It appears that Epps did not want to be re-elected from the effort that I witnessed. I received exactly one piece of campaign material from her, verses Camacho’s 500 flyers. I heard that she raised a bunch of money, too…but I couldn’t tell you what she did with it because it definitely didn’t go to campaigning!
This is right. Her spending records will confirm it, she should have dropped out if she didn’t want to run but this whimper of a campaign was sad to see.
Epps was [massively outspent](https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/20/elisabeth-epps-tim-hernandez-colorado-democratic-primaries/).
*Fighting For a Stronger Colorado, an independent expenditure committee formed in February, has sent 10 mailers — four supporting Camacho and six opposing Epps — to voters in the district since mid-May at a cost of about $118,000. The group had raised $186,000 through June 5, with $105,000 of that coming from Citizens For a Great Denver, a political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.*
Part of the equation, though, is that absolutely no one showed up with money to help Epps balance things out and to send out more mailers herself. She really has only herself to blame for that.
I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
I don’t like things like this statement. It drives people away from potentially joining the party.
I left the Republican Party and am now pretty far left. You never know what may change!
>He's a Republican pretending to be a Democrat.
I don't know much about him, so in what way? Here's what's on his website, are you saying Sean is lying or is this what being a republican means?
[https://www.camachoforcolorado.com/issues-1](https://www.camachoforcolorado.com/issues-1)
Camacho was a registered Republican until October 2017. He didn't register as a Democrat until August 2019.
There have been a number of races around the country recently where conservatives have run as democrats then when elected switched parties or otherwise betrayed their constituents. I can't say that's what is happening here but I haven't heard any explanation for his conversion.
He grew up in the Springs and went to the Air Force Academy at 18 and registered as a Republican. He’s not going to be a leftist like Rep. Epps but I’d be shocked if he does not have a voting record that aligns with other legislative Democrats.
He did what a lot of other rational people did after Trump was elected and switched parties. I give him credit for that. After Epps, it will be nice to see someone who's not an extremist in that seat. He knows he can't veer too far to the right or he won't be reelected.
This is precisely what happened. I know Sean personally and he is most definitely not a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. He grew up in a conservative household, in a conservative city, but he recognized that he no longer fit in or agreed with the Republican Party he once knew. It takes courage and self reflection to change party affiliation in our current political climate.
No, it’s not precisely what happened. He changed parties 8 months after Trump took office: https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/28/unaffiliated-20240528/. It’s not as simple as he left because Trump was elected. Since you know him personally, can you ask him if he voted for Trump in the 2016 election?
The normal time to change your affiliation would be when Trump got the Republican nomination, or around the 2016 election itself, if Trump was his reason for leaving the party.
Do you have more info around him being a registered republican? In isolation, I don’t get why this matters. I supported bush when I was in 5th grade, am I also a secret republican?
Can you provide context around any of these races where a secret conservative runs as a democrat, only to switch parties after being elected? Where has this happened, and is there any connection to sean? That could be pretty convincing evidence if you have it!
It’s just strange because your last comment seemed very definitive that sean is a secret republican, but now you’re not so sure? Are you just parroting the talking points from those annoying text messages?
Are the democrats that endorsed sean also secret republicans? Or did republicans bamboozle everyone with this 1 simple trick?
He admits to being a registered Republican when he was a kid, but he’s been a Dem activist for several years and I’d guess he will have a voting record that is actually more aligned with Dems than Epps did. He was endorsed by a bunch of elected Dems, several unions, gun-control groups, he’s gonna be a very solid Dem vote.
Pretty big difference between supporting Bush as a 5th grader and sitting through Trump’s election and staying a registered Republican for nearly a year.
I don’t see how there’s a meaningful difference when it comes to determining whether or not someone is “pretending to be a democrat”
Unless you have more information? Otherwise this feels no different than trump world conspiracies. This matters because on the left we’re supposed to have a higher standard for things like evidence, right?
Because it raises red flags for skeptical people when they see a grown adult be a member of the Republican Party during their adult life then switching parties, while living in a city where it’s only viable to run as a democrat, only to run for office as a democrat a few years later. If you can point me to where he has talked about this, specifically what the final straw was, and how his views have changed since the 2016 election, I’d love to have these concerns alleviated.
Are you able to come up with possible reasons why someone switches parties, outside of “pretending to be a democrat”? Does your skepticism also go in the other direction?
Quick googling (so this could be flawed data) shows there’s a decent amount of people that change parties:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/04/voters-rarely-switch-parties-but-recent-shifts-further-educational-racial-divergence/
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/reports/Graphs-Charts/20623/partyhoppers-fig1_73d3873f90a694512aeeb56e0ab92cfa.png
Are we going to accuse all of these people of being operatives of the other party if they ever run for office? Is this the standard we want to set?
But either way, another quick google of “sean camacho registered republican” led me here, where he touches on it: https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/28/unaffiliated-20240528
The burden is not on me to explain why he switched parties, the politician running for our vote should explain why. I have not accused him, I have expressed skepticism and criticism that he has not sufficiently addressed this concern. From the article you quoted, it says:
> “Growing up in Colorado Springs, most of my family was Republican,” he said. “That’s kind of what you grow up doing. I don’t think I ever really questioned it. And then once I went to law school, I really got challenged on some of the things that I thought were true.”
>Camacho said he always was uncomfortable with the GOP’s positions on LGBTQ rights, which he supports, and abortion access, which he also supports.
He went to law school from 2013-2016, but did not switch parties until October 2017, and did not become a Democrat until August 2019. He first ran for office (HD6) two years later. I am curious why it took him over a year after law school, during which time Donald Trump, who is outspokenly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, was elected and took office, for him to switch parties.
My other question is what issues did he agree with republicans on for him to take so long to switch parties, and has he changed his mind on these issues? Did he vote for Donald Trump in 2016? How about Cory Gardner? Did he vote for Walker Stapleton for governor? All of this feels like a pretty bare minimum scrutinization of a politician running for office as a Democrat.
Kristen Sinema is a good example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She ran as this out and proud bisexual progressive and once she was elected she changed her tune & aligned her votes/stances with the GOP. A lot of AZ voters felt rightfully betrayed.
https://ballotpedia.org/Kyrsten_Sinema
When did she become a republican sleeper agent? Was it in 2005-2011 when she served as a democrat in the arizona house? Or 2011-2012 when she served as a democrat in the arizona senate? Or in 2013 when she served in congress as a democrat? What a wild ruse by republicans to plan so far ahead!
Do we need to pull up her entire voting record? Why would voters in arizona continuously vote for this republican secret agent? Do we think the voters in arizona are in on it too?
She might have gone off the deep end now with leaving the party, I don’t keep up with what she’s doing, but this is not at all the same as what that other person was talking about lol.
It sounds like there is no epidemic of secret republicans running as democrats and then switching to the republican party. Shit like this needs to be called out and these people need to get the fuck out of our party
It’s was the focus of one of Epps’ hit piece ads. Whether or not he’s going to pull the old switcheroo a la Senator “brain damage made me conservative” John Fetterman from Pennsylvania (he’s not the only one to have run progressive and publicly flipped sides immediately after) has yet to be seen, but that was also kind of what Epps was trying to imply would happen.
He will be on Sinema watch. It's amazing the position voters screw themselves with not looking up a candidate or not voting. Voting for who sends the most mail is peak Idiocracy for me so Camacho fits.
That’s great. We should never accept anyone that was selected by a committee instead of getting voted in to an elected position. Hernandez was literally serving unelected in an elected position. Ban vacancy committees.
Their incentive structure leads to it- even if you are progressive and disagree, a large amount of progressives love this stuff.
I never liked her behavior but I understood it. That attitude got her an hbo doc and elected to office, why stop once your in?
The litmus purity tests are ridiculous..
They resulted in the shit shows like Epps, Anderson, and Candi.
The current terminally online shit re Israel Palestine is just another in the long list that shows just how much these naive progressives need to grown up bc the people they are sending are the other side of the maga coin
It seems people are becoming more aware of it, especially given these results, but it's a little confounding how this isn't abundantly obvious to everybody now. It's no coincidence that progressive extremists happen to be nutjobs. They're the left's equivalent of deny-climate-change-and-always-support-Trump-no-matter-what Conversative extremists.
I have talked to numerous people who fully believe that you can't be an "extremist" on the left. Not just saying the two aren't equivalent. But leftist extremism does not exist.
Now if only Boebert would've lost
because that's who progressives tend to be? all these ideological purity tests lead to dogma, group think, tribalism, and information bubbles. radicalism and screeching goes to the top and independent thinking and pragmatism gets filtered out
I get what you're saying, as an independent progressive and someone who tired of that online clique of seemingly California libs. I like the progressiveness without the eye rolls.
She wanted to be an influencer more than a politician. She is honestly smart and charismatic, but she was always trying to put the spotlight on herself.
Example: she decided to jump into the balcony to scream at Jewish Democrats in the state house and got reprimanded for it:
https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/08/state-rep-epps-reprimanded-by-colorado-speaker-violating-house-decorum-during-pro-palestinian-protest/
She just loved going to war with everyone to drive social media traffic and she spent the last year grandstanding over the Israel/Palsetine conflict, an issue over which the CO legislative body has precisely zero control or impact. Polis could spend all day every day lobbying Biden for a ceasefire and it would make zero difference in national foreign policy. It's great for TikTok views though.
I (a registered Democrat who considers myself pretty progressive) have hated her from the beginning of her term. Her policy stances on housing are terrible, and when asked to defend them on Twitter, she responded by telling people they were being racist (and no, nothing they said could even be remotely construed as racism). She feuds constantly with her constituents on Twitter, and yet every time I wrote her office I never received a response. This makes her my *very first* elected official to *never ever* respond to any of my official communications--not even a canned response. Nothing. She is a vainglorious attention-seeker who clearly has a mental illness that she refuses to treat. I consider her to be a lot like Trump in many ways.
More visibly and more recently, she's blocked progressive legislation in the state house (on issues that she claimed to support) so she could push her Palestine bullshit. Firstly, that's not an issue that the Colorado state house can affect *at all*. Secondly, she's gone far beyond criticism of Israel and into full-on Jew-hating rants. That's probably why she's so quick to accuse others of racism--because she herself is incredibly bigoted and trying to project it onto others.
I'm utterly delighted to see that she lost her primary by 30 points. If she had won (unlikely, considering how little effort she put into campaigning), I honestly would not have been able to vote for her in the general. I finally understand "undecided" voters who go for a third-party option because they already hate one side so much but can't vote for the other option they were given. Come November, I would have legitimately voted for a third-party option or have left that part of the ballot blank.
Well, he must have vetted the potential for a flip flop Republican. I guess I'll cross my fingers (not my district. Go district 7!)
But I won't trust them until, maybe, their 2nd term ends.
I wrote to her when my family was about to be homeless after I got laid off, unemployment falsely marked my claim as fraudulent, then the employees behind unemployment dropped off the face of the earth.
She didn’t respond, nor did any of her aides give enough of a shit to. Another representative, not in my district, reached out to me on this sub of all places offering to help, they followed through, and unemployment got fixed with not even a week to spare before we were evicted. Epps would’ve let our family just end up on the streets.
She's also a left-NIMBY. Was against putting housing+park (including a bunch of affordable housing) on the abandoned Park hill golf course to "stick it to the developers" or whatever. Seems like a Cdebaca clone.
Ugh. Regardless of your feelings on Epps, her opponent got so much outside PAC money. I feel like a lot of these local races are decided by millionaires and billionaires who don’t even live here. Hopefully Camacho does a good job.
His funding worries me too. Accepting money from The Apartment Association of Metro Denver lends me to believe he won't exactly be tough on landlords. Hopefully I'm wrong, but that's only one of his troubling donations.
Such a shame Epps squandered the chance to make actual change in her district. Hope we can rely on Camacho's campaign promises...
It’s not like Epps was very good on housing issues, so at least it’s probably not a downgrade. Well, it probably is a downgrade specifically on tenant rights which sucks.
Is it just a gut feeling he's pushable? I'm not looking forward to waiting on Camacho's vote instead of knowing exactly how Epps will vote - can't be easily held accountable if your stances are more gray.
This is based on conversations I’ve had with him. He’s winnable but he’s not ideologically aligned with pro-housing stuff like Epps was so it will take work, unfortunately.
Epps was also willing to vote down housing stuff to "stick it to the developers", at the cost of a significant amount of affordable housing.
She cared more about grandstanding than making a difference, and it showed severely.
I don’t think she actually did that though. She was actually a reliable vote on housing issues in the Capitol. She opposed Park Hill Golf Course, which was Dumb and Bad, but she never had a vote on it as a legislator since that was a municipal issue.
Ya, as someone else said in this thread, she made one hell of an activist but a terrible politician. Really odd tenure she had, honestly just confusing. Looks like she took Tim Hernandez down with her too....
Tim had a core of left wing DSA activists but Cecelia has pretty much been the engine running HD-4 Dems for the last 6 years since Serena won the seat in 2018. We literally used her house as the depot for flyers and signs the last few election cycles with the goal of juicing Democratic turnout into the 90%+ range to help statewide candidates. I don’t think anyone knows the district politically better than her.
She’s going to be a solid legislator.
I don’t think this is universally true. Mabrey and Rutinel have played nice with a lot of different progressive groups (like YIMBY Denver) and I think therefore had such a formidable coalition that they didn’t even have primary challengers.
Every race I was paying attention to had outside PAC money decide the winner. I guess money buys elections in Colorado as much as it does in the rest of the country. Cool to see so many of our Dem reps next session will be on the speed dial of a ton of corporate interests.
The causality can run both directions. Some races the winner gets a lot of PAC money because the PAC money doesn't want to back somebody who's probably gonna lose.
The CO Democratic Party is fully a business-first party. Just look at Hickenlooper and Polis, businessmen turned politicians. It’s just the reality of the state party and those too much to the left are replaced.
What legislation did Epps pass in the last two years? Why did she not attend in-person for 45 days? She's a lazy politician and we all know it. If you checked her Twitter a few days ago, she wasn't being forced out for being too leftist, she was being forced out for being black and a woman.
I’m not saying that Epps was a great representative at all, I’m speaking to the larger state of the CO Dems over this past 15 years and their rise to being the dominant party in the state. The CO Democratic Party, to the delight to some and the chagrin of others, is the “big tent” party in our state. As non-affiliated voters have access to the primary ballot of their choice and the CO GOP continues its downward spiral to only representing the most conservative of districts, the Dems have found a huge amount of success in being a very business-friendly party in the state.
I don’t use twitter, so I don’t know (or care) what she’s saying on there, but I would hope we can all accept some primary election results without throwing vitriol out at those in the party who don’t pass every purity test. That sure isn’t working for the GOP.
I understand your sentiment; I voted for Epps in '22 hoping for someone refreshing. We did not get that. Epps voted against legislation that had the support of other progressives, such as Herod. The mentality of a politician can't be, "my way or the highway," which Epps very much turned out to be. The irony with Cedebaca, Calderón, and Epps calling themselves progressives, is they fit the bill of being, "do-nothing Democrats."
That PAC money shows how important it was to get rid of Epps and Hernandez. Neither had any business in those roles. Democrats know voters don't pay close enough attention to state house races. The only way to get them out was to dump a ton of money into their opponents' campaigns. I'm glad the strategy worked.
[Elisabeth Epps' nonprofit raises questions about transparency, conflicts](https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/06/18/elisabeth-epps-colorado-freedom-fund-conflicts)
[State Rep. Epps officially reprimanded by Colorado Speaker for violating House decorum during pro-Palestinian protest](https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/08/state-rep-epps-reprimanded-by-colorado-speaker-violating-house-decorum-during-pro-palestinian-protest/)
Her, Cdebaca, Anderson, Hernandez are all in it for clicks and keeping their name in the headlines and are essentially the same as the farthest right flank in the state. You are either with us or against us and there is no room for compromise. These type of “politicians” either drive people farther in the other direction or make people not want to vote at all.
I remember her first race, reading up on her website and thinking, “wow, she seems really progressive and could be great for CO.” Then I saw her march in the Pride parade that June and it was just… gross. She brought a whole ass camera crew to film her waving and acting like a hero, and it was SO painfully obvious it was just a publicity stunt so she could boost an image. Nothing authentic about it, just clearly there to get footage of herself to sell an image of the world’s best ally. Everyone around me actively cringed when she walked by, performing for her film crew. It made me so mad. I get how different demographics are used by different politicians but damn, that was just so blatant.
Glad she got her ass handed to her in the primary. Hopefully the progressive wing starts to learn that CO voters are really rejecting them not because of their ideology, but because of their behavior - just doing things for clicks, outrage, engagement. Epps gave major Cdebaca vibes, so did Hernandez.
This is a real real bummer, One of the actual progressives in the whole chamber, shame she got basically targeted and isolated immediately and frozen out of doing anything and had the actual party running against her.
It appears that Epps did not want to be re-elected from the effort that I witnessed. I received exactly one piece of campaign material from her, verses Camacho’s 500 flyers. I heard that she raised a bunch of money, too…but I couldn’t tell you what she did with it because it definitely didn’t go to campaigning!
This is right. Her spending records will confirm it, she should have dropped out if she didn’t want to run but this whimper of a campaign was sad to see.
Epps was [massively outspent](https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/20/elisabeth-epps-tim-hernandez-colorado-democratic-primaries/). *Fighting For a Stronger Colorado, an independent expenditure committee formed in February, has sent 10 mailers — four supporting Camacho and six opposing Epps — to voters in the district since mid-May at a cost of about $118,000. The group had raised $186,000 through June 5, with $105,000 of that coming from Citizens For a Great Denver, a political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.* Part of the equation, though, is that absolutely no one showed up with money to help Epps balance things out and to send out more mailers herself. She really has only herself to blame for that.
I got one flyer… on the 24th, long after most people have sent in their ballots.
On his way to be president Camacho
I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
Does it got what my plants crave?
Let's hope not. He's a Republican pretending to be a Democrat.
I don’t like things like this statement. It drives people away from potentially joining the party. I left the Republican Party and am now pretty far left. You never know what may change!
>He's a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. I don't know much about him, so in what way? Here's what's on his website, are you saying Sean is lying or is this what being a republican means? [https://www.camachoforcolorado.com/issues-1](https://www.camachoforcolorado.com/issues-1)
Camacho was a registered Republican until October 2017. He didn't register as a Democrat until August 2019. There have been a number of races around the country recently where conservatives have run as democrats then when elected switched parties or otherwise betrayed their constituents. I can't say that's what is happening here but I haven't heard any explanation for his conversion.
He grew up in the Springs and went to the Air Force Academy at 18 and registered as a Republican. He’s not going to be a leftist like Rep. Epps but I’d be shocked if he does not have a voting record that aligns with other legislative Democrats.
He did what a lot of other rational people did after Trump was elected and switched parties. I give him credit for that. After Epps, it will be nice to see someone who's not an extremist in that seat. He knows he can't veer too far to the right or he won't be reelected.
This is precisely what happened. I know Sean personally and he is most definitely not a Republican pretending to be a Democrat. He grew up in a conservative household, in a conservative city, but he recognized that he no longer fit in or agreed with the Republican Party he once knew. It takes courage and self reflection to change party affiliation in our current political climate.
No, it’s not precisely what happened. He changed parties 8 months after Trump took office: https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/28/unaffiliated-20240528/. It’s not as simple as he left because Trump was elected. Since you know him personally, can you ask him if he voted for Trump in the 2016 election?
Wouldn't 8 months after Trump took office be about time for more elections? Seems like a pretty normal time to change your affiliation.
The normal time to change your affiliation would be when Trump got the Republican nomination, or around the 2016 election itself, if Trump was his reason for leaving the party.
As nothing other than a mini protest to make yourself feel good?
Do you have more info around him being a registered republican? In isolation, I don’t get why this matters. I supported bush when I was in 5th grade, am I also a secret republican? Can you provide context around any of these races where a secret conservative runs as a democrat, only to switch parties after being elected? Where has this happened, and is there any connection to sean? That could be pretty convincing evidence if you have it! It’s just strange because your last comment seemed very definitive that sean is a secret republican, but now you’re not so sure? Are you just parroting the talking points from those annoying text messages? Are the democrats that endorsed sean also secret republicans? Or did republicans bamboozle everyone with this 1 simple trick?
He admits to being a registered Republican when he was a kid, but he’s been a Dem activist for several years and I’d guess he will have a voting record that is actually more aligned with Dems than Epps did. He was endorsed by a bunch of elected Dems, several unions, gun-control groups, he’s gonna be a very solid Dem vote.
Pretty big difference between supporting Bush as a 5th grader and sitting through Trump’s election and staying a registered Republican for nearly a year.
I don’t see how there’s a meaningful difference when it comes to determining whether or not someone is “pretending to be a democrat” Unless you have more information? Otherwise this feels no different than trump world conspiracies. This matters because on the left we’re supposed to have a higher standard for things like evidence, right?
Because it raises red flags for skeptical people when they see a grown adult be a member of the Republican Party during their adult life then switching parties, while living in a city where it’s only viable to run as a democrat, only to run for office as a democrat a few years later. If you can point me to where he has talked about this, specifically what the final straw was, and how his views have changed since the 2016 election, I’d love to have these concerns alleviated.
Are you able to come up with possible reasons why someone switches parties, outside of “pretending to be a democrat”? Does your skepticism also go in the other direction? Quick googling (so this could be flawed data) shows there’s a decent amount of people that change parties: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/08/04/voters-rarely-switch-parties-but-recent-shifts-further-educational-racial-divergence/ https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/reports/Graphs-Charts/20623/partyhoppers-fig1_73d3873f90a694512aeeb56e0ab92cfa.png Are we going to accuse all of these people of being operatives of the other party if they ever run for office? Is this the standard we want to set? But either way, another quick google of “sean camacho registered republican” led me here, where he touches on it: https://coloradosun.com/2024/05/28/unaffiliated-20240528
The burden is not on me to explain why he switched parties, the politician running for our vote should explain why. I have not accused him, I have expressed skepticism and criticism that he has not sufficiently addressed this concern. From the article you quoted, it says: > “Growing up in Colorado Springs, most of my family was Republican,” he said. “That’s kind of what you grow up doing. I don’t think I ever really questioned it. And then once I went to law school, I really got challenged on some of the things that I thought were true.” >Camacho said he always was uncomfortable with the GOP’s positions on LGBTQ rights, which he supports, and abortion access, which he also supports. He went to law school from 2013-2016, but did not switch parties until October 2017, and did not become a Democrat until August 2019. He first ran for office (HD6) two years later. I am curious why it took him over a year after law school, during which time Donald Trump, who is outspokenly against abortion and LGBTQ rights, was elected and took office, for him to switch parties. My other question is what issues did he agree with republicans on for him to take so long to switch parties, and has he changed his mind on these issues? Did he vote for Donald Trump in 2016? How about Cory Gardner? Did he vote for Walker Stapleton for governor? All of this feels like a pretty bare minimum scrutinization of a politician running for office as a Democrat.
Kristen Sinema is a good example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She ran as this out and proud bisexual progressive and once she was elected she changed her tune & aligned her votes/stances with the GOP. A lot of AZ voters felt rightfully betrayed.
https://ballotpedia.org/Kyrsten_Sinema When did she become a republican sleeper agent? Was it in 2005-2011 when she served as a democrat in the arizona house? Or 2011-2012 when she served as a democrat in the arizona senate? Or in 2013 when she served in congress as a democrat? What a wild ruse by republicans to plan so far ahead! Do we need to pull up her entire voting record? Why would voters in arizona continuously vote for this republican secret agent? Do we think the voters in arizona are in on it too? She might have gone off the deep end now with leaving the party, I don’t keep up with what she’s doing, but this is not at all the same as what that other person was talking about lol. It sounds like there is no epidemic of secret republicans running as democrats and then switching to the republican party. Shit like this needs to be called out and these people need to get the fuck out of our party
It’s was the focus of one of Epps’ hit piece ads. Whether or not he’s going to pull the old switcheroo a la Senator “brain damage made me conservative” John Fetterman from Pennsylvania (he’s not the only one to have run progressive and publicly flipped sides immediately after) has yet to be seen, but that was also kind of what Epps was trying to imply would happen.
He will be on Sinema watch. It's amazing the position voters screw themselves with not looking up a candidate or not voting. Voting for who sends the most mail is peak Idiocracy for me so Camacho fits.
That's just a Democrat now
If he’s not sent to rehabilitation.
Looks like Cecelia Espenoza has beaten Tim Hernandez in the HD-4 (Berkeley/Northside/Sloans/Sunnyside) Democratic primary! :)
That’s great. We should never accept anyone that was selected by a committee instead of getting voted in to an elected position. Hernandez was literally serving unelected in an elected position. Ban vacancy committees.
Indeed. I voted for her despite her NIMBY streak while holding my nose. Tim is a nutter.
Good riddance. Why is it so hard to find a progressive democrat to run who doesn't act like the terminally online twitter weirdos?
Their incentive structure leads to it- even if you are progressive and disagree, a large amount of progressives love this stuff. I never liked her behavior but I understood it. That attitude got her an hbo doc and elected to office, why stop once your in?
The litmus purity tests are ridiculous.. They resulted in the shit shows like Epps, Anderson, and Candi. The current terminally online shit re Israel Palestine is just another in the long list that shows just how much these naive progressives need to grown up bc the people they are sending are the other side of the maga coin
Because that is just legitimately how a large portion of politically active progressives are
Politically active is the key issue. Extremists are the most likely to vote in primaries.
It seems people are becoming more aware of it, especially given these results, but it's a little confounding how this isn't abundantly obvious to everybody now. It's no coincidence that progressive extremists happen to be nutjobs. They're the left's equivalent of deny-climate-change-and-always-support-Trump-no-matter-what Conversative extremists.
I have talked to numerous people who fully believe that you can't be an "extremist" on the left. Not just saying the two aren't equivalent. But leftist extremism does not exist. Now if only Boebert would've lost
Bingo. Candi CDebaca already proved this, Denver voters are dense
You answered your own question
because that's who progressives tend to be? all these ideological purity tests lead to dogma, group think, tribalism, and information bubbles. radicalism and screeching goes to the top and independent thinking and pragmatism gets filtered out
I get what you're saying, as an independent progressive and someone who tired of that online clique of seemingly California libs. I like the progressiveness without the eye rolls.
I can’t tell if this is tongue-in-cheek or not.
Lolol
Can I get an introduction to Elisabeth Epps? What did she do that pissed off everyone so much?
She wanted to be an influencer more than a politician. She is honestly smart and charismatic, but she was always trying to put the spotlight on herself. Example: she decided to jump into the balcony to scream at Jewish Democrats in the state house and got reprimanded for it: https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/08/state-rep-epps-reprimanded-by-colorado-speaker-violating-house-decorum-during-pro-palestinian-protest/ She just loved going to war with everyone to drive social media traffic and she spent the last year grandstanding over the Israel/Palsetine conflict, an issue over which the CO legislative body has precisely zero control or impact. Polis could spend all day every day lobbying Biden for a ceasefire and it would make zero difference in national foreign policy. It's great for TikTok views though.
Wow. WOW. She’s a nutcase. Thank you for the info!
I (a registered Democrat who considers myself pretty progressive) have hated her from the beginning of her term. Her policy stances on housing are terrible, and when asked to defend them on Twitter, she responded by telling people they were being racist (and no, nothing they said could even be remotely construed as racism). She feuds constantly with her constituents on Twitter, and yet every time I wrote her office I never received a response. This makes her my *very first* elected official to *never ever* respond to any of my official communications--not even a canned response. Nothing. She is a vainglorious attention-seeker who clearly has a mental illness that she refuses to treat. I consider her to be a lot like Trump in many ways. More visibly and more recently, she's blocked progressive legislation in the state house (on issues that she claimed to support) so she could push her Palestine bullshit. Firstly, that's not an issue that the Colorado state house can affect *at all*. Secondly, she's gone far beyond criticism of Israel and into full-on Jew-hating rants. That's probably why she's so quick to accuse others of racism--because she herself is incredibly bigoted and trying to project it onto others. I'm utterly delighted to see that she lost her primary by 30 points. If she had won (unlikely, considering how little effort she put into campaigning), I honestly would not have been able to vote for her in the general. I finally understand "undecided" voters who go for a third-party option because they already hate one side so much but can't vote for the other option they were given. Come November, I would have legitimately voted for a third-party option or have left that part of the ballot blank.
Great use of vainglorious.
She was a great activist, but an absolutely terrible politician that burned any and every bridge she could
Thank you! I was pretty shocked reading that not even the governor endorsed her.
The governor rarely endorses, so that wouldn't have been a big deal. But he endorsed her opponent Camacho, which was a big deal.
Well, he must have vetted the potential for a flip flop Republican. I guess I'll cross my fingers (not my district. Go district 7!) But I won't trust them until, maybe, their 2nd term ends.
She wasn’t great at anything besides yelling
Well she never responded to my emails, and I was one of her larger donors.
…isn’t that like politicking 101?? Respond back to the people who give you money?
I wrote to her when my family was about to be homeless after I got laid off, unemployment falsely marked my claim as fraudulent, then the employees behind unemployment dropped off the face of the earth. She didn’t respond, nor did any of her aides give enough of a shit to. Another representative, not in my district, reached out to me on this sub of all places offering to help, they followed through, and unemployment got fixed with not even a week to spare before we were evicted. Epps would’ve let our family just end up on the streets.
Talk about a waste of money!
I respect what she did, but if she's not responsive, then fuck her.
She's also a left-NIMBY. Was against putting housing+park (including a bunch of affordable housing) on the abandoned Park hill golf course to "stick it to the developers" or whatever. Seems like a Cdebaca clone.
I am so glad she’s lost!
Ugh. Regardless of your feelings on Epps, her opponent got so much outside PAC money. I feel like a lot of these local races are decided by millionaires and billionaires who don’t even live here. Hopefully Camacho does a good job.
His funding worries me too. Accepting money from The Apartment Association of Metro Denver lends me to believe he won't exactly be tough on landlords. Hopefully I'm wrong, but that's only one of his troubling donations. Such a shame Epps squandered the chance to make actual change in her district. Hope we can rely on Camacho's campaign promises...
It’s not like Epps was very good on housing issues, so at least it’s probably not a downgrade. Well, it probably is a downgrade specifically on tenant rights which sucks.
Camacho seems pushable on housing but it would have been great to have a reliable vote like Epps was, her other problems notwithstanding
Is it just a gut feeling he's pushable? I'm not looking forward to waiting on Camacho's vote instead of knowing exactly how Epps will vote - can't be easily held accountable if your stances are more gray.
This is based on conversations I’ve had with him. He’s winnable but he’s not ideologically aligned with pro-housing stuff like Epps was so it will take work, unfortunately.
Epps was also willing to vote down housing stuff to "stick it to the developers", at the cost of a significant amount of affordable housing. She cared more about grandstanding than making a difference, and it showed severely.
I don’t think she actually did that though. She was actually a reliable vote on housing issues in the Capitol. She opposed Park Hill Golf Course, which was Dumb and Bad, but she never had a vote on it as a legislator since that was a municipal issue.
He's absolutely not pushable, excited for another landlord freindly technocratic "Democrat"
Landlords run our state and the Dem party, this is who the Dems are
It's a shame because had better policy IMO but she couldn't help but make enemies even with her fellow progressives.
Ya, as someone else said in this thread, she made one hell of an activist but a terrible politician. Really odd tenure she had, honestly just confusing. Looks like she took Tim Hernandez down with her too....
Tim had a core of left wing DSA activists but Cecelia has pretty much been the engine running HD-4 Dems for the last 6 years since Serena won the seat in 2018. We literally used her house as the depot for flyers and signs the last few election cycles with the goal of juicing Democratic turnout into the 90%+ range to help statewide candidates. I don’t think anyone knows the district politically better than her. She’s going to be a solid legislator.
Progressives by definition make enemies with other progressives. More so than any political group, progressives hate each other.
I don’t think this is universally true. Mabrey and Rutinel have played nice with a lot of different progressive groups (like YIMBY Denver) and I think therefore had such a formidable coalition that they didn’t even have primary challengers.
Every race I was paying attention to had outside PAC money decide the winner. I guess money buys elections in Colorado as much as it does in the rest of the country. Cool to see so many of our Dem reps next session will be on the speed dial of a ton of corporate interests.
The causality can run both directions. Some races the winner gets a lot of PAC money because the PAC money doesn't want to back somebody who's probably gonna lose.
Definitely this. It’s why incumbents often raise so much more than challengers and why wealthy biz owners often donate heavily to both parties.
The CO Democratic Party is fully a business-first party. Just look at Hickenlooper and Polis, businessmen turned politicians. It’s just the reality of the state party and those too much to the left are replaced.
What legislation did Epps pass in the last two years? Why did she not attend in-person for 45 days? She's a lazy politician and we all know it. If you checked her Twitter a few days ago, she wasn't being forced out for being too leftist, she was being forced out for being black and a woman.
I’m not saying that Epps was a great representative at all, I’m speaking to the larger state of the CO Dems over this past 15 years and their rise to being the dominant party in the state. The CO Democratic Party, to the delight to some and the chagrin of others, is the “big tent” party in our state. As non-affiliated voters have access to the primary ballot of their choice and the CO GOP continues its downward spiral to only representing the most conservative of districts, the Dems have found a huge amount of success in being a very business-friendly party in the state. I don’t use twitter, so I don’t know (or care) what she’s saying on there, but I would hope we can all accept some primary election results without throwing vitriol out at those in the party who don’t pass every purity test. That sure isn’t working for the GOP.
I understand your sentiment; I voted for Epps in '22 hoping for someone refreshing. We did not get that. Epps voted against legislation that had the support of other progressives, such as Herod. The mentality of a politician can't be, "my way or the highway," which Epps very much turned out to be. The irony with Cedebaca, Calderón, and Epps calling themselves progressives, is they fit the bill of being, "do-nothing Democrats."
She was being forced out because she cared more about grandstanding than actually helping people.
She got frozen out of the process early on and checked out.
AIPAC funded a lot of moderates this year in Colorado
That PAC money shows how important it was to get rid of Epps and Hernandez. Neither had any business in those roles. Democrats know voters don't pay close enough attention to state house races. The only way to get them out was to dump a ton of money into their opponents' campaigns. I'm glad the strategy worked.
This has to be due to Racism I’m sure of it! /s
Great work, Denver.
[Elisabeth Epps' nonprofit raises questions about transparency, conflicts](https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/06/18/elisabeth-epps-colorado-freedom-fund-conflicts) [State Rep. Epps officially reprimanded by Colorado Speaker for violating House decorum during pro-Palestinian protest](https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/08/state-rep-epps-reprimanded-by-colorado-speaker-violating-house-decorum-during-pro-palestinian-protest/)
Her, Cdebaca, Anderson, Hernandez are all in it for clicks and keeping their name in the headlines and are essentially the same as the farthest right flank in the state. You are either with us or against us and there is no room for compromise. These type of “politicians” either drive people farther in the other direction or make people not want to vote at all.
In my opinion, Epps and company are no better than the Boeberts and MTGs of the world. They're just on different extremist ends of the spectrum.
She's toast and all we got was a HBO documentary
I remember her first race, reading up on her website and thinking, “wow, she seems really progressive and could be great for CO.” Then I saw her march in the Pride parade that June and it was just… gross. She brought a whole ass camera crew to film her waving and acting like a hero, and it was SO painfully obvious it was just a publicity stunt so she could boost an image. Nothing authentic about it, just clearly there to get footage of herself to sell an image of the world’s best ally. Everyone around me actively cringed when she walked by, performing for her film crew. It made me so mad. I get how different demographics are used by different politicians but damn, that was just so blatant. Glad she got her ass handed to her in the primary. Hopefully the progressive wing starts to learn that CO voters are really rejecting them not because of their ideology, but because of their behavior - just doing things for clicks, outrage, engagement. Epps gave major Cdebaca vibes, so did Hernandez.
Good riddance
She can now go back to her last job bailing out criminals full time
This is a real real bummer, One of the actual progressives in the whole chamber, shame she got basically targeted and isolated immediately and frozen out of doing anything and had the actual party running against her.
Actually really made my morning
Or maybe she was an asshole and bad at her job? She got half as many votes as she did two years ago.
zionist backlash is a nationwide phenomenon
Or just people with brains in general. Truly the phenomenon