Democratic Secretary of State candidate Joe Neguse might have an interesting family story, but including one of the state’s most inept County and Clerk Recorders’ endorsement of you in your very first video shows an incredible lack of political awareness. Hey Joe, campaign 101: don’t have someone say you’ll do a great job when that person sucks at theirs.
PeakNation™, you may not remember Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz. Here’s a reminder. We last saw him using an abacus to tally up votes in Pueblo’s recall election (rumor has it, the vote totals took so long because the abacus got unplugged not once, but twice!), but Neguse decided Ortiz’s words were the perfect way for Neguse to introduce himself to Colorado. Ortiz sticks to basic boilerplate stuff when talking about Neguse, vision, integrity, blah, blah… before he busts out this odd-ball phrase:
…who has, you know, unstoppable ethics.
Huh? Unstoppable ethics? What is that? The tagline to a reboot of the Judge Dredd films? But don’t take our word for it, plug the phrase “unstoppable ethics” into Google and see how prodigious this phrase is, go ahead, we’ll wait…
…Yep, of the 30 trillion webpages Google searches the exact term “unstoppable ethics” shows up on exactly 57 of them; which means we are either dealing with a genius, or a man who failed a few classes in high school.
Not only do such nuances escape Ortiz, but so do the basic functions of his job:
- The time his office mailed a ballot to a lady who had been dead for over a year
- Failure to lead as President Elect of the Colorado County Clerks Association resulting in voting irregularities and being unprepared for primary elections
- His inability to do simple math or count ballots, going on national TV and exaggerating ballots returned by inactive voters by almost 200%
- And the night where all eyes were turned on Southern Colorado and Ortiz could neither count ballots nor get his website to run
The last is probably the most damaging for Neguse, as the Republican candidate running against him showed Colorado and Ortiz just how smoothly and efficiently a recall election could go despite numerous unknowns from a newly-minted elections law.
Then again, hopefully Neguse will stick another camera in Ortiz’s face and we’ll get another delightfully new phrase: perhaps something as whimsical as “furious integrity!” (172 websites, fyi)