PERRY: Gessler offers politics as unusual in Colorado

Growing older has been such a disappointment.

No flying cars. No calorie-free doughnuts. No cure for being short. And people like Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler still get elected to office.

While the doughnut thing has been one my life’s biggest bummers, Gessler comes in as a close second.

If you’re lucky, you don’t even know who Gessler is. Few people care enough to know the name of the secretary of state. For the most part, it’s a paper-pushing government job that’s done right when the official stays out of the headlines.

A clue: Guess who’s back in the headlines? Gessler graced the pages of newspapers statewide this week because he’s briefly “pausing” his gubernatorial campaign (excuse me for just a moment while I snort and guffaw) to focus on the issue of public education, in particularly, the Douglas County School Board election next week. Gessler, not just a Republican, but a Republican who is a lawyer that sues others to make sure Republican causes get on the ballot or get in office, has said he wants to make sure nothing less than the most conservative candidates get elected in DougCo.

• As Gessler was running for the office of secretary of state, he divulged that for years he had been an attorney for GOP political action committees and candidates. His job was to find a way to win partisan battles in courts, panels and boards.

• Immediately after being elected secretary of state, which means he would become the chief elections official in Colorado, he was forced to reveal that he planned to continue working for his law firm because the secretary of state job didn’t pay very good, but he promised not to work on partisan lawsuits. It gets better.

• During the 2012 presidential campaign, Gessler got caught spending “discretionary” cash at the secretary of state’s office for a trip to Florida that included a “learning” opportunity to meet with a GOP election lawyer junket, and attend the GOP presidential convention. After that became public, he reimbursed the state for the trip.

• Along the way, Gessler has decided that illegal immigrants pose a grave and monstrous risk to our democracy by voting illegally. He started a McCarthy-like hunt for Mexican voters gone bad that has included mailing threatening letters to more than 4,000 state residents, accusing them of having voted illegally because their names appeared on lists showing they might not be U.S. citizens. Of all those letters and threats, he’s gotten word back from about a dozen people saying to take them off the voter rolls. He has also received word from state residents who received the letters who are U.S. citizens, telling Gessler what he can do with their hanging chads.

And now, Gessler, who really is running for Colorado governor, (giggle) and who really is the top election official in the state, is telling the public that his gubernatorial campaign wants to bankroll an operation to send people door to door to get out the conservative vote against school board candidates he thinks are too far left — in Douglas County. Douglas County is already so far right that they don’t even allow left turns anywhere in the county.

Anyway, Denver Post political reporter Lynn Bartels wrote this week that Gessler sent out emails and a Facebook post telling about how important it is to keep righties on the DougCo school board and that, “We’re actively recruiting door-knockers to get out the vote. We also have paid opportunities … .” His Facebook post said: “If you would like to help we’re looking for walkers! It pays $11 per hour!”

Critics, and he has a lot of them, quickly point out that it’s against state law to take money from one campaign and move it to another one.

Oh, that law. Gessler’s hired guns say that when Gessler said “we” and “we’re”, he meant the royal-pain-in-the-ass, “we,” not the gubernatorial campaign “we” that sent out the email and the Facebook post. Someone else will be paying fellow conservatives $11 an hour to get out the vote against the flaming liberals in Douglas County.

We see, Gessler. So, other than some folks looking to pick up some cash beating the pavement in Highlands Ranch this week, who thinks this guy should be Colorado’s secretary of state? Of course we would never recall someone in Colorado for this kind of malfeasance. That’s what the next election is for. Unless of course they were to support changes in state gun laws requiring people who buy guns on Craigslist to undergo the same background check they already have to if they buy a gun at Wal-Mart. Those are fire-able offenses, so to speak.

It’s so disappointing. All I can do is eat another doughnut.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com