After clicking around the campaign website of Brian Watson, the Republican candidate for state treasurer, it’s pretty clear that Brian Watson lives by the book.
The thing is, he reads some eyebrow-raising books, and voters will have to decide what that means.
Watson’s official state treasurer candidate website touts his Western Slope roots, including photos of him on a horse and sitting on a requisite wood pile.
It turns out that isn’t all Watson has to offer the Centennial State, as I learned after stumbling onto his selfie website, www.brianwatson.us, not linked to his campaign.
Beyond the news articles and personal testimonies is a list of Watson’s recommended reading. He reads a lot.
I scrolled through about 60 books, mostly the expected Tony Robbins-ish, how-to-get-rich variety. Unsurprising reading fare for a Republican commercial real estate investor at the helm of a billion dollar company.
Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People – sure. How to Win Over Worry – naturally. These are important reads, because Watson is being sued by a former associate for $415,000, as the Denver Business Journal reported this week.
Conspicuously absent from Watson’s library is The Art of the Deal, though Watson has written his own book.
Then there’s some good, soulful reading: Mother Teresa’s A Simple Path, and a book called From Good to Great in God’s Eyes. Good. Scratch that – great.
Hmm. Sprinkled in the midst of the list is a man in a turban looking out from the cover of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance.
The book was written by a Robert Spencer, a regular Fox News commentator, and author of the bestselling Confessions of an Islamophobe.
“There has never been in the history of the world before, large scale immigration of a people from one place to another with a ready-made model of society and governance that they consider to be superior to the model to the place in which they’re coming, no interest in integration, no interest in assimilation,” Spencer said on Fox’s “Hannity” in 2015. “All they want to do is Islamize and transform the society that they are coming to.”
Watson’s campaign declined to comment on his reading list and why he would recommend to anyone they read The Myth of Islamic Tolerance.
Watson also recommends reading The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Light reading? I’m yawning just thinking about it.
Watson also declined to comment on Whitman. Bummer. I’d reckon As I Lay Dying pairs well with a wood pile between campaign stops.
— Grant Stringer, Staff Writer
