The Colorado Democratic Party on Wednesday night voted overwhelmingly to censure Gov. Jared Polis, condemning his decision to shorten the prison sentence of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.
The extraordinary vote by the party’s central committee — to censure a man who has been the face of the party for most of the last eight years — was the most significant political fallout yet for Polis after granting clemency to Peters, whose role in an election security breach made her a national poster child of President Donald Trump’s efforts to deny the results of the 2020 election.
The censure was approved with almost 90% of the vote.
If you want to drill in on this, 9News reporter Kyle Clark is one of the best in the business and he’s all over it. A couple items of interest:
Clark also caught that Peters’ commutation letter from Polis did not contain the boilerplate phrases about her having shown remorse, and also the phrase “I believe you will be successful upon your release. Polis knows what he did, and his freeze peach justification wasn’t bought by anyone, not the least among them the Colorado County Clerks, most of whom are Republican, who condemned Polis’ commutation.
The highest-ranking elected Democrat who said something positive about the Democratic Party and censure was Rep. Jason Crow, who supported a vote but didn’t say which way he thought that committee members should vote. Real profiles in courage from Democratic electeds when 90% of the party is pretty clear about their feelings, which could be summarized as “eat shit Polis”.
As I explained yesterday, Polis’ timing of Peters’ commutation made it pretty hard for Democrats to do anything but censure him as a party. So, nice to see it done quickly, with a huge majority.
Peters is going to be on parole, and she’s shown that following rules isn’t one of her core life skills. She also has one of the true hallmarks of a grifter, former participation in a multi-level-marketing scheme. So hopefully she’ll get assigned the toughest parole officer in Mesa County and feel the fuckery of the law. And, as Kyle Clark pointed out, if Peters does go on to influence other election-denying clerks, this commutation will be the most important part of his legacy.
