Substance
The McFadyen-Ortiz campaign should go down as one of the more embarrassing chapters for Pueblo politics where key Democrats jeopardized Pueblo’s growth for the sake of the politics of retribution.
A group of Pueblo County Democrats is playing Pueblo voters in a game of retribution and control of Country government.
This was a Pueblo Democratic primary election that was more a case of retribution than of vision. Pueblo County needs a new direction was the charge. The players, the incumbents, County Commissioners Terry Hart and Buffie, “Lianne,” McFadyen were leading Pueblo County astray. Democrats would risk the county’s progress for the sake of personal politics.
Chris Nicoll would challenge Hart on three issues, transparency, selenium and marijuana. His charges against Hart weren’t substantial but they were rooted in substance. But this was the undercard fight and Nicoll was about something.
The main event would be taking out McFadyen, a perceived caustic agent in Pueblo circles. She would face a challenge from Garrison Ortiz in a campaign that represented anger and rage but not leadership and vision. Ortiz and Democrats, some of them included key Pueblo players, spent two years, with a substance-free candidate, trying to bring down McFadyen and finally on primary night they had their trophy.
I understand why McFadyen is unliked by many. She’s loud, a dominant female, and has pushed backed against other county politicians. With thirteen years in politics, serving as a State Representative and then being elected as commissioner she picked up political baggage. But she also had political connections in Denver, and along with Sal Pace, fellow commissioner and former Speaker of the State House, had a formidable legislative portfolio that gave Pueblo access.
But with McFadyen were the rumors, shadowy innuendos surrounding McFadyen’s personal life, more akin to “slut-shaming” but were pervasive in conversations around-the-town. In the past four years and beyond, McFadyen’s personal life, the divorces, an embarrassing incident with county deputies and the party chair — fit a narrative of a wanton, reckless commissioner not fit for county office. If she was a man, would we care?
What Pueblo saw from the primary and from Democrats was like a wolf off a fresh kill, all the signs of a power struggle where personal politics of retribution were more important than county progress.
Charge one, the commissioners gave away too much to Colorado Springs. The three county commissioners, Hart, McFadyen and Pace negotiated a $441 million dollar agreement with Colorado Springs over stormwater mitigations. That’s NFL stadium money, or at least MLB park money.
McFadyen’s catastrophic error, according to Ortiz, was not fighting hard enough for Pueblo and wasting money on items like the Citadel Mall neighborhood improvements ($1.05 million, or .2 percent of the entire project).
And yet, Pueblo’s water concerns don’t start in Pueblo, they just flow here. Earlier this month Ortiz’s main water argument — that spending money in Colorado Springs was a waste — would be dealt a blow when lead-levels, four times that of Flint, Mich., were found in well-water in south El Paso County. Maybe that pollution will have no impact on Pueblo, but Colorado Springs’ water problems flow one way.
Still McFadyen had to go? She was a reckless spender. Ortiz countered in the debate about her misuse, through her aide’s spending at Dillard’s and buying $7500 in “cookies.” A clumsy tactless, borderline sexist charge. He would later say that was misinterpreted. Yet the damage was done. The budgeting charge stuck, that McFadyen, the attractive, skinny blonde 13 years ago when first elected, was now gluttonous both in appearance and from a budgetary mindset from eating too many sweets on the county’s dime.
Nevermind that two commissioners’ offices have said that they spread their purchases around. And the media, including the PULP, was silent. (The county budget office and the spokesperson for the county, ignored PULP’s requests for clarification.)
Yet McFadyen was the problem? As Ortiz pointed out, she decided to ask the voters to improve the Desert Hawk Golf Course on your dime. But in that “waste of money” excise tax spending were other big ticket items such as scholarships to Pueblo-area students, money to study a Southwest Chief expansion, money to look at Highway 50 Improvement, and Colorado State Fair Improvements.
And still no professional action of McFadyen was good enough for Democrats.
Pace, McFadyen and Hart, whatever your politics, whatever your beliefs are on marijuana, single-handedly took Pueblo from a minor player to an international one by allowing the sale of recreational weed. But they did something else, something more tangible for Puebloans. They brought money into the county. By 2020 it’s estimated the county could see $70 million in excise tax revenue from the industry alone. And don’t forget the current commercial property boom the industry has created. Even more, don’t forget the jobs, the tourism into the area, and the potential if marijuana goes legal across the nation.
If this primary battle was about a new direction, Ortiz didn’t provide Pueblo what that direction is only that McFadyen had to leave. Ortiz’s platform is seven bullet points on his website, one being he was born in Pueblo.
I’m not writing this to defend McFadyen on her way out. I’m merely asking, if this campaign was about leadership, vision, and a new direction then what do those words mean if this entire primary campaign was about simply to get McFadyen out?
This wasn’t about water, or economic growth, or budgetary problems — this primary was about something more sinister, more selfish.
How was Garrison Ortiz, who has been campaigning for two years, filled with so much rage for McFadyen that in two years, just two years into her first term, Ortiz decided he could do better. A man, who was thirteen when McFadyen was first elected to the legislature. A candidate whose main claim was that could do everything better than McFadyen and yet failed to give Pueblo Democrats, or the media any specifics as to what they are.
The McFadyen-Ortiz campaign should go down as one of the more embarrassing chapters for Pueblo politics where key Democrats jeopardized growth for the sake of the politics of retribution. That Democrats, key Pueblo democrats, who rail against Republicans’ empty talk, the politics of hate, and moneyball politics just voted for a candidate and a campaign that embodied just that.
In the last four years, Pace, McFadyen and Hart actually moved the intractable mass of steel and chile known as Pueblo forward. In the next four years, the county could be thrown into a recession if prohibition passes, and it must fix the county jail out of safety and concern for inmates and deputies equally. Or, conversely, the county will be flush with cash from a green rush, the likes of which this county hasn’t seen since the steel days.
Challenges and opportunities exist and it will take serious leaders, to tackle them. Yet on primary day, a percentage of Democrats, a small percentage of Pueblo County residents spoke for Pueblo that a substance-free Democrat should face off against a substance-light Republican in November.
With McFadyen gone, did the county take a direction forward or did it take a step towards those who supported a candidate without substance?
