Having lived in Salt Lake City for the majority of my life before moving to Colorado a few years ago, I’m completely used to corruption in politics—everything you’ve heard about the Mormon Church “influencing” Utah politicians is true. But because there was no dominant religious force in Colorado, I thought everything would be different. In fact, I was so sure things would be different, I went out and purchased a bitchin’ new pair of rose-colored glasses.

Sadly, as they often do with the passage of time, the glasses have broken.

Though a lot of money isn’t being thrown around by a major religion when it comes to influencing elections and the passage of certain laws in Colorado, that doesn’t mean the motivations of our leaders are totally driven by a deeper sense of morality.

Earlier this year, the Colorado Sun released a report showing just how much money was spent—along with the levels of impact it had—on the 2024 primary elections. Spoiler alert: you can pretty much buy a victory.

They concluded that political groups spent nearly $6 million on Colorado primaries. In 10 races where state-level super PACs spent the most amount of (somewhat hidden) money to boost Democratic candidates, eight won.

Though the spending this year was more than triple the $1.8 million spent on legislative primaries in 2020, with an 80%-win rate, why not pay a little more on a sure bet?

Prior investigations done by the Colorado Sun reveal these massive jumps in monetary influence are nothing new. In 2022, the last major election cycle for Colorado, nearly $51 million was spent lobbying the Colorado legislature and state government; a record amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Also, the Sun noted that “volume” is important when it comes to matters of corruption. Their report found that the two most heavily lobbied bills in the legislature—Senate Bill 213 and House Bill 1118— failed mightily. This isn’t surprising when you learn that those bills garnered the undying love and affection from over 200 separate lobbyists … EACH.

As soon as these facts about the amount of cash being funneled into our political process came to light, I was ready to excoriate the Democratic party. But, like with most things in the political arena, the surface-level bullshit is just that, bullshit.

In 2021, Colorado Democrat Senator Michael Bennet joined a group of his colleagues to reintroduce the Democracy for All Amendment. This constitutional amendment would overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, as well as other alarming decisions concerning campaign finance that have produced a flood of dark money in politics.

And even as recently as the date of this article’s publication, the official Colorado Democratic party has campaign finance reform—including the overturning of Citizens United—as a main party focus.

These public stances against dark money being so easily thrown around in the world of politics led me to two different conclusions.

The first is that the Colorado Democratic Party is utilizing one of the oldest/most effective deception tactics created by man: claiming others are doing the exact thing you’re doing in an attempt to shift the focus/narrative.

I mean, it’s entirely possible that the DNC is aware that by having these public outcries against money in politics, there’s a guaranteed percentage of their base who will follow them to the ends of the Earth and dismiss anything negative being presented as being a lie. This would allow them to keep getting all the free lunches at Twin Peaks they could handle without sounding the alarm.

The second conclusion is that the Democrats are finally starting to adopt some of the more tactless strategies employed by the Republican party when it comes to exploiting the American political system.

One of the biggest complaints against the Democratic party is they have no guts; they’re more worried about how they look while (possibly) gaining a victory than the victory itself. We know that the GOP will employ whatever means necessary to further their agenda—like overturning Roe v. Wade–no matter how ruthless the tactics may be; this is something the DNC could learn from.

And I think they have.

To be honest, knowing what I know about how political sciences work, I believe the willingness to allow dark money to infiltrate their sphere is a perfect split of both the aforementioned theories. With that being said, the Colorado DNC has set themselves up for the perfect “be careful what you wish for” scenario. If Citizens United gets overturned, and the spigots of money and “benefits” run dry, I worry that the Democrats will try to adopt another Republican tactic: “Giuliani Math.”