Tea Partiers bring the house down — says Dem

It’s always the events we don’t attend that turn out to be the most fun. We missed a candidate’s forum at the Evergreen Lakehouse (conjures up images of hot chocolate and ice skating—but no…) on Tuesday.

According to one Democrat who attended, the crowd of 300-400 people got a little out of hand. “The Tea Party packed the room with people in (Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan ) Maes and (SD 16 candidate Tim) Leonard T-shirts, tons of signs, balloons and rude people. They came from all over the state to clap, shout, snort, boo and bully,” Clear Creek County resident Jimy Murphy wrote us in an email.

“It was not a fair debate,” he told us by phone. He said the organizers established ground rules, which were ignored.

“The Tea Party does a very good job of packing meetings like this with people from all over the state,and they get there early to fill the room.” Murphy said the room holds 200-300 people, and another 100 or so, most of them locals, were outside and couldn’t get in.

“Although the moderators laid down ground rules and tried to maintain decorum, asking the crowd to withhold their applause until the end, the Tea Partiers ignored the rules and cheered at every ant-tax, anti-Obama, anti-education, anti-government invective flowing from Dan Maes. Tom Tancredo, (6th District Republican incumbent) Mike Coffman and Tim Leonard,” Murphy told us.

He said the moderators eventually gave up and many of the local people just walked out.

Scot Kersgaard has been managing editor of a political newspaper, editor and co-owner of a ski town newspaper, executive editor of eight high-tech magazines (where he worked with current Apple CEO Tim Cook), deputy press secretary to a U.S. Senator, and an outdoors columnist at the Rocky Mountain News. He has an English degree from the University of Washington. He was awarded a fellowship to study internet journalism at the University of Maryland's Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. He was student body president in college. He spends his free time hiking and skiing.

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