There’s never a dull moment in Colorado politics, and last week was no exception.
From yet another Republican leaving a loaded gun at the state Capitol, to Xcel Energy botching a planned power outage and Republicans booting out an established political reporter from their assembly, multiple incidents in the state went instantly national in recent days.
So let’s take a moment to unpack the best of the worst, and put into context the leaders that keep letting us down and why.
Guns
For what feels like the umpteenth time, a Colorado Republican lawmaker brought a loaded gun to the state Capitol only to leave it behind. How one can so easily forget a loaded firearm is beyond me, but per multiple reports, state Rep. Don Wilson was found to have accidentally left his loaded gun in the bathroom of the Capitol building on Tuesday night. In the epitome of irony, the incident occurred after Wilson’s party argued against a proposal to ban firearms at the Capitol.
Wilson later admitted his grave oversight in a formal statement, calling his dangerous cognitive lapse a “mistake” with seemingly little recognition of the larger implications. Particularly in a week with the historic convictions of a mass murderer’s parents, Wilson’s forgetfulness feels more like a lesson in luck than a mistake. Had his loaded gun been found by the wrong person instead of a janitor, this story could have had a very different and tragic ending.
Yet Wilson’s actions are but one example in a pattern of Republican hypocrisy over opposition to gun safety laws while recklessly operating such weapons. Several other Colorado Republicans have been careless with guns on Capitol grounds in recent years, calling into question the argument of responsible gun ownership as a rationale for less stringent gun safety laws. After all, if the lawmakers claiming to be responsible with guns clearly aren’t, who can be?
Xcel Energy
Should the power have gone out? After last week’s wind storms, that is the question.
As someone who fled the Marshall fire, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, given the circumstances, Xcel’s decision to cut power preemptively to tens of thousands of Coloradans almost certainly avoided larger catastrophes.
On the other hand, Xcel is not off the hook. Although the company’s actions to cut power were proactive in fire mitigation, its ability to communicate plans clearly to its customers was as messy as a toddler’s mudpie. For nearly a week, local meteorologists had been increasingly sure in their predictions of an extreme wind event, yet little if any indication of cutting power for an extended period was given until the day of the storm — if that.
This oversight might have resolved itself had the power been out for only a few hours. However, we’ve since learned that many residents reported a loss in power for up to two days or more, well after the storm had passed without clear contact from Xcel. As a result of the lack of communication, one local food bank reported over $80,000 in lost refrigerated items, with countless families throwing out hundreds of dollars of food.
Understanding that restoring power to lines after a storm is complicated, and that lost food is in no uncertainty better than nearly 1,100 homes burning down, this outcome is still unacceptable. And thanks to everyone who spoke out with the help of Gov. Jared Polis, Xcel’s actions will now be investigated by the Colorado Public Utility Commission.
But I think there’s an even bigger oversight by Xcel that is escaping attention. For a company that reported over $1.7 billion in profits last year, why didn’t Xcel take the preemptive measure of burying Front Range power lines at risk of high wind events rather than resort to cutting locals off? Even with a hefty cost of construction, they clearly have the funds, and given the company’s talk of decarbonizing, it’s clear the issue of climate change has long been on the radar. Why haven’t they already better prepared for high winds?
Is it too much to ask that a public service company put locals over shareholder profits? If so, why isn’t the PUC holding them accountable for it?
Sandra Fish
Not to be outdone by the wind, Colorado’s GOP Chair Dave Williams created a storm of his own after he deployed a sheriff’s deputy to escort Colorado Sun political reporter Sandra Fish out of the GOP state assembly. The reason? Williams didn’t like her reporting.
Williams has since mocked Fish’s appearance — specifically her purple hair — and has doubled down on his decision to remove her, even as some hard-right Republicans question the decision. Rightfully so, much debate has ensued about the role of the free press in a democracy.
Yet while much of the focus has turned into a meta-analysis of journalism and autocracy, far fewer have sought to refocus the conversation on what Williams didn’t like about Fish’s reporting in the first place. What had she written that would get her, and only her as best I can tell, removed from the arena by police? After all, that’s the real crux of the story, is it not?
To quote the tweets of my colleague Mario Nicolais, “I cannot stress enough that it is because [Fish] is the state’s best campaign finance reporter. And the GOP chair/congressional candidate has treated the party as a personal slush fund. … If it is just outrage about [Fish] being removed without further exposing the cause, that is a trade Williams is willing to make.”
Exactly, and I suggest we start asking how many people can now more easily identify Fish’s purple hair than they can list William’s financial indiscretions. Because I’d hazard a guess that it’s heavily skewed toward the former and for journalists whose primary goal is to expose the truth, that seems like a problem.
So there you have it, the best of the worst of Colorado politics last week. We can only wait and see what this week will bring.
Trish Zornio is a scientist, lecturer and writer who has worked at some of the nation’s top universities and hospitals. She’s an avid rock climber and was a 2020 candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.