Front Range television ads attacking Republican Walker Stapleton and Democrat Jason Crow are false.

Who is coming up with these ads? No, seriously, the political action committees responsible for attack ads on Walker Stapleton, a Republican candidate for governor, and Jason Crow, a Democratic candidate for the 6th Congressional District, should fire whoever came up with the intellectually dishonest TV ads running in the Front Range market.

There’s something to be said for going after a candidate where he or she is strongest, but these ads are so poorly done that we can only imagine it boosts these candidates’ appeal to voters.

“As Colorado’s pension system barreled toward a funding crisis, where was our state treasurer?” asks an ad funded by the Democratic Governors Association through the political action committee Good Jobs Colorado.

Well, the answer is Stapleton was about the only person sounding the alarm.

While members of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association board of trustees whitewashed the fact that the unfunded liability was growing even in years when the optimistic assumed rate of return was being met, only Stapleton was urging for reform to put PERA back on track to being fully funded.

The fact that Colorado lawmakers addressed the issue earlier this year is a testament to the fact that Stapleton was not crying wolf – as PERA officials accused him for years – but was actually spot on in his analysis.

The ads are based on the fact that Stapleton frequently did not attend PERA board meetings, and instead he sent a deputy on his behalf. Stapleton should have attended more meetings; Joe St. George with FOX31 reported that Stapleton only personally attended 41 meetings out of 74 during his eight years in office.

But it is patently false to claim Stapleton was complicit in PERA’s headinthesand approach to its multimillion dollar unfunded liability. Voters should know that Stapleton was the only one drawing attention to the worsening financial outlook at PERA.

Just as dishonest is the ad attacking Jason Crow, a Democrat running against Mike Coffman for Congress, claiming Crow failed to do his job to fight for veterans.

We hope that ad — paid for by the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC working to keep Republicans in Congress) — serves as an expensive reminder that Crow donated thousands of hours of his time on a volunteer board to help veterans in Colorado.

Himself a combat veteran with a bronze star, Crow attended 47 meetings as a governorappointed member of the Colorado Board of Veteran Affairs. He missed 17 meetings in 5 years during which time his wife gave birth to their two children, according to a fact check by CBS4’s Shaun Boyd.

Worse than simply pointing out Crow’s attendance record, the ads attempt to place blame on Crow for mismanagement at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Conflating the two is the equivalent of blaming a smalltown mayor for the policies of the White House.

The good news is Colorado voters are savvy and discerning. Part of the problem is that there is no one to hold accountable for these kind of ads since they don’t come from candidates themselves.

That’s why we were dismayed to see Rep. Mike Coffman send tweets doubling down on the Crow attack ads.

He wrote “Jason Crow’s chronic truancy on the Veterans Committee reminds me of what I see in Congress — egos more interested in title than doing the hard work of the American people.”

We’ve come to expect more of Coffman over the years. Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.