Aspen city spokeswoman Mitzi Rapkin is on a mission to raise $18,000 to buy a full-page ad in The Denver Post to call out U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner saying the Republican is failing to respond to his constituents while marching in political lockstep with President Donald Trump.
A mock-up of the ad, which is posted on a , accuses the first-term senator from Yuma of not returning phone calls or being accessible to the voters. As of Monday morning, she’d raised just over $5,000.
“I strongly believe we have to be creative and do everything we can think of to fight this regime and the hypocritical Republican leadership who, at every turn, condone racist, bigoted, sexist, short-sighted, immature, and menial-minded behavior and policy. One of my latest efforts in the fight is to raise money for a full-page ad in The Denver Post about Colorado Senator Cory Gardner’s appalling voting record, behavior and insistence that the thousands calling him are paid protestors,” Rapkin wrote in an email blast from her personal account.
Rapkin’s efforts are allowed under Aspen’s ethics code for city workers, but her endeavor has at least one city watchdog concerned about the perception of the city’s spokesperson weighing in publicly on national politics.
Rapkin cannot mix outside politics with her job, but as her political activism is performed on her own time, Rapkin — who participated in the Million Woman March last month in Washington, D.C. — can “privately and publicly express an opinion on political subjects and candidates,” Aspen city code says. That includes being a member of a political party, signing petitions and donating to campaigns, among other political functions. City Attorney Jim True said, “She’s doing it on her time, and our rules say very clearly what people can do on their own time.”
That Rapkin is playing by the rules, however, is not the point, said Elizabeth Milias, a City Hall critic and author of the conservative Red Ant blog. “Of course itap legal,” she said. “Of course she has the right to political speech. But the fact that she is the chief information officer for the city, I think that inherently when she speaks, she speaks for the city. I just think itap a slippery slope, and the optics are bad.”
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