Colorado Community Rights Network, a fractivists group pushing an extreme anti-fracking initiative this fall, determined it would be impossible for them to gather enough signatures in time to qualify for the ballot. As The Gazette’s Megan Schrader reported:
The first of several proposed ballot questions to increase local regulation over the oil and gas industry threw in the towel early Monday admitting the group was unlikely to collect almost 86,000 signatures by the Aug. 4 deadline.
The Colorado Community Rights Network was relying almost exclusively on volunteers to collect signatures to put a question on the November ballot asking voters whether local communities should be able to regulate industries that threaten a community’s health or safety. [the Peak’s emphasis]
PeakNation™, that is one down, and more to go. What should be most encouraging to us on the commonsense side of things—and, what should be most terrifying for fractivists pushing their extremists’ agenda—is that CCRN were determined to use an (almost) all-volunteer network to gather their signatures. In other words: your average Coloradan. Yet, not only did they fail, they failed by such a wide margin that they quit the race with more than three weeks left to go. This shows the average Coloradan has no stomach for this anti-business, anti-Colorado, far-Left agenda. The only hope fractivists have in Colorado is to ship in out-of-state people, while, simultaneously also pumping in gobs of out-of-state money.
All that talk about “local control” is officially dead. We’re now more likely to see Mark Ruffalo collecting signatures, than a Coloradan who’s not getting paid to.
One aspect of this battle that hasn’t gotten much attention is fractivist fatigue. Fractivists certainly don’t have the facts on their side. Their doomsday scenarios have no science behind them, and the only faucets being lit on fire are nearly 2,000 miles away in Pennsylvania where swamp gas is known to naturally happen. Fracitivists’ failure to capture the Colorado electorate this year will only make it harder in the future, as Colorado’s strong fracking safety record becomes more and more well known. This is not to say fractivists still won’t be able to pick off a community or two in the future (how could they not when you got a place like the People’s Republic of Boulder where they don’t have pet owners, but rather pet “guardians.” We at the Peak are still eagerly waiting for the first Yorkie emancipation), but never will they have a better time to blind the entire state of Colorado to their extremists’ position. If they don’t make it this year, they won’t make it any year.
Rep. Jared Polis can’t be looking forward to kissing his millions goodbye in this boondoggle. If he actually sees this all the way through to the end, he might have to start accepting that Congresional salary he’s been refusing all these years.
The fact that the fractivists’ initiatives are dying off under their own weight, makes it that much more incredible that Gov. John Hickenlooper is still being held hostage by Polis. Surely, if Hick had any sort of actual leadership ability he wouldn’t be at the mercy of someone who has no solid ground to stand on. Then again, the Governor’s mansion did get some beer taps installed this last spring, so we can’t be sure he even knows it’s summer already.
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