We, too, have lost confidence in Colorado House Minority Leader Mike Lynch.
Lynch displayed a lapse in judgment and a lack of integrity when he drove drunk in 2022 and then failed to disclose his arrest and pending criminal charges to the public or even to his caucus as they considered him for the role of Republican Leader in the state House. Two weeks after his arrest, Lynch was elected as Republican Leader. He is still on probation for driving while ability impaired, a lesser charge than he first faced that was reached in a plea deal.
We expect more of our public officials.
Lynch’s criminal record only came to light after he announced that he would run for Congress this month.
The representative from Wellington was pulled over north of Fort Collins going 90 mph, according to the incident report, and he then failed a field sobriety test.
The video of Lynch’s arrest only drives home how very impaired the state lawmaker was at the time, and it is frightening to think of him behind the wheel of a Mustang speeding north on the interstate full of traffic. In 2022, 286 people were killed in Colorado by impaired drivers.
Lynch not only stumbled several times while attempting to walk a straight line for the Colorado State Patrol corporal who pulled him over but also made a series of shockingly dangerous decisions.
Alcohol not only impairs your reaction time, peripheral vision, and judgment but also memory. Lynch exited his car with a gun in his pocket. He didn’t tell the state patrolman that he was armed. And then, when the patrolman asked about a knife in one pocket, Lynch reached into his other pocket and said, “I have a gun in this pocket, too.”
“You have a gun? Stop that,” the patrolman said quickly grabbing Lynch’s hand and pulling it out of his pocket. “We’re not going to reach for guns when we’re out here … “
Lynch is lucky to be alive.
Our respect goes to the patrolman who kept his cool despite Lynch’s bad behavior. The patrolman also seemed unfazed by Lynch’s attempts to pull rank and simply did his job to take a dangerous driver off the road. Lynch dropped the name of the lobbyist for Colorado State Patrol, mentioned that he was a state lawmaker, and even said, “You don’t know how much I fight for you guys.” Lynch seemed to think better of his attempts to influence the police officer’s decisions and repeatedly said “never mind” after he’d mentioned the name of the lobbyist.
In a no-confidence vote Monday, Lynch narrowly avoided ouster as the leader of the Republican Caucus, with the members split evenly 9-9. One representative was on maternity leave and could not vote – a revote was in the works on Tuesday. The vote has been cast as a divide between Republicans who have always wanted a more extreme leader than Lynch and those who still support Lynch despite his criminal record because of his less abrasive approach to governing.
As much as we appreciate Lynch’s more collaborative approach to governance, we cannot overlook his missteps, even if it could mean putting an obstructionist in charge of the minority party in the House. In 2016, we called for Rep. Dan Pabon to resign from office. We were disappointed Pabon put others in danger driving drunk, but we were appalled by his efforts to use his position in the General Assembly to coerce the cop into letting him go. The cop, in that case, also held strong and refused to let Pabon off the hook.
Pabon and Lynch are not bad people. Elected officials do not have to be perfect, but driving drunk is dangerous and cannot be normalized by our society.
Across America, we have seen the bar of expectations lowering for public leaders.
It’s not too much to ask that elected officials follow the very laws they are charged with writing and enforcing.
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