In Colorado, fracking is a big deal and it has contributed to Colorado’s oil and gas boom (literally as well as figuratively) to the point where Weld county, including the city of Greeley and the area around it is littered with oil and gas fracking pads as far as the eye can see. The industry has brought many jobs to the state and has led to numerous legal battles as the oil and gas industry has been trying to extract every last bit of oil and gas from the shale beneath people’s homes and farmland. The industry has had protections up until recently because the state board that oversees their mining of the resources was entirely composed of interests devoted to development of the resources — not of preserving and protecting people’s land and health. Cities that have grown up north of Denver and east of Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Fort Collins have especially tried to preserve the health of people by restricting how close to schools and homes the gas drilling could take place, but in every case, even if the cities have won in court, the state has had the authority to over-rule the cities by the way the laws were written.
Last year, there were measures on the ballot to try and allow for cities to have larger buffer areas from the drilling and associated pollution in the air and groundwater. They were opposed by a well-funded campaign claiming that Colorado would ruin its whole economy by adopting those measures, including tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions upon billions of dollars. Well, of course the money won, especially since there was no really organized support for those measures because those people living and breathing the pollution every day weren’t enough to compete against the fossil fuel interests.
Greeley, as a University town (Northern Colorado) is a slightly Democratic-leaning district in a sea of conservative red and this past election they voted in a new state representative. Rochelle Galindo, former Greeley city councilwoman, woman of color (strike 1), gay (strike 2) and a Democrat (strike 3) was elected and she went this year for her first term representing state district 50. Today, faced with an upcoming recall petition that was just certified by the state, she chose to resign the seat rather than battle through the recall.
“It has been the honor of my life to serve as the Representative for State House District 50. I have served my community to the best of my ability have given a voice for the underrepresented. With that, it is with great sadness that I announce that I will be resigning my seat as the Representative for State House District 50 effective immediately,” wrote Galindo. “The allegations against me are false. That said, they will make my fight against the pending recall effort untenable. I will not put my constituents through what will surely be a recall campaign based on political smear tactics and false allegations. Instead, I will resign my seat as the elected representative of House District 50, effective immediately.”
Per 9News,
Multiple sources have told 9NEWS political reporter Marshall Zelinger that her resignation has nothing to do with the recall effort against her.
RELATED | State approves petition for recalling Democratic state lawmaker
House Speaker KC Becker (D-Boulder) said that the allegations were about sexual misconduct, not at the State Capitol.
We’ll likely find out in the coming days what exactly those “allegations” may have been.
From Colorado Politics.com
"This is the first win of the recall season," said Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and president of the National Association of Gun Rights.
Brown, a hard-line defender of Second Amendment rights, was among several high-profile conservative activists working to recall Galindo.
Last week, at a press conference announcing a lawsuit seeking to overturn gun-control legislation passed this year with Galindo's support, Brown said organizers plan to target as many as a dozen Democratic lawmakers with recalls.
…
Galindo came under fire early for her support of Senate Bill 181, legislation to overhaul how the state regulates the oil and gas industry, which Gov. Jared Polis has signed into law.
She also sponsored measures in the 2019 session to repeal prohibitions that banned local governments from setting their own minimum wages; reauthorize a state resiliency office, which was set up after the 2013 floods and was due to end in June; and a measure to create a transition office for those in the coal mining industry.
I encourage people to go read the Colorado Politics article, if it stays in front of the paywall. It lists the recalls that turned the Colorado State Senate from blue to red after Democrats had the temerity to get gun control legislation passed in the wake of multiple school, theater and a shooting of a Denver-based judge by an inmate who had just been released and got his gun through a straw purchase. It describes, imo, how desperate the Republicans are to undo the will of the people by recalling candidates forcing the government to spend tens of thousands of dollars on elections won fairly by Democrats, because fewer people show up for recall elections.
Rochelle Galindo, by resigning, assures that a committee of Democrats chosen before now as a precaution against recall, will be the group that chooses who will fill out the balance of her term (unless the Republicans mount yet another recall against whoever that is). Had she fought the recall, and had it gone to a recall election, it could have been her, some other Democrat or a Republican who took the seat for the remainder of the term. The last set of recalls resulted in the Republicans keeping the state senate for an extra two years, so it’s worth it to them and their anonymous funders to throw whatever wrenches they can into the works of Colorado government. I hope they choke on their recalls.