Colorado petition gatherers harassed, threatened, stalked and intimidated; Media silent

How far is the left willing to go to win an election?  Consider the recent attempt to recall Colorado state Senator Evie Hudak.  Hudak — one of the anti-gun Democrats who helped push the state’s hated gun control laws — was the third Democrat to be targeted for removal.  The stakes were high — if she lost, a Republican would take over and the GOP would control the state Senate.

Hudak apparently realized she could actually lose the election and resigned.  That resignation ensured Democrats would keep their iron grip on the Senate.  But liberals in the state showed the depths they were willing to go to win — threatening, harassing and intimidating petition gatherers.  Worse yet, with the exception of some local reporting, the Democrat-media complex said nothing.

As we reported at Examiner, one Hudak supporter threatened to murder signature gatherers — and the threat was captured on video:

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Charles C.W. Cooke highlighted some of the thug tactics used by the left:

“As we speak, we have multiple cars monitoring us at our offices and filming us from the parking lot,” Mike McAlpine, who headed up the recall effort, told me yesterday. “This is not a one-off event. We hold sign-and-drive events on the sidewalks near to busy intersections, and we hold signs inviting people to pull over and sign the petition. Our opponents have taken to blocking us: as cars pull in, they run up to the driver’s side door and physically stand next to the door so that the person inside cannot open the door and come outside.”

He added:

Elsewhere, opponents have formed human chains in order to block anyone who wants to sign. “They yell at the person while they’re at the table trying to sign, or blow an airhorn in their ear,” McAlpine added. “There have been a half-dozen examples of that. In addition, when we go out to knock on doors and present the petition, they will follow us down the sidewalk and scream and yell.” Recently, McAlpine told me, protesters encircled a young black man who was collecting signatures. “They yelled at him, ‘you killed Trayvon! You killed Trayvon!’”

But that’s not all.  Hudak supporters even went so far as to distribute flyers accusing petition signature gatherers of being sex offenders.  Seriously:

McAlpine said he had three cars following him at any given time.

“We have tails in most of our locations, and the police will not address this. We’ve shared the statute with the police. We think this is stalking and intimidation,” he said.

Of course it’s stalking and intimidation.  But since it’s being done by Democrats, it’s apparently okay.  And the silence from the media enabled all of it.

Authorities at government offices like the DMV have also harassed and chased signature gatherers away.

“We stay 100 feet from the entrance to be approximately safe,” McAlpine told Cooke. “Nonetheless, the city has deployed the police to escort us off the premises with the direct threat that they will arrest us next time.”

Cooke said unions (SEIU, and all the usual suspects) and other liberal groups spent some $120,000 in Colorado.  Nevertheless, Hudak resigned.

Noting the silence from the national outlets of the Democrat-media complex, Newsbusters’ Tom Blumer said:

Thanks to the press and law enforcement giving them cover by ignoring them (with some rare exceptions in local TV), these tactics will continue in future contentious elections until exposure and prosecutions occur.