WASHINGTON — With the final results tallied in Colorado’s primary election, several far-right extremist Republican state legislative candidates will be on the ballot for the general election. Across the board, the GOP nominated dangerous candidates who will end safe and legal abortion access, push conspiracy theories, and undermine our elections. The overwhelming support for these candidates on Tuesday proves that far-right extremists will continue to be the face of the Colorado Republican Party.
“The Colorado GOP has gone all-in on courting far-right votes by supporting wildly out-of-touch candidates that will ban abortion, spew baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, and normalize violence,” said DLCC President Jessica Post. “The Colorado Republican Party is obsessed with pleasing Donald Trump instead of addressing the issues facing working families. Colorado Democrats have the right priorities — they’ve enshrined abortion rights into state law, passed universal pre-K and free all-day kindergarten, invested in affordable housing, and lowered health care premiums by 15%. State Democrats will defend the majorities in the House and Senate this fall by keeping their focus on lowering costs and leveling the playing field for Coloradans.”
The Colorado GOP’s extremist candidates in the House include:
- Rachel Inez Stovall (HD-17) believes the Reproductive Health Equity Act that made Colorado the 16th Democratic state to protect abortion rights has “just plain gone too far,” adding that “many are irresponsible in their sex lives” and “we need to approach sex more as responsibility and less as casual.”
- Shana Black (HD-18), in a since-deleted post, wrote about her excitement on Facebook about overturning Roe v. Wade.
- Dan Woog (HD-19) is a perfect case study of “white fragility.” Woog joined other Republicans in saying that the House floor was not an appropriate place for discussions about race saying, “When we hear ‘white supremacist’ over and over, it is hard not to feel like we are being included in that.” He supported an amendment to a resolution calling on Congress to adopt voting rights legislation that endorsed election conspiracy theories and thanked the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which led to multiple deaths of civilians and police officers.
- Colin Larson (HD-25) is an anti-choice politician who voted against the Reproductive Health Equity Act that made Colorado the 16th Democratic state to explicitly protect abortion rights.
- Savannah Wolfson (HD-26) is supported by the Eagle County Grassroots Conservatives, a right-wing group supporting indicted conspiracy theorists and insurrection participants.
- Christina Carlino (HD-27) doesn’t believe it’s “the place of our government to control every aspect of our life” yet supports taking away reproductive choices and allowing state-sanctioned forced birth.
- Vanessa Warren-DeMott (HD-29) promoted the Qanon Wayfair conspiracy theory, believing the online retailer is engaged in a secret child sex trafficking operation (they’re not). She attended a rally for Colorado’s FEC United, a group with an armed militia wing run by election conspiracist Joe Oltmann, who has called for the mass execution of political opponents.
- Jonathan Ambler (HD-46) praised the decision overturning Roe v. Wade and called the Reproductive Health Equity Act “the most extreme abortion law in the country’s history, effectively allowing infanticide.”
- Ryan Gonzalez (HD-50) is a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, a conservative networking organization that has had speakers such as James Lindsay, a proponent of the “white genocide” theory.
- Shelli Shaw (HD-59) expressed support for the rioters on January 6th and predicted a future civil war. She claimed that “Antifa, BLM activists, and anarchists” were behind the insurrection and that there were “falsified records” and “evidence of fraud” in the 2020 election.
The Colorado GOP’s extremist candidates in the Senate include:
- Stephen Varela (SD-3) exploited his position as the vice president of the Chavez Huerta K-12 Preparatory Academy Board to kick out a basketball tournament, which provided scholarships to students, so that the GOP could use the space for their county convention. These actions led to a teacher walkout demanding that Varela and the school board president resign.
- Matt Solomon (SD-8) joined a lawsuit with the gun extremist group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners to overturn the popular universal background check law and the high-capacity magazine ban implemented after the Aurora theater shooting.
- Dennis Hisey (SD-11) is an anti-abortion candidate. During the debate on the Reproductive Health Equity Act in the Colorado Senate, Hisey tweeted, “‘My body my choice?’ Absolutely. But that doesn’t apply to the separate body with unique DNA in the womb. Tonight is the night we fight for the unborn!”
- Rob Woodward (SD-15) has made public racist comments and pushed abortion disinformation. He has used the term “colored people” when referring to communities of color and introduced a bill to create a doctor-patient relationship for any aborted fetus “born alive” after a failed abortion. Similar bills have been called by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists “gross legislative interference into the practice of medicine, putting politicians between women and their trusted doctors.”
- Courtney Potter (SD-24) posted her support for an armed militia at a ballot drop box and is a staunch anti-vaxxer.
- Tim Walsh (SD-20) supported using public funds to support private religious schools and gave max-out donations to extremists like Dan Montoya and Courtney Potter.
- Thomas Kim (SD-27) is endorsed by multiple anti-choice politicians, including former Colorado Senate President John Andrews, who has made Islamophobic statements. During his campaign kickoff, Kim said, “I do not believe our country is based on systematic racism.”
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