It’s not just the state legislature that Democrats are packing with candidates selected by party insiders instead of voters.
Now it looks like Gov. Polis is trying to stack the judiciary in the same manner — by filling a sudden vacancy with his own appointee and scaring off candidates who don’t have the money to run against a pseudo incumbent just a few months later.
District Attorney Christian Champagne of the 6th Judicial District that serves La Plata, Archuleta, and San Juan Counties, bailed on his job one year before his term-limited seat left him unemployed and landed a job with the Democrat state attorney’s general office.
That gave Polis the authority to fill Champagne’s term in the middle of a campaign between Jason Eley and Sean Murray to serve as the top prosecutor of the three-county region.
Polis put his thumb on the scale and appointed Murray to the seat, prompting Eley to withdraw from the race the following day.
From the Durango Herald:
With Eley out, Murray appears to be the only remaining candidate for district attorney.
Just like that, the fix was in.
Normally, such appointments would not draw much scrutiny, seeing as that’s how it’s supposed to work.
But with more politicians, mostly Democrats, abusing the vacancy process to bypass voters and appoint elected officials with party insiders, it’s worth keeping an eye on Polis to see if he starts stacking the deck on Colorado’s judiciary in the same manner.
That Polis’s selection has affected the outcome of an election that was set for this fall is concerning.
Meanwhile, Champagne will take his crusade for restorative justice with him to the attorney’s general office in Denver to serve as senior counsel in advising rural district attorneys across the state. Cringe.
It’s a win-win for the Democrats, and a huge loss to voters who were robbed of their votes.