Garfield County rises above hate
Last month, voters in Rifle, Silt, and New Castle recalled far-right school board member Tony May by a huge margin. Their success is an inspiring example of what we can accomplish here in Garfield County when we come together across our differences and work for positive change.
Nationwide, only 2% of attempts to recall a school board member succeed. Despite these odds, Re-2 Recall supporters gathered over 20% more signatures than they needed and the recall passed by a whopping 15 percentage points.
The recall effort was led by the non-partisan community group Coalition for Responsible Education in Re2. The diversity of this group was key to their strength. The official three-person Recall Committee included a Republican, Democrat, and Independent voter; two Anglos and one Latina. The group endorsed Republican Scott Bolitho as their candidate to replace May.
In contrast to the Coalition’s embracing of diversity, May’s backers employed the typical MAGA strategy of spewing hateful rhetoric and personal attacks. They enlisted far-right, anti-LGBTQ political figures from outside our community who are masters of this strategy, including former Garfield County resident Sherronna Bishop.
Bishop is Lauren Boebert’s former campaign manager and a close ally of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Clerk recently convicted of four felonies related to election interference. Bishop’s Facebook page is filled with anti-LGBTQ+ posts and personal attacks.
Supporters of the recall effort were subjected to a barrage of baseless name-calling throughout the campaign, from horribly offensive insults like “groomers” and “pedophiles” to bizarre claims that they were “Marxists” and “communists.”
These same accusations are hurled at teachers and librarians across the country who, for example, stand up for teaching the truth about slavery or including books with gay characters in our libraries. The far-right political agenda outlined in Project 2025 calls for teachers and librarians to be “registered as sex offenders” if they allow kids access to books that do not adhere to Project 2025’s “biblical definition” of marriage and family.
Legislators are facing similar attacks. Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow was accused by a fellow senator of “grooming” kindergartners after voting in support of the rights of LGBTQ+ youth. McMorrow’s response went viral with over 14 millions views. “Call me whatever you want,” she stated on the senate floor, “We will not let hate win.”
“It’s really easy to motivate people with fear,” McMorrow explained in an interview, and our kids are suffering as a result of the current fear-mongering against LGBTQ+ people. She described a visit to a high school in her district: “The first question was from a girl, probably 15 or 16, who said, ‘You know, I identify as queer. I’m LGBTQ. Why do they hate us?'”
MAGA politicians are riling people up to fear and hate members of the LGBTQ community, people of color, and immigrants in an attempt to get people on board with whitewashing our history and banning books with gay, Black, or Brown perspectives. These politicians are pushing the idea that only straight, white, Christian people can be true patriots.
Fortunately, the vast majority of Re-2 community members refused to be drawn into the anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry. They decisively rejected the attempt to impose whitewashed American Birthright Standards in their schools. Unfortunately, however, our libraries are now under a similar attack.
This past year we’ve heard countless claims that the only people who could possibly be against restricting access to certain books in our local libraries are pedofiles and groomers, Marxists and socialists. Sound familiar?
Last week, the Colorado Library Association awarded the Outstanding Library Trustee of the Year to our Library Board President Adrian Rippy-Sheehy. They honored her for championing the freedom of expression and actively fighting against censorship and the suppression of ideas here in Garfield County.
We can all support Rippy-Sheehy’s fight against censorship simply by voting in this November’s county commissioner elections. As the non-partisan community group Protect Our GarCo Libraries has documented, this election could fundamentally change the future of our local libraries.
Before casting your vote this November, make sure you know where each candidate stands on these issues. Do they support the new Colorado law to protect libraries from partisan book-banning, or oppose it? Do they support the library operating as an independent public entity as it did from 2008 to 2023, or do they believe the commissioners should control the make-up of our library board? Do they support the library’s mission of providing free access to information, or do they think the library should restrict access to books they deem objectionable?
Let’s build on the success of the Re-2 Recall Election and take inspiration from Rippy-Sheehy’s award-winning work to resist censorship. Make sure your friends understand the stakes of this year’s county commissioner elections when it comes to maintaining free access to a wide diversity of books in our libraries.
Debbie Bruell of Carbondale chairs the Garfield County Democrats and is a past member of the Roaring Fork Schools Board of Education.
