Tag: Steve Carter

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.

Two Democrats who lost out in a nasty election for the Garfield County board of commissioners last year say the main reason they were targeted by the oil and gas industry was something that happened earlier in 2008 in neighboring Rio Blanco County.

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 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.

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.