During the 2022 campaign for secretary of state, former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson succinctly described her Democratic and Republican opponents as “similar sides of the same coin.” Nothing has changed.

Although they come from different ideological fringes of their respective political parties, the public records of both Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters are defined by incompetence, blind partisanship and corruption.

They both have glorified visions of their public personas.

Griswold extols how she is the first Democratic woman to be elected secretary of state after Republican women served as secretary of state for 32 consecutive years from 1974 to 2006. What took Democrats so long?

Griswold is notorious for unprecedented turnover in her office. She drives out professional staff members who are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements which suppress public discussion of her management style. 

She inappropriately injects herself into regulatory decisions that punish Republicans. Griswold aired taxpayer funded television ads featuring her which were ostensibly to encourage people to vote but were really thinly veiled campaign commercials.

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While she claims to oppose so-called “dark money’ in campaigns, she was elected chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State which spends millions of unaccountable, dark dollars in secretary of state campaigns including her own and also in her brother’s political consulting firm.

Twice her office sent out voter registration forms to 30,000 non-citizens which she blamed on a “data glitch.”

Her office refused for months to alert 64 county clerks that her office had publicly revealed confidential passwords for election equipment around the state.

Griswold has used the office as a partisan Democratic weapon to promote her insatiable ambition in stark contrast to her predecessors in both parties.

Democrat Bernie Buescher ran the office with non-partisan professionalism from 2009 to 2010. Republican Natalie Meyer chaired both of President Ronald Reagan’s Colorado campaigns in 1976 and 1980 but there was not a hint of partisan favoritism during her three terms as secretary of state from 1983 to 1995.

Griswold had all but formally announced for governor until U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet bullied her out of the race, which forced her to run for attorney general.

Peters sees herself as leading the vanguard of truth to uncover the deep conspiracy that stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. After being convicted on criminal charges for illegally tampering with her county’s election equipment, she now plays the martyr for her fellow stolen election conspiracists across the nation including President Donald Trump who calls her a “political prisoner.”

There is a significant contrast in how a Republican-dominated, pro-Trump Mesa County dealt with Peters and how Democratic-dominated Denver County dealt with Griswold.

Mesa County Republican District Attorney Dan Rubinstein convened a grand jury that resulted in the indictments of Peters. All three Republican members of the Board of Mesa County Commissioners called for the investigation. Rubinstein prosecuted the case in a Mesa County court in front of a jury of Mesa County citizens where Peters was convicted and sentenced to prison.

Meanwhile, Griswold launched a laughable internal “investigation” of the leak of election passwords which, of course, fingered a fall-guy in the office. Griswold accepted no responsibility.

The Denver district attorney at the time, Democratic criminal-coddler Beth McCann, conducted a perfunctory investigation and, predictably, declared there was no wrongdoing. Nothing to see here folks!

Vastly outnumbered Republican state legislators demanded a full state audit of Griswold’s office but ruling Democrats closed ranks and shut it down.

And of course, Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser could not be bothered with Griswold’s illegal release of election equipment passcodes. 

Peters is in prison. Griswold is now running for attorney general. They both remain similar sides of the same corrupt coin.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.  He was campaign manager for U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota when Thune unseated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.