We’ve thoroughly documented the strategy of Democrats and affiliated groups using birth control and abortion as their “closing argument” in campaigns, both in the presidential race and U.S. Senate and House races, including Colorado. It’s even happening in state legislative races.
Speaking at the Centennial Institute in August, Debbie Brown of the Colorado Women’s Alliance spoke on gender-gap politics, the 2010 Colorado Senate race, and tactics deployed in a close race.
“Women also vote later than men,” she said. “So a lot of times, the swing women voters in the suburbs are thinking about it. And so advertising blitzes at the last minute makes a huge impact on them.”
Now, a Colorado independent expenditure group is smearing the Colorado Women’s Alliance (CWA) in a guilt-by-association mailer; only they had to invent the guilt.
The Colorado Accountable Government Alliance (CAGA) was recently described by The Denver Post’s Vincent Carroll in a column titled, “Millionaires for gutter politics.”
“Over the past five years, the second- and third-highest individual Colorado donors to political campaigns have been [Tim] Gill and [Pat] Stryker (Congressman Jared Polis is No. 1). And more power to them for commitment to their causes,” wrote Caroll.
“It’s hard to get too starry eyed about this idealism, however, when year after year they consent to the tactics of the gutter.”
CWA’s name is featured on a mailer that attacks State House candidate Jennifer George, a Republican from Colorado Springs. The flyer described CWA as a “radical anti-birth control front group” that “wants to outlaw common forms of birth control.”
The truth is that CWA doesn’t focus on social issues, and has built both its coalition and its arguments entirely around economics. As Brown recently wrote in a Denver Post op-ed (“Brown: GOP: Break up with Obama“):
“Even pro-choice GOP women at a Colorado Women’s Alliance roundtable concluded the economy trumps everything, even social issues that they care about deeply, in their decision this election cycle. They felt the Democrats’ economic policies hurt women.”
The CWA has sent a cease-and-desist letter to CAGA’s agent, Julie Wells, insisting that they stop lying about the group, according to a CWA press release…
“CAGA’s characterization of the Colorado Women’s Alliance as a ‘radical anti-birth control front-group’ and CAGA’s claim that the Colorado Women’s Alliance ‘wants to outlaw common forms of birth control’ are baseless and without merit.”
“The CWA has never issued any statement opposing a woman’s personal choice to use birth control. The CWA has also never sought to outlaw any common form of birth control. Any statements by CAGA to the contrary are both patently false and misleading.”
Adding to CAGA’s dishonesty and manipulation is the fact that legal birth control isn’t even on the table as a legislative agenda item in the state. The campaign literature is simply an effort to defeat a Republican candidate and help Democrats gain control of the state House (narrowly controlled by Republicans) in order to pursue their own agenda.
Coloradans will remember the 2004 election, when some of the same wealthy backers now affiliated with CAGA poured money into state legislative races, giving Democrats control over both houses for the first time in 40 years – even as Pres. George W. Bush was winning Colorado and re-election nationally.
In the current presidential year, with Colorado hotly contested, they’re no doubt looking to repeat that feat of gaining political control of the state.
[Note: Citizen Media, publisher of WhoSaidYouSaid.com, donated to the Colorado Women's Alliance in support of the "I Care About the Economy" project.]
