Progressive activist coalition Campaign for a Strong Colorado has dug into GOP candidate for treasurer Walker Stapleton’s 1999 San Francisco DUI arrest and found the case to be more complicated than Stapleton let on at a debate last month, where he likened talking about the incident to “being forced to eat a doo-doo sandwich.” He said a cab ran a yellow blinking light and struck his car but court records suggest Stapleton did the light running, that he hit the cab, as well as a pedestrian, injuring two women. More troubling is that Stapleton was charged with speeding away from the site of the crash, another detail Stapleton left out of his truncated mea culpa.
From the the Strong Colorado release:
San Francisco Superior Court records indicate that Stapleton was charged with DUI, and hit and run. A third charge of failure to stop and give aid to the injured women was added a month later. Stapleton pleaded guilty to DUI and served community service.
[S]everal questions that remain unanswered:
· Why did the SFPD charge Stapleton with DUI, hit and run and hitting pedestrians?
· Why were the charges amended a month afterward to include leaving the scene of an accident without giving aid to the injured women?
· Why did he not mention that two people were injured as a result of the accident?
· Is he blaming the victims when they don’t have any ability to tell their side of the story?
San Francisco Superior Court records indicate that Stapleton was charged with DUI, and hit and run. A third charge of failure to stop and give aid to the injured women was added a month later. Stapleton pleaded guilty to DUI and served community service.
Stapleton is a member of the vastly wealthy and political Stapleton-Bush clan. His great grandfather was the well-known mayor of Denver. His second cousin is the former president George H Bush. Stapleton’s professional life consists mainly of work performed for his family in its various real estate ventures. His extended family has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his run for treasurer and he makes no bones that he has political ambitions that go beyond this race.
In the wake of the DUI accident, Stapleton was sentenced to community service in San Francisco’s down-and-out Tenderloin district. In discussion with the Denver Post, Stapleton sarcastically referred to the service he performed there as “a fantastic period of time that involved me cleaning up garbage.”
Calls to the campaigns were not immediately returned.
The Colorado GOP has been plagued this election season by revelations linked to the criminal histories of many of its candidates for office.
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