Monday 5 p.m. deadline for Glenwood City Council candidate petitions to be filed

Monday is the final day for prospective candidates to circulate and submit petitions to run for three Glenwood Springs City Council seats that will be up for election April 6.

As of late last week, only the three incumbents had turned in their petitions — Shelley Kaup for the At-Large seat, Jonathan Godes for Ward 5 and Ingrid Wussow for Ward 2.

However, Acting City Clerk Steve Boyd said the City Clerk’s Office had handed out additional candidate packets for the At Large and Ward 5 seats, but none of those had yet been returned.

Aside from the three incumbents, no official candidate announcements have been made.

Would-be candidates must collect at least 25 valid signatures of registered city voters to qualify for the ballot. Candidates running for one of the two ward seats must collect signatures within their respective wards.

Petitions are due by 5 p.m. Monday.

 

Congressional oaths questioned as Trump’s backers fight against loss

FILE – In this Jan. 3, 2021, file photo, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi administers the oath of office to members of the 117th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The oath, which normally doesn’t attract much attention, has become a common subject in the final days of the Trump presidency, being invoked by members of both parties as they met Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 to affirm Biden's win and a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. (Bill Clark/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Before they take office, elected officials swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution. But what happens when they are accused of doing the opposite?

As some Republicans continued to back President Donald Trump’s doomed effort to overturn the election, critics — including President-elect Joe Biden — accused them of violating their oaths and instead pledging allegiance to Trump.

The oaths, which rarely attract much attention, have become a common subject in the final days of the Trump presidency, being invoked by members of both parties as they met Wednesday to affirm Biden’s win and a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

“They also swore on a Bible to uphold the Constitution, and that’s where they really are stepping outside and being in dereliction of duty,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who served as EPA administrator during former President George W. Bush’s administration. “They swore to uphold the Constitution against all our enemies, foreign or domestic, and they are ignoring that.”

The oaths vary slightly between government bodies, but elected officials generally swear to defend the Constitution. The U.S. Senate website says its current oath is linked to the 1860s, “drafted by Civil War-era members of Congress intent on ensnaring traitors.”

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, vowed to honor the oath she took and affirm the results of the presidential election while urging colleagues to do the same. Republican Sen. Todd Young, of Indiana, was seen in a video posted to social media telling Trump supporters outside a Senate office building that he took an oath to the Constitution under God and asked, “Do we still take that seriously in this country?”

Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University and author of “The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents,” said the oath must be taken seriously and that Americans have to demand its enforcement or “the risk is to the entire system.” He said he would support censures, a formal statement of disapproval, for officials who clearly violate their oaths.

“The worst that could happen is that people roll their eyes at the oath and they say, ‘Oh, none of them mean it,’ and I think what we’ve got to do at a time of crisis is exactly the opposite — is to say, this does mean something,” Brettschneider said. “When you break the law, you need to be held to account, and that’s what’s really up to the American people to be outraged when Trump does what he’s done.”

Republicans who have filed or supported lawsuits challenging Biden’s win in November have claimed, without evidence, that the election was rigged against Trump. Their cases have failed before courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both Republican and Democratic officials have deemed the election results legitimate and free of any widespread fraud.

The oaths were mentioned often Wednesday during a joint session of Congress meant to confirm Biden’s victory. Some Republicans who launched objections to the election results claimed their oaths required them to do so, while Democrats urged their counterparts to honor their oaths and affirm Biden as the next president.

“The oath that I took this past Sunday to defend and support the Constitution makes it necessary for me to object to this travesty,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert of Rifle.

The newly elected Republican representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District already has come under fire from state elected officials and others calling for her resignation, saying her early morning Jan. 6 tweet “Today is 1776” contributed to the violence later that day.

As lawmakers met, violent protestors loyal to Trump stormed the Capitol in an insurrection intended to keep Biden from replacing Trump in the White House. While authorities struggled to regain control, Biden called on Trump to abide by his oath and move to ease tensions.

“I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege,” Biden said.

The GOP effort to block the formal confirmation of Biden’s win eventually failed after Republicans recycled arguments of fraud and other irregularities that have failed to gain traction.

Democrats were quick to condemn Republicans who continued to oppose the results.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California asked, “Does our oath to uphold the Constitution, taken just days ago, mean so very little? I think not.” He added that “an oath is no less broken when the breaking fails to achieve its end.”

Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, said she would introduce a resolution calling for the expulsion of Republicans who moved to invalidate the election results.

“I believe the Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences,” she tweeted. “They have broken their sacred oath of office.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said officials who continued to support Trump’s baseless claims of fraud violated their oath, and their rhetoric emboldened the rioters who stormed the Capitol.

“They have an allegiance that they have sworn — not to the Constitution and not the United States of America, but to one man, and that man is Donald Trump,” she said. “And they refuse to walk away from that no matter what he says, no matter what he does, and I think history will not judge them kindly for that.”

(Editor’s note: The Glenwood Springs Post Independent added to this AP report in regards to 3rd District Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.)