Griswold should resign and run for governor on her own time | WADHAMS | Opinion

It is often said that the most dangerous place in American politics is between a blindly ambitious candidate and a television camera.

In contrast to decades of dedicated service from Colorado’s former secretaries of state, incumbent Democrat Jena Griswold has made media attention her first, foremost and only pursuit over the past six years. And it finally caught up with her, as her incompetence has thrown Colorado’s election process into turmoil.

We now know four months ago – four months! – passwords for election computers have been made public in 63 of the 64 counties, reportedly by an employee of Griswold’s office, but this fact was not even known to Griswold until recently. Keep talking about her work on top.

Once she found out, she didn’t alert the 64 county clerks or other government officials, including Gov. Jared Polis. When the password exposure came to light, media master Griswold was initially unavailable for public comment.

When she reluctantly did media interviews, they were nothing short of PR disasters as she bobbed and weaved and refused to take responsibility for this attack on Colorado’s electoral process within the office she was elected to.

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It doesn’t stretch the imagination to believe that there is much more to this scandal than just an unnamed employee engaging in rogue behavior, but it will take more than Griswold’s “internal investigation” to find out more. The Denver District Attorney’s Office, the Colorado Attorney General, and even the FBI should get involved, just as they did when convicted and jailed Tina Peters was caught illegally tampering with election equipment in Mesa County.

Fortunately, 64 excellent county clerks in the state ultimately run Colorado elections and they will ensure that they run smoothly. Griswold’s hostile relationship with many clerks is well known.

Griswold capitalized on the Colorado electorate’s deep hostility toward then-President Donald Trump when she ousted Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams in 2018, and that same dynamic propelled her to reelection in 2022 against former Republican Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson. There is no way this fiasco would have happened under Williams or Anderson.

Griswold must resign. Her second term won’t end until the 2026 midterm elections, when open seats for governor, attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state will be on the ballot, along with U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who is running for a second term .

Not only can Colorado not afford two years of blindly partisan incompetence, Griswold is also not secretly planning to seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2026 – so her obsession with media attention while paying no attention to her job will be in overdrive to go.

Griswold would be one of several high-profile Democrats who could run for governor.

Gov. Jared Polis is uniquely qualified to appoint a real secretary of state to complete the term through 2026. In fact, there are three relatively recent examples where governors from different parties took up the challenge of appointing a new Secretary of State when that position was appointed. vacant.

Republican Secretary of State Vikki Buckley tragically died in office in July 1999, after being elected in 1994 and re-elected in 1998. Buckley was the first African-American woman elected Secretary of State.

Republican Governor Bill Owens appointed Arapahoe County Clerk Donetta Davidson to the office, which was almost unanimously applauded by county clerks across the state. Davidson had the unique distinction of previously serving as a county clerk in rural Bent County and later in suburban Arapahoe County.

Davidson resigned in 2005 after being appointed to Washington’s Election Assistance Commission. DC Owens appointed former State Senator Gigi Dennis of Pueblo to complete the term.

Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman was elected in 2006 but resigned in 2009 after being elected to the U.S. Congress from the Sixth Congressional District in 2008. Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter was not legally required to appoint a Republican to replace Coffman.

Ritter appointed former state Rep. Bernie Buescher of Grand Junction, who had also been the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1998. Buescher ran with Lt. Gov. Gail Schoettler, who was defeated by Owens. Owens became the first Republican governor to be elected in 28 years, and he remains the only Republican governor to have served in the last 50 years.

Interestingly, Republican women served as Secretary of State for 32 consecutive years from 1974 to 2006, including Mary Estill Buchanan, Natalie Meyer, Vikki Buckley, Donetta Davidson and Gigi Dennis.

Buescher served with distinction, but he was ousted in 2010 when 106,000 more Republicans voted than Democrats in the general election.

Not only is resigning the right thing to do in light of this password fiasco, it would also allow Griswold to run for governor full-time for the next two years — not that she wouldn’t have done so anyway, even as secretary of state.

Since she cannot run for re-election, her run for governor would give voters the opportunity to make their own judgments about her blindly partisan, media-obsessed, shoddy tenure as secretary of state.

And Colorado Republicans, who have been bogged down by Trump’s deep unpopularity over the past three election cycles as Democrats now have unlimited power at all levels, could be competitive in the 2026 gubernatorial election, especially if Griswold is the nominee.

Jena Griswold for Governor!

Dick Wadhams is a former Republican state chairman from Colorado who worked for U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong for nine years before running campaigns for U.S. Senators Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Governor Bill Owens.