Is state elections chief Griswold too political?
It is no secret that Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state since 2019, has a major problem with former President Donald Trump.
A quick scroll through her account on X, formerly known as Twitter, reveals dozens of condemnations of the former president, with Griswold repeatedly calling him an “oath-breaking insurrectionist” and a “threat to democracy.”
“It is up to American voters to save our country next November and vote for democracy over chaos,” she posted Nov. 30.
Those sentiments find broad support in Colorado politics, which largely has been hostile to Trump. But the outspokenness of the Democratic secretary of state — on social media and in numerous interviews on cable news — doesn’t play well with those who expect a more even-handed approach from Colorado’s top election official, especially in a year when Trump is on the ballot again for president.
Griswold’s social media posts generate plenty of pushback, and lately Colorado Republicans have gone after her more aggressively, including by launching a doomed impeachment bid. They also have criticized her decision to support an attempt to remove Trump from the ballot in a Colorado case the U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned.
Wayne Williams, a Republican who preceded Griswold as secretary of state and lost to her in the 2018 election, says there is no question his 39-year-old successor loudly and boldly wears her liberal politics on her sleeve. She regularly expresses support for abortion rights, gun control legislation and transgender rights in her official capacity as secretary of state.
Griswold also has lambasted U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, as an election denier. Williams understands why some voters might be uncomfortable with that.
“It makes it very difficult for people to believe everything’s fair when you are on a full-out attack on candidates they support,” he said. “I believe her partisan actions undermine the confidence of voters’ faith in the office.”
But Griswold said in an interview that her vocal criticism of Trump was intrinsically linked to her duty to defend the integrity of Colorado’s elections.
“Will I become quiet? The answer is absolutely not,” she said. “We are in an unprecedented and dangerous political climate. It is not partisan or political to protect our democracy.”
Threats against Griswold
The most fervent criticism from Colorado Republicans has come since the U.S. Supreme Court early this month overruled the Colorado high court’s December decision to strike Trump from the Republican primary ballot. Griswold wasn’t among the plaintiffs in the case, but she had filed a brief in support.
On March 4, Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert threatened to pursue a recall campaign against Griswold. Days later, state House Republicans announced an effort to impeach the secretary of state — although it isn’t expected to gain traction, and may not even get a hearing, in the Democratic-supermajority chamber.
Then, on March 14, the Colorado Republican Party filed a complaint with the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, asking it to investigate Griswold for repeatedly calling Trump an insurrectionist when the former president had neither been charged nor convicted of such an offense.
“She has repeatedly lied to and misled the public,” the complainants said in an email issued by the state GOP. Griswold is unfazed by the criticism.
Two Colorado courts — a Denver district judge in November and the Colorado Supreme Court the following month — determined
Trump had engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, she noted.
Griswold said she had received more than 800 threats, including death threats, since a group of Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters filed the ballot challenge lawsuit in September.
“I will not be silenced by Republicans in our legislature trying to score cheap political points — and I’ll never be intimidated by someone like Lauren Boebert,” she said. “I will not allow the extreme right to define standing up for democracy as not doing one’s job — it’s what every single person should be doing.”
Enabling or giving cover to those making false claims about the integrity of an election, she said, is “undemocratic, un-american and unacceptable.”
Griswold has defenders in Colorado. Amanda Gonzalez, Jefferson County’s clerk and recorder and a fellow Democrat, said she admires Griswold’s fiery dedication to shielding elections from those falsely claiming they are rigged or fraudulent.
She sees the role of a state’s top election official these days as being the “democracy-defender-in-chief.
Partisan roots in oversight
The criticism of Griswold underlines the sometimespartisan nature of election oversight, which most notably caught the public’s attention during the 2000 Bush vs. Gore debacle. Then-florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who also served as George W. Bush’s state campaign co-chair, was accused of playing favorites after she certified the state’s razor-thin results for Bush over Al Gore.