Ron Hanks declines to support Tina Peters for Secretary of State

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks declined to offer support for Secretary of State candidate Tina Peters during a U.S. Senate primary forum on Monday.

The Senate primary debate is set to air Tuesday. The Colorado Sun has the summary portraying Hanks as being a little bit evasive on the subject when Shaun Boyd brought up the Secretary of State race.

But Hanks declined to support indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a Republican who is one of Colorado’s loudest supporters of conspiracies about the outcome of the last presidential election, in her bid to become Colorado’s next secretary of state. When asked if he is voting for Peters or one of her two primary opponents, Hanks said “at this point, I’ll leave that private.”

Is Hanks hesitancy in supporting Peters a signal of how her campaign is faring?

One has to wonder whether the mountain of indictments and legal problems are starting to hurt Peters with conservatives far more than the mainstream media will ever admit, seeing as how she has become their favorite whipping post.

The group Clean Elections Colorado is taking aim at Peters’ legal and ethical problems through a number of ads leading up to next week’s primary, including one that likens Peters to the current corrupt occupant of the Secretary of State’s office, Jena Griswold.

Ouch.

Peters struggled when challenged on KNUS by Jimmy Sengenberger recently to give a coherent explanation on exactly what election records were allegedly deleted in Mesa County that prompted this whole debacle. The whole interview is worth a listen.

Interviews like that don’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence among conservatives, which probably explains why Hanks is so reluctant to endorse Peters.