Scott Shires

Voters in Colorado care about clean elections and voted through a ballot initiative specifically to enact laws governing campaign finances in 2002. Lawbreakers have been caught and fined. But that’s apparently where enforcement ends. The list of groups violating the law includes an increasing number that simply skirt the fines judges have levied against them. Secretary of State Bernie Buescher now seems determined to go after the deadbeats, but his office told the Colorado Independent that the law, as it stands now, simply lacks teeth.

An Astroturf group with ties to Colorado Republican political operative Scott Shires has apparently shifted its focus from oil and gas issues on the Western Slope to defending the religious right in a Longmont City Council race.
The Montana-based 501c4, Western Tradition Partnership, is reportedly one of two groups behind a Sept. 23 push poll targeting [...]

It’s been nearly eight months since former Garfield County Judge Steve Carter says he was ambushed by oil and gas money in his unsuccessful bid for county commissioner, but the Democrat is clearly still seething about what he considers a “stolen election.”

A mineral royalty rights meeting that turned ugly in Grand Junction earlier this month is just a small taste of what’s coming for local and state Democrats running for re-election in 2010 on Colorado’s Western Slope, according to one lawmaker.

A judge Wednesday fined a political advocacy group headed by GOP operative Scott Shires $7,150 for failing to file an electioneering communications report on $2,300 spent helping to successfully defeat a Democratic Garfield County commissioner candidate.

A political advocacy group headed by GOP operative Scott Shires confessed Monday to violating campaign finance laws by not filing an electioneering communications report last fall and possibly skewing a close commissioner’s race in gas-rich Garfield County.

The pattern emerging in the weird and sordid business life of Scott Shires points to two possible conclusions: He’s cornered the market on shifty accounting practices or this fellow has the worst luck in the world by attracting pretty shady clients.
The Denver Post reported Wednesday that Shires was indicted for aiding restaurateur Jeffrey Castardi on [...]

Once again a local political advocacy group headed by GOP operative Scott Shires is the subject of a campaign finance complaint for its involvement in a bitter 2008 Garfield County commissioners race that attracted lots of energy industry dough and carpetbagger activists.

Two Democrats running for county commissioner in Garfield County have accused conservative front groups with energy-industry backing of reaching new lows with deceptive attack ads and mailers, including one made to look like a legitimate newspaper.

Republican statehouse candidate for House District 56 and GOP up-and-comer Ali Hasan received two potentially illegal corporate contributions last month that appear to have escaped the watchful eye of the Colorado Secretary of State’s office and his wayward campaign accountant.