Political website PolitiChicks ruffled some feathers this morning running an exclusive interview with Julie Naye, the woman who says she did in fact have an affair with Colorado GOP Chairman Steve House.
The news arrived after a public dustup between House and three of the state’s top Republicans: Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, Pueblo County GOP Chair Becky Mizel and former Congressman Tom Tancredo. The three allegedly blackmailed House with threats of disclosing his affair in an effort to convince the chairman to resign his post.
House instead went public with the issue, emphatically denying any affair and refusing to resign.
The revelation that the threat may have had merit led political observers to note that it only supports House’s allegations of extortion. Others said they simply don’t care about his personal life.
Thank you, @kathrynporter, for exposing in detail what they were trying to blackmail Steve House with. #copolitics #coleg
— Alan Franklin (@alanfranklin) June 23, 2015
Honestly, who cares if a party chair had an affair? #copolitics
— Luis Toro (@_luistoro) June 23, 2015
For her part, Naye said she went public with the relationship only after House himself brought up the issue in the press and her own name began to circulate. She said she wanted to tell her side of the story.
“I am not playing victim. I did this. I am taking full responsibility for my actions,” Naye told PolitiChicks.
Naye is a political force in her own right. She ran for Colorado Springs City Council in 2013 and sang the national anthem at the GOP’s 5th Congressional Assembly in Denver back in 2012.
Still from Julie Naye singing the National Anthem via YouTube. Sen. Kevin Grantham, R- Canon City, holds the flag, right.
This keeps getting curiouser. Pols has a story ( http://bit.ly/1LtY6kA ) including the audio of a 47 minute interview with Naye by the investigator, the day after the big meeting with Coffman et al. The real Julie Naye does not utter sentences like this: “I care about him a great deal, like you would care about a close friend with additional feelings,” as she was quoted in the politichicks piece. Porter paraphrases Naye, and those quotes are not as credible as the audio of the direct interview, wherein Naye denies the affair with House.