The People Have Spoken
Flower Be Gone, Epp Be In
Close, But a Win Is a Win

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
August 8, 2023 Election
Twenty votes. Out of around 2,300 votes cast. Wow! Those twenty votes were the margin that booted sitting Custer County Commissioner Tom Flower from his job and replaced him with a local businessman, Lucas Epp. 1,181 votes to recall Flower with 1,161 votes to not recall him. Power to the people.
Real close, but a win. Apparently there are a handful of ballots with signature issues that must be “cured” by August 17th. But as the vote was basically 50/50 these ballots should follow that split. Then an audit must be performed by August 21st and the election certified by August 22nd. Thus,  the election results should be good to go.
The dynamics of the election were quite interesting and provided a multitude of lessons on local political affiliations and loyalty. It became quite apparent at the last general election that Flower’s loyalty to the republican party was a faćade as he had multiple signs from the “unaffiliated”, left wing candidate, Deb Adams, who was running for county commissioner, in his yard on Hermit Lane. One would ask why Flower who ran as a republican, would support a lefty running against a fellow republican, Bill Canda. It was because Canda (and commissioner Kevin Day) slightly disciplined Flower after the Jackie Hobby/Flower abuse case.
When the two-month discipline period was over, Flower had an epic screaming meltdown at Canda and Day in a commissioner’s meeting. So Flower carried the grudge into the last election when Adams was running against Canda. Canda is a solid conservative republican and Adams is pretty far left. And Flower chose Adams just to get back against Canda. Flower party loyalty? Non existent.
So, during the recall signature gathering process the county’s democrats and unaffiliated libs campaigned against the recall to save their new found homie, Flower. Strange brew, folks. Lefties supporting a “republican” elected official. Then, a few weeks ago, the Flower crew had their “Stop the Recall” rally down at the pavilion on Hermit Lane and guess who showed up? Tons of our local lefties and a smattering of local RINO’s. All there to support a guy with two serious state ethics convictions re him voting for a more pay for his wife who worked in public health, and, Flower causing the great Jackie Hobby abuse case which now has resulted in a potential multi-million dollar lawsuit against the county by Hobby after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission declared that five counts of Hobby’s complaint against the county and Flower was valid. So, basically you have situation normal for the ethically/morally deficient democrats/libs in that they choose to support the similarly ethically bankrupt official, Flower.
So that was Flower’s big support base in this recall election. Of course, the Tribune, the pillar of ethics, went all out to support Flower with a first time ever endorsement by the Trib editor, Jordy “Red Bug” Hedberg. The Trib also ran full page ads supporting Flower’s reign of terror. Plus the Trib had a multitude of juvenile “puff pieces” on Flower painting him as the epitome of truth and integrity. Add in lefty Deb Adams being Flower’s biggest supporter It’s little odd, don’t you think, fellow conservatives? Bottom line, Flower made a deal with the devil to try to hang on to his commissioner spot and lost. Poetic justice.
We now have a successful businessman replacing a life long government employee as a county commissioner. This is good. We need more private sector citizens to run for office. The last thing we need is more ex-government employees trying to manage an enterprise that they worked in their whole lives and know nothing else. It has always been “other people’s money” that they spend rather than their own and that leads to things like the new County Manager position. Hopefully, we are now on the right path to fiscal and managerial sanity.