LovelandPolitics.com Blog

You heard it here first, McNaught vs. Loveland Mayor Gene Pielin for House District 51 is a likely scenario for the vacated House District 51 seat. A few others are expressing interest but we have not yet confirmed they have announced they are running.

Pielin has a practical problem. He is looking for a credible Republican to nominate him at the vacancy committee meeting scheduled for Thursday August 13, 2009 at 7:00 pm in Loveland’s Pulliam Building in downtown Loveland beginning at 6:00 PM.

The appointment to fill the balance of Don Marastica’s vacated seat in the legislature will be made by the 80 member Larimer County Republican Party vacancy committee which is comprised of precinct committee members from within House District 51. That group is called the 51st Representative District Republican Central Committee.

If Pielin fails to get someone to endorse him he may abandon the pursuit in private and deny ever having an interest. A number of other names have surfaced but until the meeting anyone can be nominated including from the floor of the meeting itself.

Any comments, suggestions or thoughts?

Marostica’s recent abandonment of his seat in the Colorado State House representing House District 51 (mostly Loveland) leaves one-year on his two-year term to which he was elected. Voters shouldn’t be too surprised by this news as he also failed to serve out his elected term on the Loveland City Council when it no longer served his near-term personal interests.

During the past year Marostica has waged war against the Republican Party and its more conservative members. Comparisons between Bill Kaufman, another former Republican State Legislator turned Democrat, and Don Marostica are irresistible but misguided. Kaufman never pretended to be a conservative and also left his party (if not by registration but certainly by his actions) because of his beliefs and not for a better business opportunity. Marostica’s public image as a Republican was a lie from the first day he changed his registration but too many party activists allowed his money to cloud their judgment.

This website was largely created as a tool to inform citizens of the fraud Don Marostica perpetrated first on the unsuspecting taxpayer’s of Loveland whose lack of oversight allowed him to leverage his city position into more profitable business at the taxpayer’s expense. Anyone who followed his traffic impact fee waivers for his own projects, staunch support of eminent domain for private purposes and unquenchable thirst for new taxes while serving on city council recognized him as an opportunist and a charlatan.

As evidence, take a look at this ad that ran in the Reporter-Herald in 2005 by LovelandPolitics regarding Don Marostica’s claim to be a conservative Republican during his primary against Kevan McNaught – called “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing”

For a period of time the proprietor of this website was attacked for not supporting the Republican nominee for that office. Marostica’s goons attempted to expel him from a minor position in the Republican Party unsuccessfully. History will now recognize Marostica as the Benedict Arnold of Colorado Republicans and those who supported him by attacking this website as misguided. However, unlike Kaufman, Democrats are not likely to accept Marostica with open arms as they know his long history of abusing the public’s trust for personal gain.

As a local developer and former high school teacher and coach Marostica has no international or even significant regional business experience beyond Northern Colorado. He is clearly not qualified for the position he bartered from the Governor in exchange for turning against his colleagues in the legislature.

The Republican Party of Larimer County can ill afford to send another turn-coat to Denver to represent their ideals of limited government which are already under siege in both Denver and Washington, D.C.

As the Loveland Reporter-Herald correctly noted, all legislators now representing Northern Colorado from the Republican Party will be appointed and not elected to their current positions. The three names so far circulated as looking into the seat are Kevan McNaught, Bob Hewson and Troy Krenning. The selection will need to balance the need for selecting an ethical person while also seeking a candidate capable of holding onto the seat in 2010.

We are confident that both Larry Carillo, Chair of the Larimer County Republican Party and Carl Smith, Chair of the Republican’s 51st District Committee, will conduct an orderly and ethical process in assembling the precinct representatives to vote on Marostica’s replacement.

After an aggressive attack in Friday’s Loveland Reporter-Herald against those who use the internet to either dispense or gather news, the Editor, Ken Amundson, did something very foolish.

The following day (July 18, 2009) he ran a guest column of his own defending the McWhinney tax holiday proposal while attacking its detractors. Unfortunately, he got bad information and mistakenly attacked the “opposition” to the proposal for doing what the McWhinney supporters on council were in fact doing – making the tax holiday very short in time.

Read our response

Amundson defended the concept of a stimulus to help local construction workers who are out of work by mimicking the Chad McWhinney column argument from the day before. What he didn’t know (since he only apparently relied on McWhinney as his source) was that McWhinney advocates were trying to close the door on a wider stimulus to help unemployed construction workers in Loveland.

Troy McWhinney said it best to the Berthoud Trustees according to the Berthoud Reporter on another matter “Troy McWhinney, manager of WRB Investments, added a stipulation that his company have the right to buy the land back, if Berthoud decides to sell it in the next 25 years. McWhinney told the board that he didn’t want the town to sell the property to one of his competitors.”

McWhinney is a for-profit venture and has every incentive to help erect barriers to entry against their competitors. The CEFs (Capital Expansion Fees) are only a problem for McWhinney when they have to pay but not when others do.

They are not pro-business or pro-development but instead simply pro-McWhinney. As Troy’s comments to Berthoud reveal he doesn’t want the town to develop unless it is he who is profiting.

What Amundson did was confuse their propaganda from what they are really trying to accomplish behind the scenes. He defamed the very people on Loveland’s council who share his views and larger goal of stimulating the building trades by helping get everyone back to work instead of just one developer.

Maybe next time Amundson should properly check his sources so he can live up to the high journalistic standards he so capably defended in his July 17, 2009 editorial against unreliable “citizen journalists” like us.