Denver, CO – Sixteen Colorado Republican Legislators received failing liberty grades. This is a disgrace, and as a citizen, you should be concerned. The idea is to fight the liberal onslaught at the State Capitol, not join it.
The liberty ratings are produced by the Republican Liberty Caucus of Colorado. We covered this story last Monday, but now we are going to do a little deeper dive.
The House Republicans who were given an “F” grade are (as of our most recent check:
- Richard Holtorf (53)
- Lois Landgraf (55)
- Colin Larson (51)
- Rodney Pelton (55)
- Matt Soper (57)
- Perry Will (55)
- James Wilson (55)
The Republican Liberty Caucus of Colorado produces the liberty ratings. Note: These ratings are subject to change as new bills are introduced and reviewed. We have written about these ratings on a few occasions (HERE, HERE, and HERE). We like ratings because it gives voters both a snapshot and a comprehensive analysis of what their legislator is up to at the Colorado State Capitol.
This may come as a shock to you, but politicians lie! What a lot of politicians say on the campaign trail, simply isn’t true. Too many politicians only want your vote and will tell you what they think you want to hear. Well, ratings help compare what the politician is telling you to what they’re doing.
We are a conservative news website. This means we try to tell the truth, without a liberal persuasive narrative like in the lamestream media. Our concern is that the conservative brand is being tarnished in Colorado.
Some Republicans seem to make it their mission to ensure “conservative” and “Republican” are mutually exclusive. This is bad for Colorado, and these Republicans need to be called out. We will list the culprits and give you some of the examples of why they earned their “F” ratings.
What we find interesting, Colin Larson is the only legislator from the Metro Denver Area; he is from South Jefferson County. Holtorf (Who replaced conservative Kimmi Lewis when she went back to the Lord in December 2019) and Pelton represent all of the Eastern Plains. Soper, Wilson, and Will are from the Western Slope. Landgraf is in her eighth and final year; she is term-limited out of her conservative Southern El Paso County District.
This isn’t an excuse for voting the wrong way, but generally, legislators from the outlying areas vote for pork for their districts. That may affect their scores, but it is no excuse.
So, let’s point out a couple of bad bills that affected these scores. We’ll start with the low-hanging fruit. Colin Larson ran a pro-Obamacare bill with two Democrats (HB20-1086). Landgraf and Soper joined Larson as three of the four Republicans who voted for this monstrosity. Larson also was the only Republican who voted for the “Crown Act” (HB20-1048), an open-ended “anti-discrimination” law that opens up most businesses to lawsuits based on “ethnic” hairstyles. There is too much to write about Larson, so let’s find some other nexus votes.
HB20-1007, The Diverse Kindergarten Through 12th Grade Educator Workforce Report bill caught six of these seven legislators (Soper didn’t vote for it). Here is a quote from the Bill Summary:
The bill directs the department of higher education and the department of education to convene a workgroup on diversity in the educator workforce (workgroup).
Colorado Legislative Service, Bill Summary HB 20-1007
This bill creates a workgroup that seeks to promote diversity in education. In our view, this is a massive expansion of Affirmative Action in Education. Workgroups, Study Committees, and Task Forces are how legislators drum up support for future lousy legislation. They fund these groups with a small appropriation. These groups have a bunch of meetings to promote their cause. Then legislation is proposed to codify whatever crazy ideas they entertained. The laws that germanate from these entities always result in more government and less freedom.
You can check out the Liberty Scorecard for yourself, HERE. You can click on any legislator and find out about how their votes match up against liberty.
This is a great tool to hold your local politician accountable.
What do you think about these legislator’s low scores? Do you think ratings are important and useful? What are you going to do to hold these politicians accountable? Please post your comments below and on our social media!
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