Secretary of State Mike Coffman has acknowledged that hiring a partisan activist to work in the state’s elections division was a “failure of leadership.”
He figured Dan Kopelman, who also had a Republican consulting business on the side, would simply “step away from” his GOP activism once he started work as the state’s elections technology manager.
Kopelman didn’t step away. He went even further. His website, set up to sell voter databases to Republican candidates, actually boasted of his work for the secretary of state’s office.
Failure of leadership, indeed, especially given Coffman’s campaign promise to uphold the integrity of an office previously tarnished by partisanship.
Coffman caught up with the problem last week when he unveiled new rules for certain employees in his department that bar them from participating in outside, partisan political activities.
The idea is to keep his department squeaky clean – and free of accusations – when it comes to outside political influence, and that’s vitally important.
Some liberal groups have derided the policy as too little, too late. That smacks of partisanship, too. We applaud the decision and the aggressive steps Coffman is taking, even though we lament that it took a controversy to make it happen.
Perception, as Coffman says, is reality, and voters need to know that workers in his elections division are not involved in partisan politicking – on or off the job.
“Out of this has come a good policy that should have been instituted in the Department of State a long time ago,” Coffman told us last week. “I was stupid for not coming up with the rules on Day 1.”
Considering the partisan stains on other secretary of state offices across the country in recent years – Florida and Ohio quickly come to mind – Coffman should have implemented this policy in his first days.
The new rules come almost two weeks after Kopelman, a state elections employee and Coffman campaign worker, was accused of selling voter data through that personal website.
Coffman obviously knew of Kopelman’s political past but says he had no idea his Political Live Wires business was attempting to sell voter lists.
Kopelman’s pay was docked, and he was removed from work on the re-certification of electronic voting systems. He has no access to the state’s voter database. An internal review found Kopelman did not wrongfully access or sell state data, but the state auditor is still investigating.
The new policy restricts workers who are directly or indirectly involved with elections from getting involved in any outside politicking besides registering to vote with a party affiliation.
Coffman will adhere personally to the restrictions as well, saying he won’t endorse or contribute to partisan candidates or statewide ballot issues.
Whatever his motivations, it’s a sound policy and should be a permanent rule in the secretary of state’s office, even after Coffman is gone.
