EVA HENRY: Corruption resurfaces in Adams, Arapahoe County politics linked to One Main Street

When I was first elected to serve as an Adams County Commissioner in 2012, I ran to root out corruption. Things had gotten really bad here, to the point that nearly every Sunday there was a story in the newspaper about a new scandal erupting. Cronyism and nepotism had become commonplace, and it was in this era that our county earned the nickname “the New Jersey of Colorado politics”.

One of the most infamous of those scandals involved Quality Paving. As a part of that criminal enterprise, Adams County Commissioners took a bribe for granting the company a no-bid contract for a road project. And despite the company taking millions of dollars for a road project from Adams County taxpayers, the roads never got built. Our anti-corruption District Attorney at the time, Don Quick, wanted to prosecute them but turned the case over to the Republican DA in Jefferson County, to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

So, what did those unethical Commissioners do? They switched parties to become Republicans, and the JeffCo DA never charged them. 

As a community organizer who worked on healthcare reform and other progressive issues, I had never envisioned myself running for elected office. But in seeing all this corruption take over our county, I felt compelled to at least try. And I wasn’t alone – we recruited a union leader to run with me to challenge the status quo, too.

Together, the two of us ousted corrupt incumbents and got right to work rooting the graft out of Adams County government. Along the way, we took on many corporate special interests to do so: oil & gas operators who wanted to exploit and harm our communities without consequence, developers who wanted to grease palms with free trips to Vegas, and expensive dinners.

We fought hard to make our county government serve the people instead of corporate profits. And we got attacked for it, often, by the moneyed interests that preferred the previous corrupt status quo. But we persevered, with the good people of Adams County at our backs, and we changed a lot for the better.

Now, though, I am seeing corruption try to work its way back in. Corporate dark money groups, revealed to be funded in large part by Chevron and other oil & gas interests, are spending big money on mailers and ads to try to influence an Adams County Commission race. And, not so coincidentally, they’re spending that money to promote a relatively unknown candidate against the son of the anti-corruption DA I once served with. It’s no surprise they’d want to spend heavily to try to keep Tyler Quick out of office, because he inherited his father’s commitment to an ethical government that serves the people, not corporate profits.

But this race is not alone: the scandal-plagued One Main Street and other corporate dark money groups are funnelling literally millions of dollars into eleven different races with competitive Democratic primaries in the state legislature, Adams County Commission, and Arapahoe County Commission. They’re promoting their preferred “pro-business” candidates and attacking the grassroots candidates who refuse to accept corporate PAC money. The two incumbents they’re backing are already charged with ethics violations for taking illegal gifts from – you guessed it – One Main Street. And they’re working through at least eight different committees to hide the fact that this is corporate money flooding these races, all with innocuous names like “Promoting Progressive Women” and “Blue Collar Progressives”.

The good news is that we, as voters, have the opportunity to reject their attempts to influence who governs us and instead choose a different direction – just as Adams County voters did in 2012. I am encouraged to see a new generation of leaders that have stepped up to answer the call, and who are running for the state legislature to fight for everyday Coloradans and to take on the nonsense that big corporate money has brought to our state capitol.

I hope you’ll join me in saying enough is enough. The true question in this election for any candidate should be: do you stand with the people, and against corruption? Do you think our government belongs to us, or just those who can write the biggest checks to fund huge dark money operations? 

Anyone who answers those questions wrong, whether in word or deed, simply doesn’t deserve to be in office. Colorado is not New Jersey, and our elected officials need to be accountable to us, not corporate interests.

Eva Henry served on the Adams County Commission from 2012-2024. She lives in Thornton.

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