Last week, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee voted to indefinitely postpone Senate Bill 111, “Protections Against Child Rape.” Using failed bills that target child sex crimes to cast Democrats as soft on crime has long been a talking point for Colorado Republicans.
In 2024, former Sen. Kevin Van Winkle (R-Castle Rock) accused Democrats of “trying to just normalize sexual attraction that forever has been just taboo and off-limits” during a town hall event. Also in 2024, Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-CO Springs) accused Democrats of trying to lower the age of sexual consent to 12. Now running for Colorado governor, Bottoms’ most recent — and unsubstantiated — claim is that there are multiple pedophile rings being run out of the legislature and Gov. Jared Polis’ (D) office.
“It’s incredibly disheartening that the Democrat Party won’t stand for children,” said Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton), a sponsor of Senate Bill 111, during a March 18 appearance on the Richard Randall Show. “Two Democrats brought a bill to not allow indecent exposure in front of a minor that most of the Democrat party voted against. It was the Republicans that stood with some of the Democrats to make sure this was a felony six. We just saw that [Sen. Nick] Hinrichsen (D-Pueblo) was going to try to legalize prostitution. There’s an attack on our Children in the state and people better wake up and start testifying against this nonsense.”
While Republicans calling Democrats pedophiles isn’t exactly surprising, Bradley’s co-sponsor, Rep. Regina English (D-CO Springs), is. “Rep. Bradley and I have partnered up as mothers, as nurturers to protect kids and to take probation off the table,” said English during her March 20 appearance on Randall’s conservative radio program. “It should be an easy ask, and that’s the ask we’ve been asking for the past two years. The first year we ran it in 2023 we were asking for a mandatory minimum, but that didn’t happen, so we kind of changed the bill, and it failed again, and now this is the third time that it failed. We thought that if it would start in the Senate that we could get more traction on it, and the hope was for it to pass out of Senate and come to the House so we’ll have a different platform to actually speak to the things we needed to speak to with the traction in the Senate, but it failed the Senate and it just tells me that, like Rep. Bradley said, the anger needs to turn into advocacy. This always should be a bipartisan issue.”
To be clear, current law allows only for the possibility of probation, it in no way prevents rapists from being incarcerated.
Following the bill’s failure, photos of Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee began appearing on conservative Facebook groups and on X. One commenter on Facebook noted, “Pedophiles defending members of the club. Pedophiles hunting season coming soon.” Another person commented with an image from the 1996 film Fargo, of a body being pushed through a wood chipper. Sen. Mike Weissman (D-Aurora) said the attention has led to threats and harassment. The same thing happened in 2024 when Bradley and English’s bill failed then.
“The reaction to a vote last week – which has been inflated and inflamed to a nationwide extent — has been absolutely toxic,” said Weissman in an email. “I have reported five threats so far to Colorado State Patrol and suspect my colleagues have had to do similarly. If I didn’t already have Ring cameras up at my house from the last time this kind of thing happened — fanned by the same nationwide online hate mob as this time — I’ve have bought some and put them up over the weekend. Legislators — of either party — need to be able to assess facts and vote the policy in front of them without threats of harm and death. And every other legislator needs to understand when their actions will contribute to a climate that militates against that and not contribute to it.”
While Republicans haven’t raised concerns about Bradley’s online posts or rhetoric, they have spoken out against her bipartisan approach to controversial legislation. “When I think of my representative, I don’t want to open social media and see that they’re besties with Democrats — one of the dumbest Democrats — down at the Capitol,” said former Colorado GOP Vice Chair Priscilla Rahn during this weekend’s Douglas County GOP assembly. “I don’t want to see someone signing onto letters with Bob Marshall. I don’t want to see someone making ghetto videos with another Black representative that’s a Democrat down at the Capitol.”
Rahn voiced her support for Bradley’s primary challenger Deborah Mulvey, an attorney and Castle Pines City Councilor, whose challenge came to an end this weekend when she failed to win enough votes at assembly to make the ballot. And while Bradley’s primary challenge just fizzled, English still has a primary opponent. Chauncy Johnson, a political newcomer who ran for Colorado Springs City Council after serving as an intern for former Sen. Pete Lee and Sen. Tony Exum (D-CO Springs) and working as a legislative aide for Sen. Marc Snyder (D-Manitou Springs), hopes to win the Democratic nomination for House District 17.
“I got in this race because I believe right now, most importantly, we need someone that’s going to show up for us,” said Johnson. “And when they show up, not to vote against the marginalized because I believe if you’re voting against one marginalized community, you’re voting against all.”
In 2024, English was the sole Democrat to vote against the “Protecting The Freedom to Marry” measure, which asked voters to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage that Colorado currently has in the State Constitution. Last year, English voted against amendments to House Bill 1312, which expanded protections for transgender people.
Johnson notes that his campaign isn’t just focused on English’s votes toward the LGBTQ community. “It’s not just about one issue,” he said. “I think you know if you ask anyone, whether that’s part of the LGBTQ community, cisgender person, rich, poor, a young person or older person — I think if you’re asking if you want economic dignity and ensuring that you have a Colorado state bank that’s created here that works for you and not for the portfolio of Wall Street and Wells Fargo and all the banks, private banks that we have here, I think most would agree. I think if you asked, ‘Hey, we want a vacancy tax and to ensure that people are being housed and as well creating a state housing authority to ensure that affordable housing is there and we’re not just saying it but actually doing it.’ I think they would agree. And we’re getting the light rail transit done, and ensuring that we get that here in Colorado Springs to help our thriving economy, and also ensuring that we have a good climate, and are at the top of that, I think they would agree as well.”
