May election results in Council District 9

Would you be surprised to learn that incumbent City Councilwoman Judy Montero nearly lost an entire neighborhood against wild-eyed Waldo Benevidez? Well, it happened in Valverde, where the penniless challenger received 45.2% of the vote. Below is a graph indicating the results.

Denver's five nonvoting political candidates

We care to know that political candidates show political leaders, so it is discouraging when they fail to fulfill even the most basic democratic responsibility to vote. Daniel Chacon of the Rocky Mountain News has investigated the voting records of the current candidates for municipal office, and found that five didn't vote at all in the January 2007 election.

They want your vote, but five candidates running for office in Denver in May didn't cast ballots in the last election.

Their reasons for not voting in January - when voters were asked whether to replace the troubled Denver Election Commission with an elected clerk and recorder - are as varied as the candidates.

Dennis Smith didn't remember receiving his ballot.

Bill Wells lost his ballot.

Greg Rasheed forgot to mail it.

Mitchell Poindexter said he didn't understand the question.

Waldo Benavidez thought it was a waste of money.

View the entire article online at "Five city candidates didn't vote in January election."

CD9: Support for Benevidez at NoIllegals.com

Folks over at Americans for Legal Immigration are trying to drum up support for City Council District 9 candidate Waldo Benevidez:

You folks on the front range (and elsewhere) might do what you can to help one of ours in the Denver City Council Race. Waldo Benavidez is a Leader in the Colorado YOU DONT SPEAK FOR ME movement.

He was the first signature on the illegal immigration petition last summer. He signed with ex Govenor Lamm on the capitol steps last summer.

Waldo has debated against illegal immigration around Colorado. A fine man. He has good standing in the Latino community in Denver. All might do what you can. His opponent is an incumbent here in the sanctuary city of Denver and will be a tough match up.

Reach out and help where you can.

Further information on the You Don't Speak for Me movement is available online.

Profile: Waldo Benevidez (CD9)

Waldo Benevidez has been running for City Council for a long time. Decades, in fact. As a historian, I recently reviewed some old Denver newspapers for information about this candidate and discovered dozens of articles. Below are some excerpts from the archives.

In 1991, Benevidez ran for the City Council District 9 seat against incumbent Deborah Ortega, Gary Castillo and Joe Herrera.

Denver Post, March 30, 1991

...Benavidez, a 51-year-old Democrat who works as executive director of the Auraria Community Center, calls dispersed housing "social engineering. ... I don't think the Denver Housing Authority should be in the business of buying single-family homes.

...On other issues, Benavidez said he's against a subsidy for a convention center headquarters hotel.

And he thinks the large retail project proposed by the city's urban renewal agency for downtown should be replaced by a plan calling for shops that would appeal more to students and downtown workers.

Rocky Mountain News, May 9, 1991

... District 9. Incumbent Debbie Ortega may be steamrolling toward another term, but challengers Waldo Benavidez, Joe Herrera, and Gary Castillo are mounting spirited attacks. Our favorite is Wally Benavidez, whose pro-business ideas include selling off Winter Park and investing the profits in more beneficial projects. While the conventional wisdom says it's Ortega all the way, Benavidez's ideas promise greater development in the Ninth.

Then in 1996 he ran for Colorado House District 2 against Gloria Leyba. Leyba was initially left off the ballot for failure to file the necessary paperwork in time. Leyba was elated in the article below when a federal judge ruled in her favor.

Denver Post, June 26, 1996

...Benavidez was less enthused.

"I don't think it's right that the judge should put her on the ballot," he said from his home. "She didn't get her papers in on time because she was too busy trying to keep me off the ballot."

After Benavidez won a spot on the ballot through a petition drive, Leyba challenged some of his petitions last month, but Buckley dismissed the challenge.

In the end, Gloria Leyba won with 71%: 2,445 total votes against Benavidez's 980. He ran again in 2004, and again encountered issues with the ballot.

Rocky Mountain News, June 29, 2004

A Denver man hoping to run for a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives failed to submit sufficient signatures to make the August primary, a state election official ruled Monday.

But Waldo Benavidez, executive director of the Auraria Community Center, said he intends to challenge that finding in court and is not giving up.

"As long as my name is on the ballot, I'm going to campaign," said Benavidez, 65.

Deputy Secretary of State William Hobbs ruled Benavidez lacked sufficient signatures on petitions to participate in the primary, falling 19 short of the 579 names needed to become a Democratic candidate in Denver House District 2.

...Benavidez initially was placed on the ballot when state election officials ruled 733 of the 1,037 signatures that he submitted were valid.

However, Hobbs struck 173 more, leaving Benavidez with only 560 valid signatures - 19 short of what he needed.

The bulk of the signatures rejected - 158 names - were tossed out because they were obtained by two petition circulators who were declared not to be residents of the district. as required by law.

Denver Post, August 6, 2004

Democrat Waldo Benavidez is putting on a conservative hat and challenging incumbent Rep. Mike Cerbo for the Democratic nomination to represent state House District 2, which includes Denver's west side.

Benavidez, executive director of the Auraria Community Center, and Cerbo, a union official with the Hotel & Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, are the Democratic primary candidates.

Support for school vouchers could make Benavidez a stranger in his own party, but he said families in his district deserve school choice and higher-quality education.

"Parents are upset with how their kids are being treated in the public school system, and school choice is an alternative," said Benavidez, who started a group a few years ago for parents in west Denver to push for vouchers. High dropout and expulsion rates in the public schools in his district are a problem, Benavidez said.

But Cerbo argues that K-12 education has already been squeezed enough.

...Benavidez has had a roller- coaster ride to get on the ballot by petition. The secretary of state's office first ruled in June that he did not have enough signatures. A Denver judge then ruled in July that all votes cast for Benavidez in Tuesday's primary would be counted.

In the end, Cerbo won re-election with 65% of the vote. Benavidez received 1,246 votes. By 2006, Benevidez was in the middle of the immigration debate.

Denver Post, January 5, 2006

[Defend Colorado Now] are here to introduce an anti-illegal-immigration initiative that will probably be on the ballot in 2006.

One of the group's leaders, former Gov. Dick Lamm, lends the debate intellectual firepower and left-wing credibility. His "liberal case" to control the border is a well-crafted argument against "illegal immigration," not "the illegal immigrant."

Defend Colorado Now's initiative would amend the state's constitution to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving publicly funded services that are "not required under the law."

Question: If Colorado is already "not required under the law" to provide these welfare-state services, what's the purpose of the initiative?

Why not just follow the law?

"It's a mandate," Lamm explained. He expects the passage will send a message to legislators that Colorado voters are getting impatient. "Listen. Voters matter."

Unfortunately for Lamm, his arguments were corroded by the presence of another leader of his group, Waldo Benavidez, director of the Auraria Community Center.

We've seen the ugly underbelly of the isolationist, right-wing crowd - and, no, not everyone who is concerned about illegal immigration falls in this category - but wait until you hear the left-wing case for closed borders as presented by Benavidez.

There is no other way to say this: Benavidez's rhetoric was two parts nonsense and one part paranoia, sprinkled liberally with economic illiteracy. Benavidez threw so many inane anti-business clichés around that, by the end of the speech, you had to wonder why any Mexicans would risk their lives coming to this dreadful country.

Other than to sell us drugs, of course, in Benavidez's world.

GOPUSA.com, April 28, 2006

“Enough is enough,” said Waldo Benavidez, a Denver social service agency director and leader of the ballot measure. “I’m tired of people protesting in our streets demanding rights that they’re not entitled to.

“This initiative is the first volley of Colorado citizens fighting back,” he said. “It’s about preserving our way of life. In the final analysis, it is all about cheap labor and denying the middle class their piece of the American dream.”

For more information, visit Defend Colorado Now.

CD09: Waldo Benefidez misleads regarding Denver's immigration policy

Waldo Benevidez, candidate for City Council in Council District 9, has spouted off on "The Peter Boyles Show."

Benevidez hasn't raised a dime for his candidacy (as shown in the April 5 candidate disclosure statements) but apparently is important enough figure to win an invitation to Peter Boyles radio program.

As he is wont to do, Boyles again fostered the myth that Denver is a "sanctuary city" for illegal immigration, and Benevidez followed along.

The below quote from the conversation indicates the obfuscation:

BOYLES: Do you think Denver, Colorado, is a sanctuary city?

BENAVIDEZ: It is a sanctuary city. I remember back during the Webb administration when they had a -- the city council met and passed an ordinance regarding that.

Opinon: Denver needs more spirited politics

Former city councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt penned a March 3 column for the Denver Post entitled "Election Below the Radar".

So much of the article is good, it's hard to know where to start. The column begins with a rundown of the current apathetic political situation:

So far, Denver's all-mail, May 1 municipal ballot looks like a nothing burger. With the exception of three open City Council seats in Districts 3, 7 and 8, there are no truly contested council races. There are no serious candidates challenging the mayor or the auditor. Nor does there appear to be a real horse race to fill the newly created, $125,000-per-year elected job of clerk and recorder.

Oh, sure, the perfunctory Harold Stassen candidates (the Minnesota Republican who sought the presidential nomination nine times between 1948 and 1992) have pulled petitions: Dwight Henson, Denver's "homeless mayor," may run for mayor; CPA Bill Wells is gathering signatures - again - to run for auditor; Ike Kelley Jr. and William Rutherford III want the District 4 seat; Mitchell Poindexter and R.J. Ours are running in District 5; and there's Waldo Benavides in District 9. Denver voters see these names regularly on the ballot.

In the at-large race, only Carol E. Campbell, a credible west Denver neighborhood activist, has pulled a petition. The at-large race has been a slam-dunk incumbent's dream for as long as anyone can remember because of two significant factors: money and geography. It's nearly impossible to build a political base by going door-to-door citywide. The other alternatives are a challenger with high citywide name recognition or a wealthy, self-funded candidate who would have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy name recognition though direct mail, TV and radio.

In fact, Councilwoman at-large Carol Boigon did exactly that four years ago. She loaned her campaign nearly $190,000 for advertising in the 2003 election and placed first in a field of seven - with 22 percent of the votes cast. Doug Linkhart secured the other at-large position with 17 percent.

After discussing the now-discarded idea of splitting the at-large council elections into two separate seats, which would have ensured more direct accountability and head-to-head campaigns, she returns to the question of political candidacies in Denver.

In 1995, Denver voters extended municipal terms to 12 years and in 2003, 10 of 13 council seats, the mayor and the auditor were open. Despite record candidate interest and numerous hotly contested seats, less than 47 percent of Denverites voted in the May municipal election.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of a citywide election for 16 important positions and little controversy. Are we so absorbed in national and international affairs and the doings at the state legislature that we simply don't care about the direction of our city, its condition and its future?

Maybe I'm tone deaf, but the absence of a spirited civic dialogue that should accompany municipal elections is not music to my ears.

Waldo Benevidez on Immigration

Though no website could be found for the Walter Benevidez campaign, his views were outlined in an April 16, 2006 article in the New York Times. The article was entitled "3 Perspectives On Immigration," and Benevidez's role offered "A Liberal's Contrarian Views," as quoted below.

Mr. Benavidez has spent most of his adult life working on behalf of the poor. For the last 25 years he has managed the community center and a food bank here on Denver's west side, where low-income families can get groceries. He marched for civil rights in the 1960's and relishes the memory of his first vote for president, for John F. Kennedy, in 1960.

But immigration's tangled implications have pushed him out of his comfortable old political box with its predictably liberal labels and causes. Supporting the poor in America, he said, now means shutting down the system that has created a flood of even poorer immigrants from Mexico...

Mr. Benavidez, whose ancestors have been in the West for 250 years, since the days of the Spanish empire, supports sealing the Mexican border, and is working for a proposed ballot proposition here in Colorado that would deny government social services to illegal immigrants.

He rails against multinational corporations that he says have rigged the political systems of the United States and Mexico to keep the border porous as a tool for suppressing wages and labor unions.