What is going on in northern Colorado? My whole dad's side and my brother turned into Trump lovers

[madamesilverspurs]

84. Inbreeding

Weld County is an agricultural county, farming and livestock (mostly cattle). So even those kids who grow up in the "big city" of Greeley are at least conversationally familiar with the basics of animal husbandry. The breeding programs are closely monitored to avoid the pitfalls of inbreeding; unfortunately, that wisdom seems to have some difficulty finding purchase in the local politics. It's been about thirty years since anyone but Republicans have been allowed on the board of county commissioners, and it shows. This past year has seen some very nasty contention between the board members. Enter the County Council, established in the '70s to oversee the commishes; they see stuff they don't like and retain the services of an accounting firm to look into the mess, including in the investigation the operations of the county clerk's office; and it bears mentioning that the county clerk is the step-child of one of the most contentious commishes. Yikes.

One of the other commishes is a huge fan of "one-party rule", and has said so in public, never mind that human history is sadly fraught with the bloody scars of such thinking. But then, she has been known to boast of herself that she's "Weld County's own Sarah Palin" (and the poor thing thinks that should be a compliment!). Proving that self-assertion, when CBS came to town to cover the 51st state effort, she looked right at the camera and stated repeatedly that "the Constitution guarantees our right to suck-cede" -- she meant secede, but no one succeeded in correcting her.

Meanwhile, over on the Greeley city council, our mayor is THANK GOD term limited. Under his guiding hand fracking became allowed within city limits; he claimed to be uninfluenced by extraction industry money, but his campaign(s) events tended to be hosted at industry offices; he listened hard to citizens who spoke up in favor of all the drilling, and set aside the reams of evidence of negative health impacts presented by local doctors, dismissing the studies as "irrelevant". A couple of years ago he actively sought someone to run against a Democratic council candidate, and he was not at all pleased when she was elected in spite of his efforts, giving the city council one seat not occupied by a Republican (she's also a proud gay Latina); she's the Democrats' toe in the door. Meanwhile, the mayor's wife just announced that she's retiring from the presidency of the University; under her administration UNC students have been treated to the joy of a president who had no problem making sure that drilling companies had permission to frack under the campus. With her departure and the mayor leaving, maybe we can leave behind the politically incestuous relationship between the U and the city.

The rest of the city council did us no favors recently when one of their members resigned. With elections coming up in November, the council was urged to fill the seat temporarily with someone who was not on the ballot. Thumbing their collective noses at citizen concerns, they chose the Republican to fill the seat; the singular Democrat voted for a non-candidate. More inbreeding.

There was a time when we enjoyed a two-hour time slot on Saturday afternoon talk radio; this was commonly referred to as "evil liberal media bias". That time slot went away a couple of years ago, so the "librul" accusations are now aimed at newspapers, most notably the Greeley Tribune (which is, in reality, a bit too far to the right to ever be considered any kind of liberal).

That same newspaper, a couple years back, ran an article about voter registrations in the county. Republicans held 38%, the balance being divided between unaffiliated and Democrats. The headline on the article was "Republicans Dominate." My reaction was, in what universe does 38% dominate? So I made a bumper sticker, purple with white numbers proclaiming "62%". I've lost count of the number of conversations that sticker has started, people wanting to know what it means; some are genuinely surprised to learn that 62% of us are NOT Republicans, given that roughly 95% of elected positions are filled by Republicans. That's when I encourage involvement. And the involvement is easier to start for Democrats, because we have an actual for real physical office where people can go in and have conversation and ask questions; Republicans have a PO Box and an email address, little hard to drop in for a visit. If you're in the library and notice a table for voter registration, the people working that table are Democrats. We've gotten really good at it, too; back in 2012 our teams registered over 12000, a number so impressive that the newspaper gave the credit to the Republican county clerk.

Anyway, we have some terrific candidates running for local offices this year, and more candidates for state and federal offices next year. For us, it's always uphill. The remarkable thing is, the number of people stepping up is increasing. Yes! It's a tough slog, but those toes in the door are making a difference.

So, maybe you could encourage your family members to drop in for a chat with their party people. When they can't find them to talk to, they can drop in for a visit with us. Because we actually have a door. And it's open.