DISQUS

greenchiledem · 1 year ago

Strong showing in Eagle ...More like an upset Although the race was even steven, Fitz-Gerald had two of our Eagle county commissioners supporting her. One of them worked very hard for her. Both Jared Polis and Joan Fitz-Gerald worked the phones, worked the delegate lists and held advance events. For Jared Polis to have won over what is probably the undecided is to his credit. He persuaded those voters because he is aligned with the issues they value in our county, like the war, education and health care. There is also a distrust of Fitz-Gerald here because of the special session, anti-immigration measure. When asked last year in during a luncheon in Eagle if she would fix the flaws in the law that were causing problems in our county, she stated, "We're not going there." There is no compassion in that statement; it's a `protect thyself' answer.

I suspect that the Fitz-Gerald campaign and our commissioner were shocked at the results in Eagle. As you stated in your story, our county was expect to be in the Fitz-Gerald column.

Everyone knew that Summit was expected to vote heavily in favor of Fitz-Gerald who did represent them in the state senate. She also has a county chair who supports her and a popular new state senator who took her place supporting her in Summit. However, to the people in Eagle, she was unknown as a representative. I don't recall any issues that she led during her years in the state house that affected our county, except bark beetle. Jared on the other hand who was on the state board of education has been a friend of education for our valley.  He has recently opened the first New Americans school outside of the Denver metro area in Gypsum. Jared Polis's family has had a home here for many, many years. I have a neighbor who taught the Polis Schutz kids to ski. But even with the ties to Vail, I would call the tie in Eagle an upset. Congratulations Jared!

Although the headline here is technically correct, a 20 delegate lead in a district with 872 delegates to be awarded is not much. The story here is the Eagle tie, not the expected Summit win, IMHO.

greenchiledem is the treasurer for the Polis campaign.

BoulderDem · 1 year ago

Thanks for the update, Dan! The Broomfield assembly appears to be a formality, as they list, on their website, the delegate apportionment (16-16 with 5 undecideds). That seems awfully low for a decent sized county, so perhaps there are still more to be handed out. Still, with three counties in and only the +20 victory for JFG in Summit, it certainly looks like both will make the ballot and the topline will be very closely competitive, itself a big surprise and a plus for Jared.