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Opinion | Morgan Liddick: Dough! Democrats’ deep pockets highlight hypocrisy

Morgan Liddick lives in Summit County. His column appears in every Tuesday in the Summit Daily News.
btrollinger@summitdaily.com |

Two weeks left. At which point we’ll discover if Colorado’s political future is for sale to the highest bidder. At present it looks as though it mostly won’t be: Democrats looked to be foiled in their attempt to buy the state delegation.

You read that right. For all the squealing from the Left about “money in politics,” they are the really big spenders in Colorado. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of Oct. 18 liberal and Democrat groups have outspent conservative and Republican in Colorado races by about 15 percent, $24 to $20 million. The race-buying champ is again California’s uber-left fat cat Tom Steyer, who has shoveled $5.7 million into Colorado, principally targeting the Senate race. Steyer has pledged to crush the Keystone pipeline, promising to reward its foes and punish its supporters — thereby enhancing his personal portfolio: he’s invested in a competitor and he wants your help to become even richer.

Other heavy weight Democrat donors in Colorado include the League of Conservation Voters, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Majority PAC; the first two, as well as Steyer, have outspent the Republicans’ biggest funder, Crossroads GPS. All four of the leading Democrat donor groups outspent the next two Republican organizations, the National Republican Campaign Committee and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose conservatism is doubted by some. And that’s only part of the story.



Nationally, the biggest donor in partisan political campaigns is not Karl Rove, or the Koch brothers — that bogeyman the Left loves to shake at the ignorant and credulous. The biggest donors are unions. According to the Department of Labor, which tracks this information, over the past 10 years labor unions have dumped about $3.3 billion into various races around the country. Billion with a “b.” This year in Colorado union groups have contributed over $3 million in cash, but their involvement is far greater. The National Education Association; Service Employees International Union; State, Local and Municipal Employees’ Union and others have provided manpower for sympathetic politicians’ canvassers, phone banks, polling and whatnot over the past six months and more. And do not doubt: like Mr. Steyer, they all expect a quid-pro-quo. Nor is that all.

The “Godfather of the Left” in America is George Soros. A multi-billionaire currency trader and arbitrager, Mr. Soros cripples national economies for fun and profit — one reason he has been convicted of market manipulation in his native Hungary and market fraud in France. He has also been working assiduously to establish a euro-socialist style-state here; over the past 10 years he has spent at least $550 million funding various Left-leaning organizations, most of it passed through a variety of shell foundations and front nonprofits to make it more difficult to trace. That’s more than 10 times the amount given by the Koch brothers. In 2013 alone, Soros’ Open Society Policy Center donated over $11 million to various organizations on the left. Haven’t heard of this? That’s probably because most U.S. media regard Leftist spending on politics as right and proper, while donations from the right are a tool of Satan. And that’s not the only problem.



Organizations like Public Campaign, which advocate campaign “reform,” usually meaning a return to the Left’s overwhelming superiority in campaign money and manpower, are illustrations of how incestuous the relationship between the Democrat party, the one-sided “reform” movement and the federal bureaucracy has become. Case in point: the recently-exposed tweets of Public Campaign’s senior program advisor Susan Anderson, wife of former IRS Director Douglas Shulmann. While Mr. Schulmann’s IRS was targeting conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status, Ms. Anderson was tweeting effusively about her attendance at a number of Occupy events. On Dec. 6, 2011, she exhorted the Twitterverse to “Come down to the Mall and tell your 99% story!” And Ms. Anderson is only one among many.

Insider friends. Deep pockets. Huge reserves of manpower. Not to mention whacky partisans like Elizabeth Warren, willing to tell any fib or spin any yarn necessary to elect her far-left cronies. How is it possible that Republican candidates are even competitive in Colorado?

Because Coloradans are smarter than the Democrat party thinks we are. Because we realize that women are more than a walking set of genitalia, obsessed solely with their ability to obtain an abortion anytime, anywhere. Because we can read the state Constitution, so we know what a school board is required to do. Because we are unimpressed with politicians who promise “no negative ads” while their minions invent ever-more-preposterous smears. Because in Colorado, money doesn’t always buy the result one wants — ask Michael Bloomberg.

Tuesday, Nov. 4 is Election Day. Vote, and disappoint Democrats; there’s nothing more irritating than not getting what you’ve paid for.

Morgan Liddick writes a weekly column.


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