Shrill, hyper-partisan rhetoric has become an unfortunate ritual of campaigns for just about any political office. For the most part, voters have the good sense to tune it out.
But there’s at least one elected office that is supposed to be above that kind of politicking, especially around election time. It’s the office that oversees the elections — Colorado’s secretary of state. In conjunction with the state’s 64 county clerks who run the elections, the secretary of state must ensure the integrity of voting. And the first step toward that end is setting aside partisan politics regardless of the secretary’s own political affiliation.
The office’s current occupant, first-term Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, has failed miserably in that regard. Since her election not even four years ago, she has become a self-parody for her over-the-top partisanship. Like her dire warning the other day of the consequences if Republicans are elected to her post in Colorado and other states.
“The country could lose the right to vote in less than three months,” she told the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian in an interview published Sunday.
“What we can expect from the extreme Republicans running across this country is to undermine free and fair elections for the American people, strip Americans of the right to vote, refuse to address security breaches and, unfortunately, be more beholden to Mar-a-Lago than the American people,” she said. “For us, we are trying to save democracy.”
Good heavens. You at first might think Griswold has lost her grip on reality altogether. But it’s a safe bet it’s merely part of her act. There’s nothing like divisive, partisan melodrama to earn more media coverage and stoke campaign contributions.
Though a novice in public office, she has proven herself a natural-born politician when it comes to her relentless self-promotion. Toward that end, she has used her office as a bully pulpit for partisan diatribes on issues often enough unrelated to her duties. Like her call in 2019, a few months after taking office, for a boycott of Alabama over its abortion law.
“Until Alabama allows for safe & legal access to health care for women, I will not authorize spending of state resources on travel to Alabama. I call on other state and local leaders in CO and across the country to join me in this boycott,” she tweeted at the time. Whether other Democratic pols followed suit doesn’t matter; it kept Griswold on the media’s radar.
Everything about the way she has conducted her affairs in office smacks of using it as a stepping stone for higher ambitions. From the phalanx of advisers who seem to surround her, to the publicity machine that churns out her campaign pitches for more donations — it’s all about dragging her office down into the political fray rather than rising above it.
And then there are her regular claims to the media of threats to her safety — as if other elected officials don’t face a lot of the same trash talk from anonymous cranks. She even hounded the legislature until it provided funding for extra security.
In the interview published Sunday, she complained, “It gets to the point where it is really hard to do your job when someone’s telling you over and over how they’re going to hang you.”
Maybe, she ought to step aside and hand the reins to someone who’s up to the challenge.
