Gessler GOP fundraiser now closed to media

Colorado secretary of state Scott Gessler

Because sometimes when your pants are down around your knees, it’s easier to step away from the window than it is to pull up your pants, the now infamous Scott Gessler/Larimer County GOP fundraiser will be closed to the media. Problem solved.

This new development was first reported Wednesday evening by the Coloradoan’s Bob Moore.

“As you may have read, we originally planned a more public event, but as usual the media in its unrelenting desire to malign Republicans has made a circus of the event and that is the reason for our change of venue,” Larimer GOP Chairman Tom Lucero said in an email Wednesday to party members, which he shared with the Coloradoan.

Gessler’s Larimer County problem began when the party’s former chair failed to report contributions and expenses in a timely fashion and then absconded with party funds.

The Secretary of State’s office fined the party $48,700 and then reduced the fine to $15,700.

It is the reduction followed by the fundraiser that raises eyebrows. “It looks like unequal enforcement of the law,” Luis Toro, director of Colorado Ethics Watch told the Colorado Independent. “I hoped this would be like the moonlighting situation, where he would see the light and change course. I don’t think he should participate in this,” Toro said.

“Closing it to the press just adds insult to injury,” Toro said. Numerous newspapers in the state have editorialized that Gessler should withdraw his participation in the fundraiser.

Scot Kersgaard has been managing editor of a political newspaper, editor and co-owner of a ski town newspaper, executive editor of eight high-tech magazines (where he worked with current Apple CEO Tim Cook), deputy press secretary to a U.S. Senator, and an outdoors columnist at the Rocky Mountain News. He has an English degree from the University of Washington. He was awarded a fellowship to study internet journalism at the University of Maryland's Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. He was student body president in college. He spends his free time hiking and skiing.

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