Some attack pieces have recently been surfacing against my campaign for state treasurer.
Here is my response:
I suspect the good news from all these negative attack pieces is I must be seen as the conservative to beat at the assembly. The group claiming responsibility for these attack pieces is JET PAC, which, as registered with the Secretary of State has the stated purpose of Electing Justin Everett to be state treasurer.
In all of the elections I have conducted I have never gone negative and I don’t intend on starting now.
As a founding member of the Republican Study Committee of Colorado (www.RSCC.us) and the current chairman I can hardly be accused of being aligned with the liberal wing of the party. Nor am I guilty of carrying the water for any special interest group, except maybe those citizens who value life, TABOR, liberty, and freedom rather than higher taxes and more control from every government agency.
In the past four years I have been in a slim majority in the Senate, with leadership responsibilities (including Assistant Majority Leader, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and member of the Joint Budget Committee). In these positions we do not have the luxury of just saying no to everything. We have had to work with the Democrat controlled House and produce a balanced budget every year. This is our Constitutional duty. I stand behind my voting record as the most responsible, conservative record of fighting the creep of government intrusion into our lives. I have held firm as a rock-solid conservative.
What cannot be captured in outside rating systems is the battles we fight with each bill to defend life, TABOR, parental rights, the 2nd Amendment, etc.. Let me be clear on one important point: I applaud Principles of Liberty (POL) and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers (C.U.T.). In fact, POL had its origin within the RSCC several years ago during which I was also the chairman of RSCC. C.U.T. has honored me seven different years with their highest awards of Champion or Guardian of the Taxpayer. These outside rating systems have provided a good touchstone for conservative values and they inform many citizens and legislators. But there is often much more to specific legislation which an outside source cannot fully capture.
For example, on the Joint Budget Committee there are three Democrats and three Republicans. It takes four votes to put anything into the budget, and we do not have the prerogative to change the statutes which direct much of the budget setting. At the end of the day decisions must be made which facilitate the already established laws. I have fought many battles on specific line items and my vote did sometimes make the difference, but we did not always prevail. Often the final line item is much less than what the Left wanted, but it was still not what was our ideal.
Recognizing that we have several Republican candidates for this office I have tried my best to keep the peace among us. I have tried to lead by example because we Republicans are famous for wounding each other in the primary to the extent that we then lose in the general election. We cannot afford to go down that road in 2018. As a part of this strategy I have not actively campaigned for extensive endorsements, not wishing to further divide our party’s loyalties. None-the-less some have stepped up and given me their endorsement, including the author of TABOR, Douglas Bruce, Dr. Barry W. Poulson, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado and Penn Pfiffner, the chairman of the TABOR Committee, all of whom are political veterans who know what it takes to be a rock-solid conservative.
For anyone who really wants to know the difference between the Republican candidates for state treasurer, check out our websites and don’t just look at what is there, look for what isn’t there. In other words, is the candidate fully disclosing their legislative record? My website (www.KevinLundberg.com) is a complete picture of the bills I have carried over the past 15 years and I have an extensive record of the weekly reports I have published for many of those years. The past two years of my Lundberg Report can be found in the archives section at: http://kevinlundberg.iwebc.net/…/1970-01-01-00-0…/Index.html. This is the most thorough information concerning the big issues for which I have fought over the past two years.
Another way for me to respond to these attacks in a positive manner is to ask you and others to pass this information on to others and challenge them to check it out for themselves. I am confident that anyone who digs deep into my record will see I am a rock-solid conservative who is fully prepared to take on the position of state treasurer.
– Kevin Lundberg
