Gail Bell, a 48-year-old U.S. Army veteran and an idealistic political novice, filed to run as an independent candidate May 10 for the hotly contested Colorado House District 36 seat. Bell dumped nearly $900 of her own money into the race. Then she got a lesson in politics and, on Friday, she dropped out.

Bell was running for the seat held by term-limited Democrat Su Ryden for the last eight years and eyed by hungry Republicans all the while. Bell’s candidacy was a long shot even before it started.

The mainstream parties have put up two strong candidates. Democratic Party insider Mike Weissman is running against Republican Richard Bowman, who ran for the seat against Ryden in 2014 and lost by a mere 668 votes.

Bowman and Weissman both enjoy support from political organizations and from elected officials.

Weissman’s campaign reported $35,000 cash on hand at the end of July. Bowman reported $15,000 cash on hand.

Bell, who until last week worked for Veterans Affairs and now works for the Department of the Interior, never raised a cent outside her family. She was struggling to collect the 400 valid resident signatures she needed to land her name on the general election ballot. And last week, she was the subject of an anonymous complaint which held that, in running for office, Bell was likely violating the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from running for partisan electoral positions.

Bell says she had never heard of the Hatch Act until the complaint was mailed to her workplace at the VA and to three local news outlets, including The Statesman.

Bell is a black woman whose policy positions line up mostly on the left of the political spectrum. She said she believes the complaint came from people who opposed her candidacy because they thought she might split the vote on the left and hand the seat to Republican candidate Bowman.

Bell said Ray Arrington, a local American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union official, made that case to her at the end of June.

“At first (Arrington) supported me,” Bell said. “Then he pulled me into his office and told me, ‘No, no, no, we can’t have a Republican win that seat. You can run for any other office, not this one.'”

Bell was flabbergasted. “I walked into this naive, OK,” she said. “I told Ray, ‘You’re not saying anything to me about taking care of the people in the district.'”

Bell said that, soon after her alleged exchange with Arrington, she received an email, which she shared with The Statesman, from Tim Snyder, AFGE union legislative and political organizer. In the email, Snyder introduced himself, said that he recently had been “made aware” of her candidacy and suggested she contact the Office of Special Counsel for advice on the Hatch Act. Snyder also offered in the note to assist her in any way he could.

Arrington told The Statesman he didn’t author the Hatch Act complaint, but he didn’t seem surprised by the question.

“This office did nothing to hinder that young lady,” he said, and referred any related questions to Snyder, who hadn’t returned messages at press time.

“You know, I’m just a little girl from Wichita, Kansas,” said Bell. “I wanted to do this to serve the people of the district. I didn’t walk into this for all the fighting and kicking and the ‘You stay out!’ stuff. I’m just being honest with you.”

Colorado Democrats don’t want to blow this House race. The party now enjoys a slim three-seat majority in the chamber, which it hopes to expand upon this year, given that Democratic voters usually turn out in higher numbers for presidential election contests. The District 36 seat would be a big loss. Democrats enjoy an edge in voter registration in the district. There are 14,530 registered active Democratic voters, 10,757 active Republican voters, and 14,365 active unaffiliated voters.

But Democrats might see a cautionary tale in the 2012 race for the seat.

That year, Ryden blew out her Republican opponent, James W. Parker. Ryden was a much stronger candidate, but it didn’t hurt that Parker was running more directly than she was against Wes Long, a Libertarian Party candidate. Long won 4 percent of the vote, which no doubt came mostly from a right-leaning corner of the electorate. He received 1,247 votes. Ryden won the election by nearly 6,000 votes.

Bell said she has learned a lot from her truncated experience in Colorado electoral politics.

“I wanted to run so bad. You don’t know how bad I wanted to do this,” she said. “I’ll be back in two years and I’ll be better prepared. I’m a military veteran. I don’t scare off that easy. In 24 months, I’m gonna get that seat.”

– john@coloradostatesman.com