The Denver Post would have us believe its editorial board was completely neutral when it endorsed Brittany Pettersen — the wife of the publication’s most outspoken progressive columnist — in the 7th District congressional race against the GOP nominee Erik Aadland.
It’s just too far-fetched for anyone with a lick of common sense to see past their pretense of any objectivity in weighing the two candidates.
The Post should have pulled Silverii from its editorial pages in January when his wife announced her intention to run for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter. She was, immediately crowned the successor by the Democrat establishment and named the party’s nominee.
That’s strike one in this endorsement, which fails to carry even a whiff of credibility.
The Post waited until nearly July to send Silverii on vacation, until presumably, his wife can get elected.
Strike two, the board completely failed to even mention Pettersen’s most radical stance as a progressive during her years in the state Senate.
Thank you @denverpost for your endorsement! I’m proud of my track record of getting things done in the state senate, including lowering insurance premiums & increasing public school funding. I will continue to fight for Coloradans in Congress. https://t.co/H5Eh1w4bIC #copolitics pic.twitter.com/eNOHikVf1I
— Brittany Pettersen (@pettersen4co) September 19, 2022
Those actionable ideas on drug use would include her dogged determination to legalize opium dens to enable addicts to shoot up illegal and dangerous substances at a so-called injection center across the street from the Capitol in Denver.
Never mind that thousands of children visit the Capitol every year and would be exposed to this dangerous situation, or that countless rallies are held at the Capitol with the potential to turn violent.
Decriminalizing dangerous drugs through injection sites is an absurdly bad idea. But no Democrat or media dare question Pettersen for supporting such nonsense because of her mother’s drug abuse history. It’s tragic, no doubt, but Pettersen uses it as a shield against criticism.
The reality remains that enabling drug addicts is never the answer, it merely enables the destructive behavior to continue.
Pettersen is also the reason efforts to criminalize the use of fentanyl in Colorado failed. Yet the Post and fellow progressives just gaslight the issue and praise Pettersen for spending hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars to prop up her political aspirations to go to Washington.
Strike three is this editor’s note buried at the bottom of the Post endorsement:
Editor’s Note: Megan Schrader, the editor of The Post’s editorial pages, recused herself from voting on and writing the endorsement for House District 7 because Pettersen’s husband, Ian Silverii, has written opinion columns for The Post.
As if that makes the endorsement legit.
Schrader’s bias bolted out the door butt naked when she allowed Silverii to influence editorial staff and the readers of the Denver Post for months after his wife’s assentation to the Democrat Party’s nominee for Congress in January.
Here’s how she failed to explain away her unethical decision to Matt Connelly, the Republican opinion writer and editor at Campfire Colorado.
“Ian called me a day before his wife announced and told me that she was going to run for Congress and I said, well let me take some time to think about the ethical balances here, how the Post would weigh, with the understanding that your wife can have a job and you can have a job and it doesn’t preclude you from having a voice, but also that there is a clear conflict,” Schrader told Campfire Colorado.
Pettersen announced in January. Silverii continued to be a columnist through the end of June, infecting readers with his opinions geared towards getting his wife elected to Congress.
To pretend the board was not under Schrader’s, Silverii’s, or the Democrat Party’s influence in making their decision to endorse Pettersen is unrealistic.
Just last week, the Durango Herald revealed some more of Schrader’s thinking in keeping Silverii as a columnist despite the obvious conflict of interest:
In an email to The Durango Herald, Schrader explained her decision. “Fairness during the campaign season is something opinion editors struggle with every year, and it was something I really started considering when Denver Post columnist Ian Silverii’s wife announced she was running for Congress,” she said. “That obvious conflict for one columnist prompted me to consider other less obvious conflicts other columnists might have.
“I struggle with whether opinion columnists, myself included, do a disservice to America when we engage with polarizing issues and fail to bring nuance and depth to our analysis. There is a rich history in America of opinion journalists using sharp barbs in their language to get their point across, and I certainly have at times not pulled my punches, but at this juncture, we could all stand for a bit more policy in our daily diet and a bit less partisanship.”
And yet, policy was not the main consideration when the Post weighed Pettersen against the Republican nominee, Erik Aadland.
The editorial board didn’t seem to like him because of that one time they found where he questioned all the shenanigans that played out in the 2020 presidential election.
Americans, we have learned, are not permitted to question election outcomes, unless Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore come out on the losing end.