The Steamboat Pilot & Today

ptaylor: allow me to take a crack at your question. . .

Political campaigns—whether it is for US Senate and President or county commissioner or town trustee—are required by law to report how their campaign activities are being funded. Full and immediate disclosure is generally the best way to help voters monitor the influence of campaign money and vote with full knowledge of who is “paying for” and “endorsing” a political message (such as a newspaper advertisement).
The political committee headed by Cheryl Witt of Westminster, Steve Lewis and others was formed to promote the election of incumbent government officials and defeat their opponents. By “knowing who they are,” as you put it, we can weigh the information that's presented in the ad (the message) with who is putting the information out there (the messenger). In politics, the messenger is always as important as the message itself, if not more important. (I would also argue that placing campaign display ads in this one-newspaper town requires a higher standard of transparency than these blog postings, but that's a discussion for a different time.)

In forming this secretive campaign committee, our community has been provided with scant information on the messengers, other than they include a Front Range resident who owns and rents out a vacation home condo at the base area and probably is not eligible to even vote in this City Council election. Steve Lewis came forward as the committee's”spokesman,” but did so tardily and awkwardly and with an apparent ax to grind. Voters should consider this: if the Cheryl Witt/Steve Lewis attack ads are based on truth and verifiable fact, then why use a secretive political committee to deliver the message with ad in the newspaper? There are many ways to support candidates you AGREE with and want to see elected or re-elected: talk to your neighbors, make phone calls, send out letters of support, even make a campaign contribution (which your candidate must dutifully report on his or her campaign finance reports). That takes integrity. To get involved this way, through a cloak-and-dagger committee that pays for hatchet-job newspaper ads, is nothing more than cowardice. And they know that because that's why they hid in the first place, and recruited Cheryl Witt to sign the papers because they wanted to distance themselves from their words. And that's why our community deserves to know who is involved in this group.