Denver, Colorado, has been taught a great politically
correct witch hunt lesson. All of the above, and many more who we will speak
about in this column, took a nice, 41-year-old white woman from a farm in Iowa,
who probably never even muttered any words or terms that could be construed by
the witch hunters on the left to be remotely racist, homophobic, Islamophobic,
or anti-global warming; who also, I believe, does not like Donald Trump; and
these bastards were able to turn her, with the help of the Denver media, into
David Duke.
You folks all remember David Duke? Remember when he ran
against Edwin Edwards to be the governor of Louisiana, and the bumper stickers
said vote for the crook because David Duke was such a horrible human.
Did you get the opportunity to witness the Hancock
celebration party at Hancock election headquarters when the numbers came in
early that he had taken this very decent woman and beaten her into the ground?
Walking next to him, the one and only, former Governor Bill Ritter; cheering
him on, former Mayor and presidential hopeful, Governor John Hickenlooper; the
true master of the City, Wellington Webb; and, of course, the crown prince himself,
Michael Hancock, doing the victory dance. (Conspicuously absent from the
victory party was current Governor Jared Polis who did not endorse or do any
fundraising for Hancock.)
To the man, these are philanderers. To the man, they
understand the power and money in Denver. To the man, they knew they were
taking this decent woman and turning her into George Wallace or the
granddaughter of Lester Maddox.
Have the television outlets no shame as they covered and
interviewed a cheerful Michael Hancock?
I can’t tell you how many times my sainted father would say
to me and my brothers, “What the hell’s wrong with you?” To the City of Denver,
in the words of my father, what the hell’s wrong with you?
This woman made some amateur mistakes, like not knowing what
the initials of the NAACP meant, and taking the picture of an Asian man after
they did a deep dumpster dive, and discovered she made some remark about
Chinatown on social media that they lifted and implied it was some sort of
racist anti-Asian remark. Maybe someone could ask the Brownstein Law Firm about
that.
I’m told when she made the runoff her total war chest was
$700 thousand and change. I’m also told, by reliable sources, that the minute
it was announced, Hancock raised that amount of money and added it to his $2.7
million war chest.
As an amateur reader of history, it’s been noted that any
time a candidate starts with negative advertising he or she is behind. Hancock
came out of the box after promising Jamie Giellis they would not go negative.
He went on the negative offensive turning her into a modern day KKK Night
Rider.
That was despicable and we may never see the internal
polling data, but you can bet your ass they knew he was in trouble.
There’s some smarmy character on the payroll and in the
words of Al Davis, “Just win baby,” and they did. It’s sad that this cabal of
wealthy men took this fine woman and dashed her on the rocks of hate. They
brought in Hillary Clinton to endorse Michael Hancock. I suspect they did
because Michael must remind her of her husband Bill. Keep an eye on this one
folks. The only good news is that a Marxist beat Albus Brooks. Watch the skies.
Wall Of Love: Jack Welner points to a photo of Lori Goldberg, his special friend. All around him is his “wall of love,” photos of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, evidence that — despite his grievous losses — Welner stayed open to life and love. His advice to people: “Don’t let your past ruin your future. Live life to the fullest.”
At 98, Jack Welner’s face shines with the eager ebullience
of a 6-year-old. His eyes twinkle with fun. That’s the kind of boy Welner was
back in Lodz, Poland — helpful, fun-loving, excited about life — and by all
accounts, that’s the kind of man he became. In between, however, came the
Holocaust, and — because Welner is Jewish — unimaginable suffering.
Through Auschwitz, Dachau, labor camps, a death march — how,
people ask, did you stay the same person? Looking back over the years, Welner
explains how he kept bitterness out of his heart and held onto the twinkle in
his eye.
Take This, You’ll Need It
Death Camp: The Auschwitz death camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. Jack Welner arrived at Auschwitz in 1944.
It’s not that Welner forgot what happened. He shares memories
so vivid, you are there: watching how fast the Germans turn a corner of Lodz
into a barbed wire ghetto; seeing guards shoot Jews in the ghetto streets “just
for practice”; pretending — along with the seven other family members crammed
into one room with no toilet or running water — that the beet leaves your
mother salted and fried taste just like herring.
“We were starving [in the ghetto],” recalls Welner. “Just
before we got on the train [for Auschwitz], we got a little piece of bread.
Late that night, we arrived. I helped mother down from the train. She still had
her bread. She pushed it into my hand. ‘Here. Take this. You’ll need it.’”
Welner’s eyes fill with tears. “Those were the last words my
mother said to me.”
Look For Luck
After the war, when Welner was in a safer place — Denver,
CO! — and heard “even a little bit of antisemitism” he’d speak up. “I left
Poland to get rid of SOBs like you, so you better shut up.”
“Later,” he adds, “we’d become friends.”
Young Boy: Thirteen-year-old Jacob Welniarz, who became Jack Welner in America, poses for a photo in his boyhood city of Lodz, Poland. He had no idea that in six years, his family would be torn apart and he would be sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
But back when hatred of Jews was law, Welner searched for small ways to survive. In a labor camp near Dachau, a guard kept beating Welner with a 2×4 so brutally, “I knew I would die if he kept it up … so I sank to the ground and began crying. Not so much from pain, but I had to … do something.”
Welner adds emphatically: “In my mind, I was saying, ‘I will survive you, you SOB!’”
Later on in that camp, “… my luck changed. A machine
operator took a liking to me. I was suffering from an ulcer. He let me lie
down. He brought me rinds of bread to eat.
“He saved my life,” concludes Welner, who, after the war,
traveled twice to Munich to bring food to that guard.
Welner was still able to feel empathy.
Many had lost that capacity.
“I had a cousin, blonde, she survived by working as a maid
in a Warsaw hotel, disguised as a Christian,” Welner recalls. “When the
[Warsaw] ghetto was burning, someone laughed, ‘Look, the bedbugs are frying.’
Her family was inside that ghetto and she had to stand there, crying, saying
nothing …”
Welner shakes his head. He tells how, upon arriving back in
Lodz after being liberated, the first words he heard from a Christian were,
“Oh, a lot of you Jews are still alive.”
L’Chaim (To Life)
Welner shares such memories seriously, like one delivering a
valuable package. Now one more person knows and will not forget. But he is not
inclined to dwell on or analyze the horror. Asked about antisemitism, Welner
shrugs. “That’s how it was. Always the Jew was the scapegoat.”
When the subject turns, however, to his three children, six
grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, Welner’s face lights up like a
100-candle birthday cake. He enthuses at length about each one. It glows when
he converses about travel or music. And when he sings.
Welner loves to sing.
Quilt: So moved by Welner’s visit and what he shared about his experience during the Holocaust, one school decided to make Welner a quilt. Each child created a square in the quilt that shows what they got from hearing Welner speak.
“I love Italian,” he
rhapsodizes. “I still remember songs from Italy [where he was in a DP camp].”
In the ghetto, Welner recalls, there was a Jewish composer
who wrote satiric songs. Welner sings one in Yiddish, then translates: “Such a
disaster, you have to eat every day, the stomach always wants more and more…
“We needed to laugh,” he recalls.
Welner adores jokes. Laughing uproariously (but never
ruining the punch line), Welner tells a joke about the cow from Minsk. The
farmer and the bull. The one where two friends enter a bakery: “‘Moishe, look
at that wonderful bagel!’ ‘Oh, but it’s got a big hole in the middle!”’
Optimist
“I see the bagel, not the hole,” Welner explains. “I’m an
optimist.”
At 31, Welner anticipated a happy future when he met a
beautiful girl, Adele. They married and moved to Denver. Seven years later,
Adele died, leaving Welner with three small children and a broken heart.
Welner moved to Israel for five years to be near his
sisters, then back to Denver, where he worked as a carpenter and raised his
kids. Despite the disappointment of a subsequent marriage not working out, “My
father always enjoyed life,” recalls Welner’s daughter Beverly. “Our home was
filled with love and laughter.”
As a Holocaust Survivor, Welner spoke to schools and groups
in Denver and surrounding areas. Then in 1995, the Shoah Foundation sent Lori
Goldberg to interview Welner.
The two connected.
“We became best friends, sharing life’s joys and challenges,” says Goldberg, who, coincidentally, in the first years of their relationship, saw Welner on Tuesdays.
“He was my Morrie,” she says, alluding to the book, Tuesdays with Morrie. “From Jack, I learned about courage, resiliency, hope, and love.”
My Motto
“Jack has taught me, no matter how difficult life can be, one should never give up hope, one should never stop loving,” said Goldberg.
“My motto,” Welner says, “is, ‘Don’t let the past ruin your
future. If you live in the past, you don’t have a future.’”
“I receive so much more from Jack than I could ever give,” says Welner’s caregiver, Linda Chambers. “It is an honor to know him. He will not allow hate to grow in his heart.”
Mayoral Runoff: 9News hosted a debate on May 21 in their studio. Michael Hancock is relying on large donations from developers, lobbying firms, and law firms to fund his negative attacks against his opponent Jamie Giellis. Giellis is hoping her grassroots approach of one-on-one contact and neighborhood visits will propel her to victory on June 4.
In the May 7 Denver Municipal Election two-time incumbent
Mayor Michael Hancock received only 38.65% of the vote and his prior pledge to
not campaign negatively went very much out the window. Led by the Brownstein
Farber Law Firm, the lobbying firm CRL Associates, Colorado Concern and myriad
“high-density developers,” money has poured into the Hancock campaign to muddy
up political neophyte Jamie Giellis who finished second with 24.86% of the
vote.
Hancock had hoped, and expected, to receive over 50% of the
vote and had only run positive ads about himself and his affability, which
apparently was not effective as over 60% of Denver voters voted for someone
other than Hancock. After election night, two other main challengers Lisa
Calderón and Penfield Tate endorsed Giellis. Hancock, in response, garnered the
support of former mayors Wellington Webb and John Hickenlooper.
Challenger: Jamie Giellis is hoping her grassroots efforts and her bus tour that spanned all 78 Denver neighborhoods will be enough to defeat incumbent Mayor Michael Hancock. An incumbent Mayor of Denver has not lost a race in 36 years.
Giellis, who had never run for political office before, appeared
shocked at first by the Hancock onslaught and appeared ill-prepared for the
inevitable claim by the Hancock forces that she was a “racist.” Giellis had
appeared on the Brother Jeff Fard’s radio show and did not correctly identify
what each of the letters in the acronym NAACP stood for. The failure to
correctly identify each of the letters made national news.
Not being a seasoned politician, Giellis did not scrub all
of her social media when she entered the mayor’s race, and what she asserts are
seemingly innocent observations were recast as being “racist.” Her notation
that in some cities there were seemingly few Chinese in today’s Chinatowns was
claimed to be anti-Asian. A tweet for a “meet & greet fundraiser at La
Cocinita for a nacho/taco bar, lowriders, and a conversation about Denver on
May 16” was declared by the Hancock campaign to be anti-Hispanic even though
the event was titled such by the owner of La Cocinita restaurant, a Hispanic,
and not Giellis.
On Saturday, before the ballots went out on May 20, Hancock
began television ads which stated, “like Trump, (Giellis) called undocumented
immigrants criminals.” A Denver Post fact checker reputed the claim but the ad
has appeared to be effective even if apparently dishonest.
Incumbent: Michael Hancock has launched a negative campaign against his runoff opponent Jamie Giellis. After Hancock was unable to receive the necessary votes to win on May 7 and avoid the runoff, Hancock launched a negative campaign to help save his campaign.
Giellis did, however, appear to rebound. Lacking money for
television ads she had a press conference where she accused Hancock of
fostering a “poisonous culture” of sexual harassment with graphs showing Denver
taxpayers paying nearly $1.5 million in settlements and legal fees during
Hancock’s eight years in office.
A review of where each of the candidates performed best in
the May 7 election shows that Giellis performed best in the areas where many
developers had inserted projects, often against the wishes of the surrounding
neighborhoods, including Cherry Creek, Hilltop, Crestmoor, Country Club and
Virginia Village. Hancock performed best in his northeast Denver home turf as
well as outlying areas where high-density development has not yet occurred.
A major bone of contention between the candidates is the
issue of homelessness. Both opposed and voted against Initiative 300 the
so-called “Right to Survive” ballot issue which went down to a crushing defeat.
Hancock supports the “camping ban” that prevents camping overnight on city
property. Giellis does not support the ban as she believes all it does is try
to sanitize downtown and push the homeless into the local neighborhoods. She
proposes a combination of designated campsites in sanitary locations along with
tiny home locations to address the problems of homelessness.
Hancock, with a massive fundraising advantage, hopes that
his name recognition and advertising campaign will win out in the end. Giellis,
who personally toured every neighborhood in Denver, hopes her person-to-person
campaigning will defeat what she views as a cynical negative advertising blitz
being relied on by the mayor.
Endorsement: Jamie Giellis received the endorsements from former rivals Penfield Tate and Lisa Calderón on May 13, 2019. Tate and Calderón received a combined 33.18% of the votes in the May 7 election. Many experts believe these endorsements are crucial for Giellis to have a chance at defeating Michael Hancock on June 4.
The last time an incumbent mayor lost in Denver was in 1983
when a young Federico Peña defeated 74-year-old incumbent Bill McNichols.
Hancock is deemed the favorite, notwithstanding getting less than 40% of the
vote in the first round. Almost 40% of the Denver electorate turned out in the
first round which was far higher than expected. The higher the turnout the
better the chances of the challenger, according to experts, as citizens happy
with the status quo often tend not to vote.
The runoff election is set for June 4, 2019, and ballots
have already been mailed by the City and County of Denver.
302: Initiated Ordinance 302 would require a vote of Denver residents before using money or resources in an effort to obtain an Olympic bid. This will be decided by Denver voters on the June 4, 2019 ballot.
While the runoff for the next Mayor of Denver has taken most
of the media attention, there are five runoff spots for City Council as well as
the City Clerk and Recorder position on the June 4 ballot. In addition, there
is a vote on Initiated Ordinance 302 which would mandate voter approval before
Denver spends money on trying to lure the Winter Olympics to the city. The
proposition was not on the May 7 ballot as the necessary petitions were not
turned in until after the day for inclusion in that voting.
The Council runoff races are in Districts 1 (the Highlands
and Federal Boulevard area in North Denver), District 3 (West Denver including
Sloan’s Lake), District 5 (Central Southeast Denver including Hilltop and
Crestmoor), District 9 (Downtown Denver and Five Points, and District 10
(Cherry Creek and Country Club). Three of the races involve incumbents
(Districts 5, 9, and 10) which is abnormally high in a city that has upset an
incumbent only once in the last three-and-one-half decades (Espinoza over
Shepherd in District 1 in 2015). This indicates, according to some, a high
level of unhappiness on how growth has been managed in the City and County of
Denver during Michael Hancock’s eight years in office, which the City Council
in large part controls.
Clerk & Recorder: The City Clerk and Recorder position is up for grabs as former Councilman Paul Lopez (far right) will face Peg Perl in the runoff. Lopez, despite being a former councilman with name recognition, failed to get over 50% of the vote as he received only 37%. Perl finished with close to 33%.
In the runoff for City Clerk and Recorder, term-limited City
Councilman Paul Lopez drew only 37% of the vote in the first round which
surprised many election observers given his high name recognition. His personal
backing of a massive Sloan’s Lake development has been his anathema to some
voters. Others attribute Lopez’s poor showing to a disastrous debate
performance against Peg Perl who appeared to be highly qualified for the
position, while Lopez came across, at best, as amiable but incompetent for the
position.
Another surprise in the first round was the showing in
District 9 of Councilman Albus Brooks who is deemed by many the heir apparent
to Mayor Hancock. He bested challenger Candi CdeBaca in the first round by only
45% to 43%. Voters appeared upset by Brooks being too close to the business
group the Downtown Denver Partnership and high-density developers. New
developments in the district have forced many African American families who
have lived in the district for generations out of Denver.
Debates: AARP Colorado presented a series of debates featuring the candidates running for each seat in the Denver City Council races. This photo, from District 10, featured all four candidates running for the District 10 seat. City Council seats in Districts 1, 3, 5, 9, and 10 will be decided on June 4, 2019.
In District 10 incumbent Wayne New received 39% of the round
on May 7 while challenger Chris Hines attracted 30% of the vote. Some felt New
did not do enough to challenge Mayor Hancock on myriad issues in his first
term, but many fear Hines will be little more than a puppet for developers if
he were to get into office.
In Council District 1 the leader of control growth on the
Council, Rafael Espinoza elected not to run for a second term after upsetting
incumbent Susan Shepherd in 2015. He indicated he could do more outside of
Council to encourage reasonable and beneficial growth, and strongly backed his
top aide Amanda Sandoval. She is in a runoff with Denver Fire Department
Lieutenant Mike Somma who is counting on massive union support for his runoff
bid. While unions often do not heavily participate in first round elections
they do often throw in their money and manpower for runoffs.
In Council District 3 where incumbent Paul Lopez was
term-limited, immigrant rights activist Jamie Torres was the top vote getter in
round one with 40% while longtime community leader Veronica Barela received
36%. The vote may depend on the massive Sloan’s Lake development pushed by Paul
Lopez and Brownstein Farber Law Firm that is opposed by Barela and many
residents.
District 5: An election forum was held at George Washington High School on March 12, 2019. Mary Beth Susman (far right) will face off against newcomer Amanda Sawyer (second from the right). Susman, the incumbent, attracted only 36% of the vote while Sawyer received 40%.
The only incumbent to fail to win or be the top vote getter
in round one was Mary Beth Susman who attracted only 36% of the vote and was
bested by political newcomer Amanda Sawyer. Susman is viewed as highly
vulnerable for voting against residents’ wishes numerous times for high density
development in her District.
A highly interesting side note is Initiated Ordinance 302
which would require a vote of Denver residents before using money or resources
in an effort to obtain an Olympic bid. The measure was a result of an effort by
Denver to host the 2020 Winter Games which eventually gave Salt Lake City the
chance to potentially bid to host the 2030 Winter Games. While developers and some
in the business community strongly backed the bid, it was largely opposed by
many everyday citizens who saw no reason to spend potentially tens of millions
to lure growth and more people to the Denver metro area. The vote is seen as a
test of the popularity of rapid if not uncontrolled growth.
Election Day is June 4, 2019, but ballots were sent out by
mail on May 20. In the first round the voting was slow up and until election
day, May 7, when almost half of the final vote tally were turned in.
