For months now, controversy has swirled around the Colorado State Capitol about State Representative Steve Lebsock.
Lebsock was elected, as a Democrat, in 2012 to represent Colorado House District 34, in Denver’s northwest suburbs, including Thornton. He has been re-elected every year since then. He is a true horse’s ass (yup, AP fans, there are plenty of ‘em in the Democratic Party).
Last year, his Democratic colleague in the House, State Representative Faith Winter, went public with accusations that Lebsock had propositioned her. The Speaker of the House, State Representative Cristanta Duran, a Democrat, told him to resign, but he refused.
After Rep. Winter went public, four other women, one a lobbyist, filed complaints of sexual harassment against Lebsock, who has been divorced for some years now.
Then Lebsock, brashly proclaiming his innocence, took a polygraph, which he claims exonerates him (https://www.stevelebsockforcolorado.com/press-release-1/).
Speaker Duran, an astute and seasoned politician, and the Democratic leadership in the State House arranged for an independent investigation to look into the allegations against Lebsock. The report of the independent investigator found merit in the accusations.
Yesterday, the House expelled Lebsock, 52-9, with many Republicans voting for the expulsion, as well as Dems (the Democrats control the House, but not the Senate, where two male Republican senators have been accused of sexual harassment, but neither has resigned — and they probably won’t, since the GOP controls the Senate, 18-17).
[What would Catherine the Great (1929-1796), who took many lovers while she ruled Russia, say about the #MeToo Movement?]
Shortly before the House voted to expel Lebsock, he went to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office and changed his registration from Democrat to Republican (https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/02/steve-lebsock-republican-colorado-legislature-expulsion/)
All the while, Lebsock has been running for Colorado State Treasurer and, incredibly enough, he still is. State Treasurer Walker Stapleton, a relative of the Bushes, is term-limited and is running for governor. In 2010, Stapleton defeated State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, a Democrat. Kennedy and Stapleton are both running for governor. Kennedy will decisively win her primary in June and so will Stapleton, so there will be a Kennedy-Stapleton rematch in November, which Kennedy will win by a nearly two to one margin.
Associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones was with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump spends most of his time, this morning when embattled Chief of Staff John Kelly rushed in to tell Trump about Lebsock’s sudden switch to the GOP, which even the Republicans in the Colorado State House didn’t know was coming.
“I like that guy a lot,” Trump told Kelly and Jones. “I am entitled to do whatever I want to women, who are only objects created for men’s pleasure. John, send out a tweet for me endorsing Lebsock.”
Kelly, a retired general, did what he was told.
Associate solitary reporter Pat Perry, a longtime Republican activist in the Centennial State, was with Colorado GOP Chairperson Jeff Hays when Kelly texted Hays and Lebsock to inform them of Trump’s endorsement.
“Is there some way we can get Trump to withdraw that endorsement?” Hays asked Perry. “You never know what Trump’s gonna do or say from one moment to the next.”
We are relying on ASR Perry to keep us informed as to how this is gonna go down.