DENVER – Mailers have poured into the House District 59 race from outside interests, highlighting the critical and tight nature of the race.
An examination by The Durango Herald of some of the mailers flooding mailboxes in Durango and throughout the Southwest Colorado district revealed that the information being sent to voters is in many cases a stretch.
The race between Republican incumbent J. Paul Brown and Democratic challenger Barbara McLachlan is among the most contested in the state.
The Democratic Party and its allies, largely led by environmental interests, have targeted Brown, while the Republican Party and its supporters, including large business stakeholders, have set their sites on McLachlan.
The candidates themselves have posted impressive fundraising, with Brown reporting $132,074 in contributions, and McLachlan filing $132,329, suggesting that the two candidates are in a horse race. The latest fundraising figures are only a snapshot, as an Oct. 17 filing looms.
Brown is perhaps the easiest to target, as he has a voting record to compare. He served two years after winning in 2010, before McLachlan’s husband, Mike McLachlan, defeated him in 2012. Brown came back to the Legislature for another two years after defeating Mike McLachlan in a rematch in 2014.
One mailer targeting Brown, sent by the left-leaning Common Sense Values committee, claims Brown voted against background checks for child care workers. The mailer cites a 2011 measure, which required background checks for employees of child care facilities.
The mailer says that Brown was the only member of the House to oppose the legislation. It is a familiar attack – it was used against him in 2014.
What it fails to point out is that when the bill came up in the House for a full vote on March 22, 2011, Brown joined his colleagues in supporting the bill.
Where the mailer stretches the truth is on amendments, one of which reduced funding for implementation of the bill by more than $20,000. The amendment passed on party-line votes, with all Republicans voting against the change in committee, and 11 Republicans opposing the amended bill in the Senate.
While Brown supported the original bill to expand background checks for child care facilities, he opposed the amended legislation over funding concerns.
The mailer also attacks Brown for voting against expanded background checks for private youth sports coaches. Brown was hardly alone in opposition, with 20 other members joining him in the House.
The 2015 legislation would have created the nation’s first requirement for criminal background checks in private youth sports. Republicans opposed, noting additional burdens on financially-strapped organizations, most of which voluntarily conduct such checks.
Another mailer, also funded by Common Sense Values, attacks Brown for voting against equal pay for women.
“J. Paul Brown voted against a law to ensure Southwest Colorado women receive equal pay when they do the same work as a man,” the mailer says.
This is true. Brown voted against the bill this year, joining Republican colleagues in opposition.
The measure would have required state contractors to certify that they pay women and men equally, and mandated that those contractors submit records proving so.
Republicans opposed the bill – including several GOP women – arguing that laws already exist to ensure equal pay for government projects and jobs.
Perhaps the biggest stretch against Brown is a mailer – funded by Conservation Colorado – that claims that he “sold us out to the Front Range” on Western Slope water.
The mailer cites a resolution this year in the Legislature, which would have encouraged Congress to streamline the water project permitting process.
The resolution was sponsored by Brown and other rural lawmakers, who introduced the proposal in an effort to increase water supply and storage along the Western Slope.
The mailer says, “Water is our most precious resource, but J. Paul Brown is failing to protect it in Denver.”
But no lawmaker worked harder in the Legislature this year to protect Western Slope water than Brown, a belief held by Republicans and Democrats.
Brown passed a bill this year that required the Colorado Water Conservation Board to study the amount of water that has been delivered over 20 years to Nebraska from the South Platte River in excess of the amount allowed under the river agreement. The legislation could lead to additional supplies and storage in rural Colorado.
Where environmental interests get it right is with a mailer that accuses Brown of denying the science behind human-made climate change. The Ignacio rancher is a self-proclaimed skeptic, who acknowledged so on the floor of the House this year, and in subsequent interviews with the Herald.
Common Sense Values claims that Brown supported cuts to rural schools. A mailer shows a list of cuts, which took place as a result of budget negotiations.
But the mailer does not mention that Brown was one of only a handful of Republicans to support a restructuring of a hospital fee to free money for schools and roads.
The Legislature has been in a bind to identify cuts to the budget, and one of the few places lawmakers have flexibility is with school funding, which makes it an easy target. Had the Hospital Provider Fee change passed – which Brown supported – millions of dollars would have been made available to spare rural school districts.
Even though she is a former teacher who has made school funding a priority this election, outside interests have tried to paint McLachlan as supportive of school cuts.
One mailer – funded by the right-leaning Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government – claims McLachlan “supported education cuts because her friends in Denver told her it was a good idea.”
The problem is, with no previous political record, and having no authority to support or oppose those cuts in the past, the claim is tenuous, if not completely false.
The mailer offers no citations to back up its accusations. Efforts to reach Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government were unsuccessful.
Not only is it unclear how McLachlan could have supported education cuts, school funding has been her biggest drive this election.
“After teaching for so long, I just decided that we need to support teachers,” McLachlan recently told the Herald. “Education is the foundation of what we need to be doing in Colorado, and if we don’t support our teachers and we don’t support our schools, that foundation could crumble.”
One of Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government’s mailers says, “Even teachers can fail tests,” giving McLachlan an “F” on a wide range of issues.
One of the claims is that McLachlan would support legalizing methamphetamines. This claim is emphatically false.
The interest group launched a website, McLachlanReport.com, to advance many of the claims, which again offer no citations to back up the accusations.
In some cases, the website links to conservative commentary and the national Democratic Party platform, but it fails to prove a connection to McLachlan’s beliefs.
pmarcus@durangoherald.com
