Colorado’s top election official dismisses Gypsum Republican’s campaign finance complaints in Eagle Town Council election

When Tony Martinez, the vice-chair of the Eagle County Republicans, filed campaign finance complaints in October against five candidates running for Eagle Town Council seats, he said he did so in an effort to prove that dark money was flowing into Eagle to help, in his words, “the Democratic side.”

The problem with that insistence, say those who were subject to the complaint, is that the town of Eagle’s charter states that “all municipal elections shall be nonpartisan” and that the candidates in the Eagle Town Council race did not declare a party affiliation. So, even if a hyperpartisan dark money group was attempting to influence the race, that group wouldn’t know who to support.

On Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of State Andrew Kline granted a motion by the department’s elections division to dismiss Martinez’s complaints, determining that the complaints should be worked out by the town of Eagle, since it is a home-rule municipality that makes its own rules regarding municipal campaign finance complaints.

“The Deputy Secretary agrees with the division that jurisdiction over these municipal campaign finance matters remains with the municipal clerk and not with the Secretary of State,” Kline said in his ruling. “The municipal clerk did not refer the complaints to the division and, in any event, the town of Eagle does not have an ordinance authorizing the referral of municipal campaign finance complaints.”

No trace on Tracer

Martinez says he was able to identify the Democrats in the Eagle Town Council race by attending an October candidate forum and listening to the candidates’ views. Martinez’s campaign finance complaint targeted those candidates he had suspected of being Democrats — Mark Bergman, Casey Glowacki, Geoff Grimmer, Scott Schreiner and Bryan Woods — saying they did not indicate who paid for their campaign signs.

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The other candidates did indicate who paid for their signs, Martinez said, and “when you look at their Tracer (Colorado’s campaign finance disclosure website) expenditures … you can see that the sign expenditures were all under $1,000, or met the criteria for not being required. With the other ones, there’s no way to know. We weren’t able to actually see their Tracer accounts, we weren’t able to find their Tracer accounts through various searches, and that was in the complaint to the secretary of state.”

However, when asked to find any Eagle candidate on the Tracer site, including those not listed in his complaint, Martinez was unable to turn up any results. In a phone call, Martinez claimed that mayoral candidate Tom Olden was on Tracer, even though Olden does not come up in a Tracer candidate search.

“I’m on Tracer right now, I’m on the candidate search … Tom’s right here,” Martinez said.

Martinez was later asked to clarify to whom he was referring — as no one named Olden comes up in a Tracer search — and he replied, in an email, “When we were on the phone, the ‘Olden’ I found, turns out wasn’t Tom Olden.”

When asked which Olden he did find, as no one named Olden appears in a Tracer candidate search, Martinez did not respond.

Candidates targeted push back against partisanship

Martinez said in Grimmer’s campaign, no indication was given as to who paid for his signs.

“I know how much signs cost, because I’ve been involved with campaigns,” Martinez said. “When you start putting up a significant number of signs around town of various sizes — double-sided, single-sided, whatever it may be — when you start adding all that up, it becomes an expensive venture.”

Grimmer said he spent $270 on 20 signs, and he disclosed that expenditure to the town. As the state does not require disclaimer statements on expenditures costing less than $1,000, Grimmer said he did not feel the need to include who paid for those signs.

However, the answer, Grimmer said, is that he himself came up with the $270 for his 20 signs. No dark money groups and no anonymous donors were involved, he said.

“I self-funded my campaign,” Grimmer said.

Grimmer, an incumbent who was re-elected to a council seat, also pushed back strongly against partisan politics in local races at the same forum Martinez attended.

“It is popular right now to be divisive. It is popular at the national level to think that the loudest voice wins,” he told forum attendees. “I would challenge that at a local level. I think we need to be teammates, the seven of us who end up on this council. We really need to function as one team, right? And if we can’t do that, we’re going to send all of you and all of us as a giant ship of fools, and we’re going to send it all down in a negative direction. I do really worry about trying to bring federal politics to the local level.”

Bryan Woods, Eagle’s new mayor-elect who defeated Tom Olden decisively on Tuesday, capturing nearly 62% of the vote, also lamented partisanship entering into a race that is supposed to be nonpartisan.

“I was deeply disappointed from the beginning when I saw people picking teams,” he said Tuesday night after securing his victory. “It started very early on when you saw the same yard signs showing up over and over together. And I really hope we can have a discussion with the town on campaign rules so we can prevent this sort of partisan interference in nonpartisan elections in the future.”

Partisanship in a nonpartisan race

Martinez used Geoff Grimmer as an example of a candidate whom he thinks is a Democrat being supported by dark money, otherwise known as soft money.

Soft-side groups, by not having a direct affiliation with those running for office, can accept larger donations than the maximum $400 contributions from individuals and businesses that a candidate can accept for their campaign.

Grimmer ran as a Democrat for Eagle County commissioner, but didn’t make it onto the ballot for the primary, won by Democrat Tom Boyd, who ran unopposed in the general election last November to secure his seat. County elections, unlike municipal elections, are partisan.

Martinez said while he himself is not an Eagle resident, instead living in Gypsum, he does follow Eagle politics and assumed Grimmer to be a Democrat based on his stance on certain issues.

“He wants Eagle to be all electric by 2030,” Martinez said of Grimmer. “That’s typically and traditionally a left-progressive green agenda.”

The assumption about Grimmer’s political affiliation, in turn, helped fuel Martinez’s suspicion that the Eagle Town Council candidate received dark-money campaign contributions.

“Dark money is coming into campaigns a lot from the Democratic side,” Martinez said.

Martinez also used the Senate District 8 election from 2022 as an example.

“The commercials on YouTube at that time, I recall being very strong attack ads against (Republican candidate) Matt Solomon,” Martinez said.

Martinez insisted there was no disclaimer saying who paid for those attack ads against Matt Solomon, but — as reported by the Vail Daily at the time — a dark money group called All Together Colorado was clearly identified as being behind the ads.

Martinez is correct in claiming that dark money was flowing into the 2022 Senate District 8 campaign, but the money was coming from both sides of the race, with groups supporting Solomon actually spending more than those supporting Dylan Roberts by a 60% to 40% margin. Dark money spending to support Solomon was reported at nearly $764,000, while spending to support Roberts totaled about $519,000.

The Eagle County Republicans and Eagle County Democrats also waded into the Eagle Town Council race with social media posts, with the Republicans touting Olden as Eagle’s next mayor and targeting Glowacki following a campaign sign controversy involving Glowacki. Glowacki admitted to pulling one of Olden’s signs on a property owned by Todd Morrison — after claiming his signs had repeatedly been pulled. Glowacki faces a misdemeanor tampering charge.

The Eagle County Democrats also issued a social media post on the nonpartisan race after two candidates — mayoral hopeful Jason Cole and council candidate Timothy Haley — suspended their campaigns to support Woods and council candidates McCrackin, Glowacki, Grimmer, Schreiner and Bergman.

Martinez said he intends to use the Deputy Secretary of State’s ruling to his advantage in future elections.

“We don’t need disclosures, we can just pump dark money into signage and help a candidate by putting up signs, and no one will ever know where the money came from,” he said. “Because now the Secretary of State has established a precedent with us — and by us I mean me — so I could go out and support a candidate in Avon, and by going out and actually purchasing the signs, and donating those signs, nobody ever has to know.”