elections Archives - Romey's Ramblings

Dark Money in the Windsor Mayoral Election

April 2, 2024April 2, 2024Romey

Note: This post originally appeared on NextDoor

Look, I get it – we’re all tired of posts about the Windsor Mayor Election, but rather than persuade you to vote for one candidate over another, I am posting on Election Day to raise some concerning information about Dark Money that infested our local elections.

“‘Dark money’ refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed.” – OpenSecrets (more at https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/basics )

After examining all of the Financial Disclosures at https://www.windsorgov.com/1256/Campaign-Finance-Reports and charting them based on expenditures, over 1 in every 4 dollars spent in this election has been by a Nonprofit Corporation called “Advancing Northern Colorado.” Based out of Loveland, they do not disclose their donors and do not have to abide by the contribution limits imposed on the candidate committees. As you can see, this has opened a pipeline of funding into our elections that cannot be traced. In this case, all the money was spent supporting one candidate.

Expenditures by Advancing Northern Colorado include $2734 for text messaging campaigns, while an additional $4500 for “Hallett for Mayor Creative Development” and “Ad Placement.”

I have raised earnest questions regarding these expenditures at https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=327303868 and appreciate the candidate’s response. I invite you to review the post and comment threads and consider them.

My intention is not to promote or embarrass any candidate but to raise awareness of how these financial practices impact our elections. I believe strongly in election integrity, and while I cherish freedom of speech, I also believe strongly in financial disclosure so we can understand how messaging is funded. As a community, we need to have some very serious discussions about Dark Money and its place in our local political discourse.

Explaining Donald Trump To My Kids

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021Romey

We’re in the waning hours of the Trump Presidency, closing a tumultuous chapter of our country’s history. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that there’s no shortage of my opinions of Donald Trump. His (lack of) leadership and virtue has driven me out of the Republican party, rendering the conservative movement into a caricature of moral hypocrisy.

During the Trump era, I refrained from blogging much about him – partly because my blogging output isn’t what it used to be – but also in large part that I used Twitter as a release value for my political frustrations. I also felt that national politics weren’t as pertinent to our everyday lives, and would much rather debate local issues and policies that affect my community.

In our immediate family, we largely avoided political conversations. My daughters were 3 & 1 when Trump’s term began and throughout his Presidency we were careful to shield them from political discourse. We didn’t see any need to expose our kids to that level of tribalism and negativity. Rather than have to explain Trump’s immoral, incompetent, and unethical behavior, we just didn’t discuss him with our kids. It worked pretty well over the years, up until last fall.

Windsor is a largely conservative town, and with the election in full swing last fall, Clara started to notice all of the Trump flags and yard signs on our way to school. Combined with the second-grade social studies curriculum, she became aware that the election was coming and started to ask questions on the way to school.

“Dad, are you going to vote for Donald Trump?”

Oh crap. “No, I won’t be sweetie.”

“It seems like a lot of people are going to be voting for Donald Trump.”

“Yes, it looks like it.”

“Why won’t you vote for him?”

“Well, sweetie, Donald Trump is a bully. He does do a lot of things that people like, but he also likes to say mean things about people he doesn’t like, and treats those that don’t agree with him very poorly.”

“Do you like Joe Biden?”

“Yes. I might not agree with everything Joe Biden thinks, but I don’t think that he thinks people who don’t agree with him are bad. Sometimes people just have different ideas about what’s the best way to do things, and it’s okay to disagree.”

Since the election we’ve seen Trump’s darkest tendencies play out, perpetuating the lie that the election was stolen from him, culminating in the tragic events at the US Capitol. This has led to more conversations with my kids about the importance of accepting the truth and being gracious in the loss. I’m counting my blessings that I was able to still filter this conversation for my kids, and hope that they didn’t pick up on my own fear about this dangerous rhetoric.

I’m not naive enough to expect our politicians to be saints. I realize that every President says things that enrage and galvanize their political opponents, but the toxicity that has seeped into our political system is not sustainable. Trump’s unique superpower is his lack of shame. The ambition of most people is kept in check by their fear of being shamed for their behavior, but this never impacted Trump. Whether that makes him a unique figure or a harbinger of darker times in our nation, remains to be seen. For the sake of my children, I hope that it’s not the latter.

More Electoral College food for thought

November 7, 2020Romey

Some food for thought for those who question the validity of the Electoral College…

These last 5 days have been excruciatingly slow for our nation, but do you realize that California has only tallied 3/4 of their votes? New York is a little better, with 84%, but between those two states alone they represent over 6 million uncounted votes – Biden’s current margin of victory is 4 million votes. Tonight while people are celebrating (or lamenting), every state is still counting votes.

A big part of what took the press so long in calling this election was waiting for a threshold state (Penn, Nevada) that would build up a large enough margin that wouldn’t trigger a recount. In keeping with the spirit of our republic, the Electoral College dispersed power and accountability, sharing it across multiple states.

As with all things government, the Electoral College is not perfect, but I would ask those who may not fully understand it from assuming that it’s without virtue. There are other tweaks that could be made (e.g. revising winner-take-all) could offer a compromise for many concerns.

Lastly, I wanted to share a chart of Swing States and Tipping Point states from the last 5 elections prior to 2020. There are definitely the usual suspects, but you may be surprised just how many states have had this status over the last 20 years.

Colorado state Democrats are destroying the Electoral College

January 30, 2019January 30, 2019Romey

Colorado lawmakers are sparring over a plan to bypass the Electoral College. Here’s what’s at stake.

I don’t know what’s more appalling: that this is being done at the state legislature, or that no one really seems to be covering it all that much. I’m not a fan of knee-jerk, reactive legislation to begin with, but no amount of state laws that you pass will put Hillary in the White House. To make the Electoral College a petty partisan issue betrays the republic and displays a level of partisan toxicity that further erodes our societal foundation.

The irony is that proponents are pushing for making every vote count, but the reality is that laws like this will all but nullify the constituency of anyone not living in an urban setting. All you have to do is look at a population density map to see the disparity between the major cities in our country, and everywhere else.

Any area that starts to look green can simply be ignored by any presidential candidate. For every 1 person you reach in the 20-to-88 zone, you can reach 200x the amount of people by just staying in the cities. Why would you go there to campaign? What would stop a presidential candidate from pandering only to those people? Does your vote even count anymore?

Go look at this list of states by population density, and you’ll find that electoral power would be concentrated into 14 states, with Colorado falling to #21 on that list. Our ballots would now become blank checks to these populous states.

What’s worse is that voters aren’t even getting a voice. This isn’t being part of some national dialog, but rather is being rammed through, state by state, at the legislature level. If our state representatives really cared about voters rights, they’d let the voters actually make the decision.

To those who aren’t fans of President Trump (and I’m one of them), the lesson from 2016 should not be to abolish the Electoral College, but rather that we should avoid elevating the office of the Presidency as a de-facto king of our country. Rather than using our state legislatures to cry “sour grapes”, we should be pushing for our national legislatures to take back their constitutional power. Instead, we seem content to do irreperable harm to our state and country.