The email and social media campaign by candidate Mike Steele and some supporters has reached across the Rockies and into New Mexico.
Steele supporter Michael Gaddy said he told about 400 people via email last month that The Cortez Journal either acted with “deliberate” fashion or “ineptitude” in vetting Republican sheriff candidate Steve Nowlin. He also emailed the Denver Post and Albuquerque TV stations.
“It is disconcerting to many that this information is in the public domain, yet The Cortez Journal has endorsed Mr. Nowlin for the office of sheriff without it seems even a cursory examination of his past reputation,” Gaddy wrote in an email on Aug. 20.
(No reporters or news editors at the Cortez Journal write editorials or endorsements.)
Gaddy based his claims on selected portions from a 249-page court transcript of a motions hearing that took place in La Plata County on Oct. 23, 2008. Gaddy said the “damaging” court documents connected to the interstate drug/theft ring reveal that Nowlin was “dishonest.”
“The people of this county are entitled to this information before they vote for any candidate for an office which requires the public trust,” Gaddy wrote.
Gaddy, an Army veteran, is former president of the New Mexico Minuteman Project, one of the first anti-immigrant groups to patrol the nation’s southern border in Arizona beginning in 2005. In 2011, he claimed that federal land-use policies in the West were part of an orchestrated effort to hide the transfer of mineral rights on public lands to China.
tbaker@cortezjournal.com