Last week, Colorado Education Association members received an email from our union regarding the upcoming election.
The email states: “Ballots are coming next week – do you know where CEA stands on candidates and issues? Bipartisan groups of CEA members, who are educators like you, interviewed candidates and reviewed ballot issues across the state to form CEA’s candidate and ballot issue recommendations.”
This is untrue.
No one representing our union, CEA, has ever contacted Paul Jones, the independent candidate for state House District 59, to discuss his positions.
Unlike other organizations that took the time to sit down with each candidate and interview them on their positions, such as The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry (Colorado Chamber of Commerce), which endorsed Paul Jones (the first ever independent candidate to be endorsed by them), and the Durango Herald, which did not endorse him but stated it was “a tough choice for state House,” CEA did not perform their due diligence for a legitimate candidate endorsement.
The union represents over 35,000 people, and this is why it is so disheartening to me to know they expect us, teachers and others, to blindly follow their endorsements.
Kathy Derry
Gunnison
