This piece from The Colorado Sun dives into Colorado’s ever-growing mass of unaffiliated voters and how political dollars chase them like groupies at a Journey concert. It’s not about values—it’s about who bought more ad time between football games.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Unaffiliated voters now dominate Colorado like kale at a Boulder salad bar. Everyone wants their vote—but few earn it.
- Campaign cash from PACs, dark money groups, and every alphabet soup acronym you can fathom floods the race like sewage during spring runoff.
- Candidates don’t win on issues—they win on ad impressions, algorithms, and who can crunch polling data into fear porn faster.
- Even decent people running for office end up becoming full-time telemarketers calling strangers begging for donations (yours truly, once included).
- Spoiler alert: if you’re shocked that money = power in politics… bless your heart. Welcome to the real world.
My Bottom Line
When I ran for Congress, I spent more time dialing for dollars than discussing policy. That’s not an exaggeration—that’s our system. Ninety percent of my campaign was spent trying to get total strangers to cough up enough cash so I could maybe—and I mean maybe—get heard through the noise. And guess what? That wasn’t even abnormal. That is the process above local government levels. Want influence? Better bring a fat checkbook or a sugar daddy Super PAC.
Meanwhile, the Great Suburban Normie floats around fed by television ads and TikTok outrage, consuming whatever narrative some well-funded consultant hands them between bites of DoorDash sushi. Then they go vote based on who screamed loudest with slickest production value—and we act surprised when integrity gets steamrolled by influence?
The sad reality is: unless you’re wealthy or wildly connected (or part of a movement funded by Silicon Valley weirdos or shady D.C. think tanks), your odds of having your voice heard are about as good as finding parking at Coors Field on opening day. This isn’t cynicism—it’s firsthand experience.
We need voters to pull their heads out of the influencer fog and actually read—yeah, READ—campaign finance reports before casting a ballot. Money equals speech? Sure—but some folks are yelling through million-dollar microphones while others whisper through tin cans—and both will be on your ballot.
Study up before you vote, folks. Because attention is expensive—and someone’s already paid to rent yours.
