Despite bankrolling support for the entire slate of winning candidates in last year’s Greeley City Council election, pro-oil and gas group Vital for Colorado has seen its efforts in Broomfield and Boulder County politics fall decidedly flatter.
The tens of thousands of dollars the Denver-based group poured into Erie’s municipal election in its waning days last month behind four candidates it deemed as “pro business” yielded the opposite results.
Jennifer Carroll, an advocate for greater local control over energy development and hard-line supporter of the town’s recent landmark drilling regulations, was elected as Erie’s new mayor by roughly 70 percent of the voters.
Moreover, the three candidates elected to the town’s Board of Trustees all ran on platforms that backed more aggressive approaches to local drilling rules; one of the newly elected leaders is the founder of Erie Protectors, an anti-oil and gas activism group.
The candidates Vital for Colorado tossed its support and cash behind — mayoral candidate Dan Woog and trustee candidates Barry Luginbill, MacKenzie Ferrie and Liz Locricchio — all failed to get enough votes to be elected.
It came only months after the group’s $100,000 effort in Broomfield’s referendum on a landmark piece of oil and gas legislation failed to sway voters’ support.
The group’s defeat is likely a combination of the disappearing separation between housing and energy development seen on the eastern fringes of Boulder County, coupled with an energized and more savvy activism base that’s risen in the year since an oil and gas-related explosion in Firestone reverberated across the Front Range, residents and activists from Broomfield and Erie say.
Activism has been instrumental in the recent fracking upheaval across the region. Apart from a learned approach to organizing members and protests, as well as spotlighting the introduction of outside funding over social media such as they did in Erie before the election, local activists have even dabbled in drafting ordinances that have made their way all the way to City Council chambers.
“I think it was the work of a diligent group in Erie,” activist and newly elected Trustee Christiaan van Woudenberg said Friday of Vital’s contributions being shut out in Tuesday’s election. “It was people that are really data smart and know how to file the (Colorado Open Records Act) requests and know how to connect the dots and look up the information. It’s what led to publicizing the data to expose the truth about the relationship between several of the candidates and this ‘dark money.'”
He added that there are more citizen activists on top of this issue than ever before.
Lafayette’s Climate Bill of Rights — a measure that its supporters say acts as a ban on all oil and gas development within city limits — was effectively drafted by residents and fractivists group East Boulder County United.
Ballot issue 301, which amended Broomfield’s Home Rule Charter to approach oil and gas regulation similar to Lafayette’s Climate Bill in viewing fracking as an affront to the “health and safety” of the community, was another resident-driven initiative.
Neil Allaire, Broomfield resident and cochair of the Yes on 301 Committee, says the activism is only part of the reason that fracking money has found its local investments turn sour.
“What motivates that activism is this new increased proximity of oil and gas operations to very populated areas,” he said Friday. “(The activism) wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for the problems created by drilling. There’s an obvious contradiction between the advertising we see all the time for oil and gas — about how ‘Colorado has the best drilling laws in the country’ — and the houses blowing up around us.
“It’s a real, ‘Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?’ type of situation,” he added.
‘Growing negativity and obstruction’
Erie has found itself at the forefront of the fracking debate, introducing a series of landmark ordinances in recent months aimed at drilling regulation.
The introduction of those measures is what likely got the attention of groups such as Vital in the first place, who say that such activism has translated into government overreach that’s harmful for the private sector.
“In recent years we have been troubled by growing negativity and obstruction in Colorado politics, especially at the local level,” Rich Coolidge, a senior strategist with Vital for Colorado, said in an emailed statement. “Activism against the state’s energy sector has spilled over into activism against all kinds of development, especially residential construction and new transportation infrastructure.”
Erie sanctioned its landmark ordinance last fall requiring drillers with local operations to hand over maps of their flow lines and other subsurface facilities to the town — information the industry has long resisted making public. Last month, Erie trustees approved an overhaul of its setback regulations.
Both came after the leadership ushered in a measure known colloquially as the ” odor ordinance,” which drew a lawsuit from Crestone Peak Resources only months after it was signed into town code.
Coolidge on Friday suggested that anti-drilling groups — or anti-business, as he refers to them — have played a big part in local elections across the Front Range.
He points to the League of Conservation Voters actively campaigning in Aurora last year, as well as the Colorado subsidiary of Indivisible and the established Sierra Club among others.
“We are proud to support candidates who believe in growth, opportunity and a common sense approach to public policy,” he said, “and we’ll continue to do so.”
Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn
