Guest post via Brian Lupo at CannCon on Substack
Part1:
This week, Colorado voters took to the polls in the first major election since the world got turned upside down on November 3, 2020. While Colorado isn’t necessarily a “swing state”, the 2022 primaries had a statewide race that garnered national attention: the race between the Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and the Director (on leave) of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, Pam Anderson. Yes, CTCL. The wildly unpopular (in conservative circles) non-profit that injected over $400 million from Mark Zuckerberg’s organization into the 2020 election.
But this story isn’t so much about Pam Anderson, who skipped the typical GOP Convention nomination by instead gathering signatures to appear on the ballot. It’s not even so much about Tina Peters, whom ColoradoPols.com showed as “…sadly, [the] favorite in a Republican Primary in 2022” and also showed Tina Peters chances to win not just the primary, but the overall general election at 40% to Pam Anderson’s 20% and Mike O’Donnell’s 5%. Wait, Mike O’Donnell? Who’s that? If you asked yourself that question, so did many Coloradoans. And his miraculous, unprecedented David vs Goliath showing is the focus of this brief article.
Mike O’Donnell, an Australian native and Colorado business owner living in Yuma Co, was the third person on the ballot in this race. In the GOP Convention in April, he lost to Tina Peters 60.67% to 39.43%, but still garnered enough votes to make the ballot. As mentioned above, Pam Anderson opted to skip the convention and rather made the ballot by gathering 17,904 signatures (only 12,317 were deemed “valid” though) I’m certain those signatures were predominantly from GOP voters though.
The GOP in Colorado would love to be represented by a board member from CTCL after the 2020 election. Twenty-two other Republicans opted to get on the ballot by this method, including Joe O’Dea who upset Ron Hanks in the US Senate primary, compared to only nine democrats.
But the 3,772 Republican delegates at this year’s GOP Convention must have been unprecedentedly out of touch with their constituents that elected them because Mike O’Donnell had quite a turnout in the primary this week. Not only is he in a neck and neck tie with Tina Peters for second place, he was actually able to win outright in 17 counties, most of which went heavily for Donald Trump in 2020.
Mike O’Donnell fundraised a whopping $1,645 from June 9 thru June 22 from a ground breaking 13 donors. Comparatively speaking, Pam Anderson raised $13,016.93 from a total of 43 donors and Tina Peters raised $19,220 from a total of 154 donors, all during the same June 9 – June 22 time period.
In total, O’Donnell raised just over $12,000 in monetary donations for his campaign. Comparatively, the alleged “winner”, Pam Anderson, raised $121,779.15 and Tina Peters, the acknowledged front runner according to ColoradoPols and other news outlets, raised $215,912.96.
So the folks of Colorado are to believe that a relatively unknown candidate who was much closer to not making the ballot at all (9.4%) than he was to winning the convention (21%) and was out fundraised by almost 1,800% somehow beat the frontrunner in the race, Tina Peters, who ended up in 3rd place overall?
The candidate who won petitioned her way onto the ballot rather than winning at convention and sits on the board of CTCL, who 70% of voters believed was a “bad thing for American democracy.”
And we must simply believe this without questioning it.
Up is down. Down is up. Much more to come on the Secretary of State election as well as the inversion of GOP candidates from Assembly to Primary…
