It’s stirring when an election hustle is crushed in a hailstorm of citizen No votes. Slashing voter ice rocks crashed through Douglas County commissioners’ proposition to turn DougCo into a home rule county. Voters shredded the initiative into tiny bits with a 70% No to 30% Yes result. The collective, democratic vote-spike of the commissioners’ imperial dreams reveals the farce behind monarchical ambitions now popular at the national level.

Douglas County has embodied the nation’s political roiling for several years. Political back and forth over education policy, local control, civic rights and property taxes, with litigation all along the way, have marked the county’s political personality.

This roiling emerged in 2017 when pro-school voucher school board members promoted a program to move public funds to parents to spend on their school choices. Douglas County School District ended up in court over that idea, and the district lost. The school board turned over.

The new board was caught in the COVID vise regarding masks and other initiatives related to equity and inclusion. That board turned over to a more conservative group that fired the district’s superintendent while violating open meeting rules. That case ended up in court, and the district lost again along with $1 million in legal fees and compensation to the fired superintendent.

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Parallel to the school board fights, other elections for federal and state offices took place, with state Rep. Bob Marshall-D grabbing a GOP seat in Highlands Ranch and Democratic U.S. Rep. Jason Crow defeating five-term GOP legislator Mike Coffman.

Somehow, the three current Douglas County commissioners, Abe Laydon, George Teal and Kevin Van Winkle, missed the news DougCo was no longer super-conservative GOP territory. The commissioners voted to put their home rule proposition on the ballot in a 90-second transaction that included no public comments, questions, or input. In a massive failure to credit their constituents with any capacity to notice a flim-flam, they confidently held a press conference parading other DougCo elected officials in front of the press to impress citizens with their universal support.

No doubt, those elected county officials now rue the day they allowed themselves to be used.

Three stalwarts, state Rep. Bob Marshall, former GOP commissioner Lora Thomas and citizen Julie Gooden, sued the commissioners for violating the state’s open meeting laws. The commissioners fought the lawsuit. The district judge hearing the case did not issue an injunction to stop the election on the premise these elected doofuses would go ahead with their $500,000 home rule proposition one way or the other. In hindsight, don’t those commissioners wish the judge had enjoined the election? As it is, they now face the humiliation and repudiation of a 70% to 30% defeat.

The commissioners’ ineptitude was monumental. Their campaign finance committee, Yes on Local Control, had exactly seven donors. Two gave $50,000 and one gave $15,000. Apparently, the commissioners did not want to do the heavy lifting of engaging their constituents in supporting their home rule campaign.

The two $50,000 donations came from out-of-state contributors: Ventana Capital out of Georgetown, Texas and Cundy Harbor Irrevocable Trust from Solana Beach, California. Ventana has lots of business in the county, including residential and commercial real estate properties. Hard to know about the Cundy Harbor Trust’s interests as beneficiaries are undisclosed. Regardless, the two generous donors benefit no matter which way the election turned out. Their interests are to stay on the right side of the commissioners.

In contrast, Stop the Power Grab, the anti-home rule committee, had about 750 contributors at last count. Even the county employee union donated to the Stop the Power Grab campaign.

Another anti-home rule citizen pitched in $14,000 of her own money to the No Little Kings committee to mail post cards to rural residents informing them of “what was going on.” She is of Japanese-American heritage and a long-time resident of Highlands Ranch. “Commissioners are supposed to represent everybody,” Eiko Browning said. But Commissioner George Teal accused her of dealing with Chinese Communist billionaires to defeat his proposition according to reporting by Kyle Clark of 9News.

Residents needed those post cards providing a snapshot of the home rule proposition because the commissioners didn’t like explaining their initiative to citizens. They held one public town hall with about 100 persons present and thousands more on Zoom. They limited the meeting to one hour when questions turned too inquisitive. A subsequent one-hour public meeting was all online ostensibly for safety reasons.

Former Commissioner Lora Thomas, a prominent leader and blogger against the power grab, had this to say given the election results: “This was as big a vote of NO CONFIDENCE that the three Douglas County commissioners could have possibly received. This is precisely the result they should have expected for disrespecting We the People and purposely keeping us out of the governing process! I hope they will see this election result as a very clear and unmistakable message that the people of Douglas County expect these commissioners to put OUR priorities ahead of their favored political cronies/insiders.”

Douglas County residents should also expect three resignations, shouldn’t they?

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.