorb all the risk while they collected the political capital.
If your first instinct on seeing kids get subjected to violence at a rally you're praising is silence, that tells voters exactly where your priorities sit. It isn't with the kids.
Kids are acting out behaviors taught to them by the adults in media, political advocacy and government, and in their schools. Most of us agree on the issues we face: cost of living, crime, the protection and future of children - but we don't all agree on the solutions. What we should all agree on is that violence is not a solution to disagreement.