Republicans Against Wal-Mart

Corporate behemoth Wal-Mart will have to think of another way to build a 187,000-square-foot “Supercenter” in Littleton.

The Denver suburban city has given”Wally World” the boot for now, and it was thanks in part to…Republican operatives?

Attorney Ryan R. Call stood in as legal counsel for “Littleton Pride, You Decide,” the local group that opposed the shopping center. But back in September, Call was the registrant for a little organization known as the Trailhead Group.That’s the Trailhead Group, a Republican political committee not to be confused with the name Trailhead Group, LLC, which was reserved by Colorado Confidential reporter Cara DeGette after administrators for the federal 527 group with the same moniker forgot to register locally with the Secretary of State’s office.

Throughout the campaign season, Trailhead and its siblings were notorious for vicious attack ads against Democratic candidates, even amid allegations of illegal coordination.

Call works for Zakhem Atherton, LLC, where he is listed as Vice-Chairman for the Denver County Republican Party and Deputy Counsel for the Colorado Republican Party.

He also works with John Zakhem, who was an attorney for the Trailhead Group and other GOP causes.

To be fair, there is an authentic movement of dedicated individuals who do not want Wal-Mart in their community. Some of them were even required to change their T-Shirts during a City Council meeting on the issue in December (the council eventually took back the idea).

At the same time, the law firm which represented the anti-union Trailhead Group, has won a victory against one of labor’s most chastised enemies. 

What the client wants, the client gets.

Erin Rosa was born in Spain and raised in Colorado Springs. She is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa's work has been featured in a variety of news outlets including the Huffington Post, Democracy Now!, and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, an alternative-weekly in Northern Colorado where she worked as a columnist covering the state legislature. Rosa has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on lobbying and woman's health issues. She was also tapped with a rare honorable mention award by the Newspaper Guild-CWA's David S. Barr Award in 2008--only the second such honor conferred in its nine-year history--for her investigative series covering the federal government's Supermax prison in the state. Rosa covers the labor community, corrections, immigration and government transparency matters. She can be reached at erosa@www.coloradoindependent.com.

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