Tag: Hatch Act

A report released yesterday by the Office of Special Counsel (pdf) indicates that the George W. Bush White House violated the Hatch Act by spending taxpayer money to send a cabinet level official to Colorado to campaign for Rick O’Donnell in his 2006 run against Ed Perlmutter for what was then an open congressional seat.

The Douglas County Board of Education election, it seems, still isn’t over. Early this week, Douglas County informed the Douglas County School District that it would not be able to certify the election in time to swear in the new slate of charter school-friendly, Republican-backed, “reform” candidates for the next board meeting.

In what some might see as a revealing small chapter of contemporary U.S. politics, an ugly school board election in Douglas County has seen the local Republican Party use hard-line ideological arguments to promote preferred "freedom-loving" Republican candidates over teachers' union-endorsed "liberal" Republican candidates. In a race that sees Republicans eating Republicans, the point seems to be less about the candidates than it is about the kind of school system a right-wing GOP would like to install in Douglas County.