PERRY: Aurora lawmaker’s reckless recall gambit is political theater at its worst

Voters need to bring down the curtain fast on Aurora Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky’s kabuki clown act insisting that the region’s new district attorney must be fired in a recall election.

Just barely six months into her term, 18th Judicial District Attorney Amy Padden faces a recall effort created and spearheaded by Jurinsky.

Yep. It’s the same Jurinsky who is the center of nearly every exhausting and sometimes dangerous political performance on Aurora’s government stage. It’s the same first-term, at-large city lawmaker who’s facing her own election battle this fall. And it’s the same tense-and-terse politico who has for about a year snuggled up to the Trump campaign in an outlandish melodrama focusing on a grotesque anti-immigrant scheme to rid the city of Venezuelans.

Now, Jurinsky has invented an effort, along with some other usual statewide Republican activist suspects, to claim that Padden has mishandled a juvenile vehicular homicide case and others. As is almost always the case, the facts available simply do not support the new claims of villainy in Jurinsky’s latest epic opera.

This recall is not about justice. It’s about drama, misinformation and opportunism. Jurinsky is using a deeply tragic case to stoke outrage without presenting a single piece of verifiable evidence of misconduct.

This is nothing more than revenge partisan politics seeping down from the corrupt regime of Donald Trump into the already complicated lives of people in Aurora, Centennial and Arapahoe County.

By pursuing this flat and embarrassing dramatic scene, Jurinsky is undermining the rule of law and further politicizing Colorado’s judicial process. And she does this at great public expense.

Her target, Padden, assumed office Jan. 14. One of the realities of the local political audience Jurinsky and other Republicans have found so irksome and inconvenient is that Aurora and Arapahoe County are now dominated by Democratic Party elected officials, other than the city council. Democratic votes have so outnumbered Republican votes in the past few elections that the party had to drag former GOP Arapahoe County DA Carol Chambers out of her long-gone career in an effort to even find a GOP opponent to run against Padden last November.

Not only does this transparent recall road show fall flat on plot and verse, Jurinsky is playing to an audience that doesn’t much appreciate the far-right cornball karaoke.

One of the central claims in Jurinsky’s campaign is that Padden allowed a teen-age, undocumented immigrant who killed 24-year-old Kaitlin Weaver in a car-crash while speeding at over 90 mph to receive just two years of probation. The tragedy of Weaver’s death is real and deeply painful, but it’s separate from Jurinsky’s narrative, which hinges on a dangerous distortion of both fact and law.

Under Colorado law, any case involving a juvenile is confidential. This means Padden and her office are legally prohibited from publicly discussing the specifics of the case, including sentencing rationale or prior prosecutorial commitments. This confidentiality exists to protect due process rights and to promote rehabilitation. That is a fundamental principle of juvenile justice.

Despite that, Jurinsky has continued to demand public answers that Padden cannot legally provide. The councilmember has cited unconfirmed media reports and social media posts to build her case. Those sources lack the transparency and accountability of official court records, which remain sealed by law.

There is no verified evidence that Padden or her team acted improperly, negligently, or in contradiction to state guidelines.

What Jurinsky does make a strong case for, inadvertently, is persuading state lawmakers to allow for at least enough information about juvenile justice cases, especially when there is a fatality, to help the public understand what’s actually happening.

We don’t know the terms of the probation in this case, because Padden won’t, and can’t, divulge them. It’s unclear whether probation includes counseling, some other kind of rehabilitation or what.

Also, the two years of probation and mandated community service were determined under the juvenile justice system’s statutory guidelines, which emphasize accountability and rehabilitation over incarceration. This sentencing was approved by a judge, not Padden.

The claim that Padden “overrode” a previous DA’s pledge to seek the maximum penalty remains completely unsubstantiated at this point.

In addition to the juvenile case, Jurinsky has pointed to the handling of Solomon Galligan, a man with a lengthy history of mental health issues who has now been ruled mentally unfit to stand trial. He is accused of wandering onto a school playground in an incoherent daze and trying to grab a kid during recess.

In a recent statement, Padden refuted Jurinsky’s misleading claims that her office had simply let Galligan go free. Galligan is being held in a state mental hospital, receiving inpatient psychiatric care.

While Jurinsky and her supporters may not like it, in the United States, insanity and mental incompetency are an affirmative defense. Up until now, we have refrained from prosecuting and executing people who are so mentally deranged that they are incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Padden rightly noted that decisions regarding competency and dismissal are not up to prosecutors. They are judicial decisions governed by state law. A court, not the district attorney, ruled Galligan unfit for trial. 

Padden is actively advocating for reform of the current state competency dismissal statute. It’s a law she publicly disagrees with. That shows leadership, not negligence. 

Jurinsky, meanwhile, offers a campaign built on a simplistic, binary view of justice: punish harshly or be punished politically.

The real science contradicts that “lock ‘em up” mentality, ushered out of Colorado in the 1980s. It simply costs taxpayers billions in prison and jail costs and boosts recidivism, creating real criminals out of miscreants.

This reckless approach is not justice. It’s demagoguery.

The recall effort itself is not just a distraction. It’s a costly one.

Arapahoe County and state election officials estimate that a special recall election would cost more than $860,000.

That money could be used to hire more cops, which the dearth of, rarely on public patrol, is part of the problem. The money could be used to expand mental health services, fund restorative justice programs, or improve police training.

Instead, those dollars are being burned on a politically motivated campaign that has yet to demonstrate any legitimate basis.

Don’t be fooled. This is not an isolated grassroots outcry. It’s the latest scene in a partisan playbook designed to remove a lawfully elected official under flimsy pretenses.

Jurinsky’s campaign is so far supported by attorney Suzanne Taheri, a long-time Republican political operative who previously represented GOP Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman in an unsuccessful attempt to restructure the city’s government.

Recall mechanisms exist to protect the public from serious abuses of power. They do not serve as political do-overs or emotional responses to painful tragedies. Using them prematurely or without cause erodes the democratic process and weakens the institutions that ensure justice is carried out fairly and legally.

No one has provided any credible detail or evidence so far showing that Padden has done anything to warrant removal from office. 

Jurinsky’s crusade, by contrast, has been reckless, inflammatory, and devoid of substance. In using public grief as a tool for political leverage, she disrespects the very memory of the lives she claims to champion.

We can and should hold elected prosecutors accountable. And state lawmakers must work to provide more transparency in the justice system, something the Sentinel and every other media entity in Colorado have long clamored for.

Accountability, however, demands facts, not speculation. It requires evidence, not innuendo. It depends on law, not mob rule. Voters should reject signing a petition to move it forward, and we all should reject the toxic politics behind this weary show.

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com