Bubis and Morse
More than a week after the El Paso Republican Party selected former Colorado Springs Councilman Bernie Herpin to run against State Senate President Morse in the upcoming September 10 recall election, alternative candidate Jaxine Bubis who, it came out, in addition to being a conservative politics person is also an erotic fiction author, lashed out against the GOP insider politics she believes went into motion to push her out of the race.
After media mockery tied to her writing subsided, Bubis used Facebook to launch a shorthand broadside against politics as usual.
“When I was pressured from all sides to submit to a primary process in which 50 Republicans would tell all the people of SD11 who they could vote for, I caved. I knew better. I knew it was not the right thing to do. I wanted the voters of SD11 to make that choice, not 50 Republicans. But the overwhelming message out there was that there could be only one Republican on the ballot. It came from Jeff Crank and Sheriff Maketa over a glass of iced tea. It came from high ranking legislators. It came from the Party. Well, you get the picture…"
A few days later, in conversation with The Colorado Independent, embattled incumbent Morse sympathized with Bubis, and not just perhaps because he would have preferred to have run against her. He celebrated her as a real grassroots figure with skin in the game.
"As soon as she surfaced some of us on the cynical side said ‘How long is it going to take the GOP to eliminate this new Republican woman and replace her with an establishment Republican man?’ Well they did it in world record time. Obviously I want everybody, everybody, to vote No on the recall. But it is interesting to me that Jaxine carried petitions. She got something like 140 herself – more than the three founders of the recall effort combined. Bernie Herpin didn’t turn in a single petition signature, aside from his own. She actually worked on this effort and gets passed aside like a used dish rag while Bernie Herpin gets to waltz in on a white horse? If you really want to think of this as grassroots, which we all know it’s not, the party getting involved and holding a mini primary – that’s a pretty big violation.”
–TC