Messenger: Good Jobs Colorado
Candidate: Walker Stapleton
Contest: Governor
Affiliation: R
Date delivered: Aug. 28, 2018
Click here for message
Message type: tv ad
Message tone: negative
About the message:
This ad from Democratic super PAC Good Jobs Colorado criticizes Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton for missing PERA board meetings. As state treasurer for the last eight years, Stapleton was an ex-officio member of the Public Employee Retirement Associaton board of trustees, which overses the state pension fund. The fund faced $32 billion in unfunded debt before a legislative compromise overhauled the system earlier this year.
The ad implies that Stapleton was attending fundraisers or golfing instead of going to PERA meetings. KDVR's Truth Check said that's misleading.
And while Stapleton did miss 33 PERA board meetings, but he wasn't "absent" during the PERA crisis as the ad implies, KDVR concluded, because he took an active role in publicly pushing for reform of the program.
9News, meanwhile, details where Stapleton was when he missed many of the meetings or portions of them, and notes that often, a deputy attended the meetings in his place.
About the messenger:
Good Jobs Colorado is a state level super PAC affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association. It supports Democrat Jared Polis and opposes Republican Walker Stapleton in the 2018 Colorado gubernatorial contest.
The messenger's money: The organization has received big money from a host of interests aligned with the party, including $920,000 from nonprofit The Sixteen Thirty Fund; $500,000 each from Education Reform Now Advocacy and State Victory Action, which is funded by billionaire George Soros and a group run by environmental activist Tom Steyer; $300,000 each from super PAC Bold Colorado, America Votes, the National Education Association and the Colorado Fund for Children & Public Education; $250,000 from the Democratic Governors Association; and $200,000 each from the Sierra Club and National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group organized by former Obama staffers to support Democratic candidates.
