Grand Junction is a part of Colorado’s third congressional district and our politics are the reason no one will take the city seriously. When the rest of the state and even the country sees what is happening, they discredit Grand Junction and the Western Slope because our politicians represent us.
To start off, Tina Peters is running for the Colorado Secretary of State and was the Mesa County clerk. Moreover, she has been indicted for election fraud. She was charged with 10 counts, seven of them being felony charges and the other three misdemeanors. The charges include identity theft and criminal impersonation.
To add to these accusations, Peters was hit with a contempt of court citation. Her disorderly conduct in the courtroom got her the charge, including recording. Not only did she cause a huge security breach and place mistrust in the voting system, but Peters failed to be respectful in court.
This has become a talking point for other states and cities when it comes to ignoring Grand Junction’s request to become a cargo stop.
The city is not included as a train stop between Salt Lake City and Denver, which has severely harmed the economy in local areas. In order to change that, there needs to be accredited people negotiating and making that change for us. Instead, our current representative at the national level heckles the president during speeches.
One of our representatives, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, markets herself as a mom who believes in freedom; though, this image she projects conflicts with her actions of heckling President Biden during the State of the Union address as he talked about his son who died in combat.
Another embarrassing contradiction is how Boebert pays for ads in local newspapers that point to a website about how corrupt her opponent is, despite having an expansive criminal record of her own. Some of the minor charges include careless driving, speeding, failure to provide insurance and two counts of not using a child restraint in a car. Driving incidents seem to be a theme for Boebert as she has eight on her record between 2003 and 2020.
In addition to the above charges, she has been arrested two separate times for failure to appear in court. One court date missed was in relation to disorderly conduct and verbal altercations with police; other run-ins with the law include an LLC pressing charges for her part in the foreclosure of the company. At one point, Capital One Bank went to court after Boebert racked up over $1 million in debt.
There are further court records that are not listed but can be found easily on the internet.
As well as this, it is also important to focus on her record in congress.
Boebert has voted against the best interest of her constituents multiple times. She voted no on the Affordable Insulin Now Act which would improve healthcare for U.S. citizens.
Boebert also voted against the Stop Sexual Assault and Harassment in Transportation Act. This would address the concerns of transgender travelers being assaulted by airline workers all over the country.
In fact, Boebert proposed her own counter legislation to the last act mentioned in the list above. The Securing Americans from Transportation Insanity Act is an effort to stop TSA from removing “biologically determined sex-based screening procedures from security screening” which will address repeated assault allegations.
These are just a couple of the reasons why it is embarrassing to have our district represented on the national stage by Boebert. Her outbursts, blatant lies and exhausting arguments invite every other state in this country to look down on the Western Slope of Colorado. Our beautiful district has a lot to offer, from our national parks to our agriculture; yet we will be dismissed because of the people we elected to office.
Voters need to look at education as a factor. Boebert had only earned her GED right before she won the election, over a decade after dropping out of high school.
With primaries coming up, there are a lot of opportunities to elect better candidates to the House of Representatives.
Grand Junction needs political leaders that are going to represent us responsibly and act in a way that makes constituents proud. The county needs to elect people who are like-minded and upstanding in all their actions.
