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Mitsch Bush, exploring taking on Tipton again, weighs in on abortion tweet

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May 21, 2019, 10:18 am

Former Eagle County state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, a Steamboat Springs Democrat, is exploring running again for Colorado’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District seat held by Republican Scott Tipton since 2011.

State Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, D-Steamboat Springs.
Former state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, D-Steamboat Springs.

“I’ve just called people throughout the district. I have a consultant team that I’ve hired,” Mitsch Bush told RealVail.com on Monday. “We’ve been working on a lot of different things, and soon, before the end of May, there will be an announcement.”

Mitsch Bush, also a former Routt County commissioner, resigned her state house seat to take on Tipton last year, ultimately losing to the Cortez conservative by nearly 8 percentage points. She weighed in on a Tipton Twitter gaff on abortion over the weekend that the congressman’s office blamed on a mistake by a staffer.

That story, which first ran in the Vail Daily on Monday, is re-posted below.

“[Tipton’s] been very consistently anti-choice,” Mitsch Bush told RealVail.com. “I don’t think he respects the idea of a woman’s right to choose. He gets a lot of money from the so-called pro-life groups. But I refuse to call them pro-life because [they don’t care] about either a woman or a live infant.

“These are the same people that cut funding for Woman, Infants and Children [WIC]. These are the same people who want to cut Medicaid.”

Eagle County Democratic Party Chairwoman Melissa Decker had this to say about Tipton’s tweet: “There’s nothing funny about Mr. Tipton’s belief that women’s access to reproductive health care should be taken away.”

Now here’s a version of Monday’s Vail Daily story on Tipton:

Tipton blames abortion meme on staffer

Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton office is blaming a rogue staffer for tweeting a mocking abortion meme over the weekend deemed offensive by current and past state lawmakers who saw it and retweeted it before it was deleted a short time later.

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U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez

The meme, issued from Tipton’s official congressional Twitter account, showed female protestors with the caption “We want government controlled healthcare!” Then below that the meme reads, “*State government Bans abortions*”, followed by a picture of a surprised Pikachu – the popular Pokémon character.

The meme is an apparent reference to the recent wave of state laws, starting in Alabama, that ban abortion to varying degrees. In the case of the Alabama law, which will likely be vigorously challenged by women’s reproductive rights and pro-choice groups, the ban applies to victims of rape and incest and cases where the mother’s health is at risk.

“The tweet was mistakenly sent out by a staffer who helps manage the account,” Tipton spokesman Matthew Atwood wrote in an email statement. “It was never viewed or vetted by Congressman Tipton prior to being posted and does not reflect Congressman Tipton’s position or work on healthcare issues.”

Tipton, who represents the western two-thirds of Eagle County along with most of Colorado’s Western Slope and part of the southern Front Range, has previously taken the position of supporting abortion in cases of rape, incest or health of the mother. Tipton in the past has voted for a federal abortion ban beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

“Scott Tipton has a consistent anti-choice record from 2011 right through 2019, and I didn’t understand that tweet. It didn’t make sense to me, and it was just so discombobulated,” said former Democratic state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, who lost to Tipton by nearly 8 percentage points last November. “It definitely seemed to me to be an insult to pro-choice women.”

Mitsch Bush, a former Routt County commissioner and state lawmaker who resigned from the legislature to take on Tipton for Congress, said she’s considering running against him again in 2020 and will have an announcement by the end of the month. She did not buy Tipton’s rogue staffer explanation.

“My opinion, having been a legislator and wanting to be a United States congresswoman is the buck stops with the legislator and not with their staff. What the staff says represents you,” Mitsch Bush said. “Nothing went out from my office that I hadn’t vetted. You take responsibility and you’re accountable and you’re transparent and he’s not.”

Atwood did not respond to further inquiries about disciplinary action facing the staffer. Nor did he care to expand on Tipton’s stance on the various abortion bans being passed in other states in hopes of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Polling shows the majority of Americans (50 percent) feel abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, with another 30 percent saying abortion should be legal under any circumstances, and just 18 percent saying abortion should never be legal for any reason.

If Tipton is in any way backing Alabama’s new law, that puts the Cortez businessman in a very small minority. In Colorado, voters have repeatedly rejected so-called “Personhood” amendments seeking to define life as starting with “the beginning of the biological development” of a human being – in other words, the fertilized egg as a person.

Such extreme views have been overwhelmingly defeated at the ballot box in Colorado, where the issues of abortion and women’s reproductive rights and their ability to choose how to handle personal health care decisions became key factors in the state’s U.S. Senate race in 2014.

Incumbent Sen. Mark Udall took a great deal of heat for focusing intensely on protecting a woman’s right to choose – earning the mocking nickname of Mark “Uterus”. The Democrat narrowly lost to Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who reversed his previous support for the Personhood amendments in order to defeat Udall.

“I’m pro-life, but that’s up to the states,” Gardner said recently of the Alabama ban. Gardner has backed both of President Donald Trump’s conservative picks for the U.S. Supreme Court, which could ultimately decide to overturn Roe v. Wade – a decision that rejected state law attempting to ban abortions.

Mitsch Bush added that the tweet’s use of the phrase government-run health care was consistent with Tipton’s frequent refrain during debates last year. She said the tweet does reflect Tipton’s position and work on health care.

“It kind of does because he loves to talk about government-run health care,” Mitsch Bush said. “But what we’re talking about here is a basic right that was decided in 1973 based on the 9th and the 14th Amendments of the Constitution. A woman under our Constitution right now has a right to choose abortion if that’s what she wishes. He’s always been anti-choice.”

Democratic state Rep. Dylan Roberts — who represents the state house district comprised of Eagle and Routt counties that was vacated by Mitsch Bush so she could challenge Tipton — tweeted his disapproval of Tipton’s tweet on Sunday: “This was the really lame and offensive meme the Congressman has now deleted.”

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David O. Williams

Managing Editor at RealVail
David O. Williams is the editor and co-founder of RealVail.com and has had his awarding-winning work (see About Us) published in more than 75 newspapers and magazines around the world, including 5280 Magazine, American Way Magazine (American Airlines), the Anchorage Daily News (Alaska), the Anchorage Daily Press (Alaska), Aspen Daily News, Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Times, Beaver Creek Magazine, the Boulder Daily Camera, the Casper Star Tribune (Wyoming), the Chicago Tribune, Colorado Central Magazine, the Colorado Independent (formerly Colorado Confidential), Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics (formerly the Colorado Statesman), Colorado Public News, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Colorado Springs Independent, the Colorado Statesman (now Colorado Politics), the Colorado Times Recorder, the Cortez Journal, the Craig Daily Press, the Curry Coastal Pilot (Oregon), the Daily Trail (Vail), the Del Norte Triplicate (California), the Denver Daily News, the Denver Gazette, the Denver Post, the Durango Herald, the Eagle Valley Enterprise, the Eastside Journal (Bellevue, Washington), ESPN.com, Explore Big Sky (Mont.), the Fort Morgan Times (Colorado), the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Greeley Tribune, the Huffington Post, the King County Journal (Seattle, Washington), the Kingman Daily Miner (Arizona), KUNC.org (northern Colorado), LA Weekly, the Las Vegas Sun, the Leadville Herald-Democrat, the London Daily Mirror, the Moab Times Independent (Utah), the Montgomery Journal (Maryland), the Montrose Daily Press, The New York Times, the Parent’s Handbook, Peaks Magazine (now Epic Life), People Magazine, Powder Magazine, the Pueblo Chieftain, PT Magazine, the Rio Blanco Herald Times (Colorado), Rocky Mountain Golf Magazine, the Rocky Mountain News, RouteFifty.com (formerly Government Executive State and Local), the Salt Lake Tribune, SKI Magazine, Ski Area Management, SKIING Magazine, the Sky-Hi News, the Steamboat Pilot & Today, the Sterling Journal Advocate (Colorado), the Summit Daily News, United Hemispheres (United Airlines), Vail/Beaver Creek Magazine, Vail en Español, Vail Health Magazine, Vail Valley Magazine, the Vail Daily, the Vail Trail, Westword (Denver), Writers on the Range and the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Williams is also the founder, publisher and editor of RealVail.com and RockyMountainPost.com.

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