Aurora – It must be election season when a candidate for City Council says of a sitting councilwoman: “If she comes to my house and crosses my sidewalk, I have a gun and she’ll be toast. That’s what happens in my neighborhood.”
This comment is from Pat Tudor, candidate for Aurora City Council’s Ward 1, which encompasses the East Colfax Avenue corridor also known as Original Aurora.
It was directed at Nadine Caldwell, who is stepping down because of term limits after 16 years.
“She is kooksville,” Caldwell said of Tudor. “Why would anyone put that in print that you are threatening someone’s life?”
Tudor doesn’t have a beef with other candidates for the office: Kim Harrell, Larry McElvain and Deborah Wallace. It’s Caldwell who gets Tudor’s blood boiling.
“She has been spreading lies about me,” Tudor said.
“I’m not fighting with her,” Caldwell said. “I’m just trying to set people straight when she makes mistakes. I don’t know what her problem is.”
The public squabble between Tudor and Caldwell came to light at a candidates’ forum.
Tudor said she helped a local motorcycle shop get its business license and stopped it from moving to Denver, the Aurora Sentinel reported.
Caldwell said she is the one who helped the business remain.
“I started working on this (zoning) ordinance so we could add these types of businesses, like a showroom,” she said. “We came up with this wording, I got it passed through committee. … I don’t know what to think of her. She lies about everything. She twists the truth. … The only reason she doesn’t like me is because I refused to come to her aid when she was fired by the city.”
The Aurora Career Service Commission held a hearing in September 2002 about Tudor’s firing from her planning-department job, finding the city was justified in dismissing her for insubordination, making false statements about her supervisor and misrepresenting herself on employment applications.
Tudor says she was fired because she was a whistle-blower.
“I caught my boss threatening a homebuilder,” she said. “I then put on my evaluation that (my supervisor) was a liar and a racist.”
Tudor’s campaign slogan is “No more business as usual.”
“There are city employees in the building department that alter their timecards to show they work eight hours a day, and they don’t,” she said. “Code enforcement discriminates. … Go up and down Colfax and ask anyone. I’m for equal code enforcement.”
Tudor believes she will win. Caldwell said she hopes not.
