State Senate candidate Vivian Smotherman has been busted for blowing campaign funds on a beauty consultant to do hair and makeup, signaling to voters how careless she’s likely to spend their tax dollars if elected.
Smotherman is the Democrat running for the district 6 seat in southwest Colorado that includes Alamosa against incumbent Republican state Sen. Cleave Simpson.
According to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, Smotherman is a bisexual transgender woman and would be the first transgender woman elected to Colorado’s state Senate.
That’s if District 6 voters find Smotherman to be fiscally responsible.
Colorado Politics has the scoop on Smotherman’s questionable campaign expenditures
From January through June Smotherman spent campaign donations on “style and appearance consulting” that included hair and makeup. The questionable spending includes purchases from different stores plus alterations to fit the Navy veteran with stylish clothing.
All for $1,075.93.
Such spending is at obvious odds with state campaign finance laws that prohibits using donations for personal use, and it doesn’t get more personal than hair and make-up.
Smotherman claims she asked the Secretary of State’s office if the expenditures were permitted, and told Colorado Politics the response was simply that no one had ever asked the question before.
Probably because no other candidate has been so vain or vapid as to presume campaign consultant meant hair and makeup.
No political candidate has probably ever asked if it’s okay to use campaign donations to buy votes either, that doesn’t make it a permission slip to go ahead and do it.
This is a hotly contested race with Democrats pulling out all the stops to flip this seat from the GOP incumbent and what few Republicans are left in the state legislature in order to obtain a veto-proof majority.
Such huge numbers in the state House and Senate would give Democrats an historic supermajority that would remove all checks and balances on their governing, including the governor himself.
Such an achievement seems to be the opposite of democracy and would swing Colorado over the edge to an authoritarian government.
Smotherman would be the perfect player in such a world. Thankfully, we’re not there yet.