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Judging Judge Starks Potential Ward 1 Candidate Jeopardizes Support of Friends on Council 2 Minute Video Clip of Rich Ball Confronting Council |
Why The Ball Family Cannot Vote Republican in Any Election Judge Conrad Ball, Richard Ball's father, was known for telling people his family hasn't voted for a Republican since President Lincoln freed his grandmother's slaves in Kentucky - the plantation being a source of the family's wealth. When LovelandPolitics reported this in 2010 while Richard Ball was a State Senate candidate, the reference in the online article we cited was later changed to a more politically correct comment even though Conrad Ball had long passed away. The Colorado Bar Association article by Richard Clark now states, "His ancestors came from Virginia and Kentucky. Conrad’s grandfather, Alonza Ball, fought for the Confederacy for four years. At the war’ s end, it took Alonza months to hitchhike back to Gallatin. Conrad, however, was a lifelong admirer of Abraham Lincoln, even though, as he sometimes joked, Lincoln had set his grandmother’s slaves free." At some point the Ball family moved their plantation fortune to Missouri where Conrad Ball was born in 1907. Richard Ball's grandfather was a part owner of the Gallatin Democrat newspaper in Gallatin, Missouri. Following a shooting (as described below in the same Colorado Bar Association article) the family moved to Loveland, CO. "Conrad’s father, Robert Ball, was co- owner of the Gallatin Democrat newspaper. In 1919, a disgruntled drunk, upset about an editorial Ball had written, burst into the newspaper’s office and killed the newspaper’s co- owner, thinking he was Ball. Robert was grazed in the shooting. Due to guilt at having been the intended target, Robert Ball soon found himself unable to continue publishing the Gallatin paper. In 1922, he purchased the Loveland Reporter Herald newspaper and moved his family to Loveland, Colorado. Robert published the Loveland newspaper, assisted at times by other family members, until his death in 1938." No word on whether Richard Ball's current positions on gun control trace back to his own grandfather's near miss with an enraged shooter. |
Richard Ball Loveland Attorney and likely candidate for Council Ward 1, 2013 |