Surely the most prominent of the independent campaign groups operating in Colorado this year is the Trailhead Group, which is boosting the candidacy of gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez and a number of other Republicans.
Trailhead is a creation of Gov. Bill Owens and wealthy businessmen Bruce Benson and Pete Coors. Based on their debut ad, we imagine them shaking in their boots, fearful of crime in the streets of Denver as a result of Bill Ritter’s 12 years as district attorney.
That’s the implication of Trailhead’s attack ad, which is out of character with the group’s usually constructive founding fathers. Trailhead used selected statistics to suggest Ritter – the Democratic candidate for governor – is soft on crime, something that seemingly escaped public notice while Ritter was in office. (We’re told the ad has now run its course.)
To be sure, this sort of thing is to be expected during an election season. The disheartening element is the potential it has to distort public perception about how the criminal justice system really works.
Trailhead might get some traction from the demon DA ads if it weren’t for a gentleman named John Suthers.
The Trailhead ad criticized Ritter’s plea bargain rate – 97 percent of his cases – saying Ritter has a record of “aggressive plea bargaining.” It sounds irresponsible and reprehensible until you learn that Ritter’s rate was barely above the national average – and less than Suthers’.
Suthers is Trailhead’s kind of guy. He is the Republican attorney general and also on the November ballot. Trailhead embraces Suthers in one ad as “a tough prosecutor who fights for justice.” What Trailhead doesn’t say is that Suthers’ plea bargain rate was 98 percent during four years as DA for El Paso and Teller counties. (According to available statistics from his former office.)
Worse than Trailhead’s statistical hypocrisy is the potential that voters could come to believe that plea agreements are inherently bad. To the contrary, the community often benefits when a defendant gets a substantial punishment without the cost and uncertainty of trial. Perhaps more important is that if every case – or even half the cases – that a district attorney filed went to trial, a percentage of these trials would surely end with the defendant going free.
Trailhead has also criticized Ritter’s incarceration rate, saying in a written statement that “he needs to be prepared to defend the 49,492 felony cases he accepted in which the criminals did not go to prison.”
This mud, meant to splatter Ritter, ends up on Suthers, too. His incarceration rate for the last three years of his tenure as DA was significantly lower than Ritter’s. Ritter’s rate was 19.5 percent. Suthers’ rate was 10.9 percent. A study of the nation’s 75 largest counties showed a rate of 16.9 percent.
Alan Philp of Trailhead explained to us that because of the differences between jurisdictions, it’s impossible to make a comparison between Suthers and Ritter. Perhaps the political operators should simply let the statistics speak for themselves.
