Longmont City Council candidate
Bill Van Dusen wrote a guest opinion in the October 18, 2009
Longmont Times-Call entitled "
More transparent campaigns make for more informed voters". Some of his positions were just shot down by a federal judge in the Preliminary Injunction that was just handed down in the case of
Western Tradition Partnership, et al v. The City of Longmont (full disclosure, I'm also a plaintiff in this ongoing case)
His piece was a veiled attack on former Longmont mayor
Julia Pirnack in reference to an earlier piece she wrote about the importance of anonymity. He even goes as far as justifying Longmont's draconian requirements in the ridiculously written
Independent Expenditure portion that was just deemed null and void by the judge in this case. His example? Another terrible piece of legislation called the
McCain-Feingold Act, the very law that has brought us 527 groups and the fiasco we find ourselves in every election cycle.
If you read through his op-ed it's full of items the judge took apart in his order for this injunction. He also completely misses the point of why this lawsuit was filed, at least from where the judge found myself to have "
standing": The red herring he throws out is that he thinks it's all about people trying to hide their identity, that's on
overly simplistic view of this that anyone who went to the trouble of reading the legal briefs or attended the court dates would have known better. He obviously didn't, along with a bunch of people who are chiming in with absolutely no idea of what they are talking about.
I even said in court I would be more than happy to make any report and not hide my identity if it were similar to what candidates had to do, which is report at set dates throughout the campaign. But instead, I have to file
within 72 hours,
make sure each affected candidate is notified (which I assume would take Certified Mail to truly accomplish), put on the flier (or whatever it is) the name of the
registered agent (tough to do when an individual can't be considered a committee nor can have a registered agent) AND
design into the flier all of this and the
dollar amount before going to print. All things that are nearly impossible to determine beforehand (don't forget possible postage) - and the judge agreed.
Sorry I had to go through that entire diatribe to explain it, but some people, apparently Mr. Van Dusen included,
just don't get it. He appears to be fully onboard with the
Fair Campaign Practices Act, and it bothers me (and should bother you) that he doesn't even question what might need to be questioned. That's not a sign of a leader in my book. We've had enough of the "
go along to get along" type of politicians around here. Enough already.
Maybe Mr. Van Dusen should stick to his specialty in tax law and not constitutional law.
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©2009 Chris Rodriguez/Longmont Advocate LLC (Chris Rodriguez is a Longmont resident, and the publisher and broadcaster of Longmont Advocate, a community website and podcast that raises local issues to increase public awareness and interest)