With most of the big guns saving their ammo for this fall, the only campaign that's rivaled that of Ron Unz (see story above) for verbal volleys belongs to Rick Stanley, the Colorado Libertarian Party's candidate for Senate, who shoots off his mouth more often than he does his famous gun.
Related Content
More About
Popped on a weapons violation in December 2001, last Thursday Stanley was sentenced to a 180-day jail term by Denver County Judge Robert Patterson, who then suspended all but thirty days and ruled that they could be served through home detention. And this after Stanley dismissed his lawyer, Paul Grant, and shot from the lip in a typical rabble-rousing statement to the court.
"The judge sentenced what he did because Stanley showed no remorse," Stanley fired off afterward. "Stanley will never be remorseful for demanding the City and County of Denver respect his constitutional right to peacefully exercise his 2nd Amendment right, to keep and bear arms, which the Constitution says shall not be infringed. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do they not understand? How do they lie their way through this one? When the citizens of Denver and America revolt against this police state one day, look back to this and thousands of other issues to understand why it will happen again in America -- and it will. Our forefathers warned us of the tyrannical nature of government and that our vigilance was required."
Frisky business: You don't hear another Senate candidate -- Republican incumbent Wayne Allard -- complaining about the tyrannical nature of the government, despite the fact that he was selected Monday for extra security-screening scrutiny at Denver International Airport.
But then, Allard got off easy compared to his secret weapon: wife Joan Allard, whose political savvy and hard work on her husband's behalf (she has a desk in his D.C. office -- and she uses it) earned her Best Political Spouse honors in Westword's Best of Denver 2002. Judging from the pat-down she got while flying from Dulles to Denver last Friday, you'd have thought her pockets were as loaded as her brain.
Joan's been a frequent target of screeners, according to Allard spokesman Sean Conway-- despite the fact that she's given up her in-flight hobby. "Prior to 9/11, she used to knit, but that's over," Conway says.
Closed call: As predicted here on July 18, those purple-and-white Bill Owenssigns have cropped up across the state, most notably on a pile of old mine tailings alongside I-70. But the ersatz grassroots campaign might be more convincing if some of that grass was still green. On his Web site, Democratic challenger Rollie Heathnotes that several of the colorful signs have popped up in front of long-closed businesses (among them a former hotel in Walsenburg and the boarded-up property in Burlington shown at left) -- hardly a testimonial to the power of Governor Owens's economic engine.
