Trailhead Involved In Effort Against Unions

Erin Rosa
October 15, 2006 Politics 2 Comments

The Denver Post is reporting that internal e-mails show individuals connected to the 527 Trailhead Group were involved in an effort to discredit labor unions through the issue of illegal immigration.

From the article:

“We (potentially) have a very rare opportunity to take a hard whack at the unions, using illegal immigration as the blunt instrument and our legal prowess as the surgeon’s knife,” said an e-mail from Jack Stansbery of the Trailhead Group, a GOP political group founded by Gov. Bill Owens, money man Bruce Benson and beer magnate Pete Coors.

“Ideally, we can come up with a coordinated legal, political, media and policy plan to present to a larger group for buy-in,” Stansbery wrote.

More:

Republicans hoped to use the lawsuit, filed this summer, to “paint all unions with a broad brush” and “illustrate unions as facilitators of illegal immigration,” according to internal e-mails obtained by The Denver Post.
…

Alan Philp of Trailhead – a key player in the e-mail talks – said candidates who have received money from groups that don’t certify the donors are legal “should return the money.”

The Republicans were also working to change campaign-finance rules to effectively crack down on unions. Republican lawyers attended a meet-and-greet with Dennis before going over their proposed rule changes with her in February.

Despite the meeting, Dennis is saying that she was unaware of the GOP strategy.

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About the Author

Erin Rosa

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@coloradoindependent.com.

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