The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, placed English and Spanish ads on Facebook last week targeting constituents in Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District, which includes the western half of the state from New Mexico to Wyoming.<\/p>\n
The ads pose a simple question: \u201cWhere\u2019s Tipton?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCongressman Scott Tipton has spent nearly a decade in office looking out for his special-interest donors while consistently failing to show up for hardworking Coloradans,\u201d DCCC spokeswoman Brooke Goren said in a news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n A cartoon of Tipton dressed in red and white stripes like the titular character in the children\u2019s book series \u201cWhere\u2019s Waldo?\u201d is featured in the ad. Once clicked<\/a>, it redirects to a ticking clock on a DCCC webpage counting the time it has been since Tipton\u2019s out-of-date website says he last held a public event for his constituents. The clock read 834 days on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The problem with the ad is that Tipton has in fact held recent public events.<\/p>\n Tipton held a roundtable<\/a> about drug abuse Jan. 25 in Grand Junction and a public meet-and-greet with veterans groups April 24 in Alamosa, said Michael Fortney, a spokesman for Tipton\u2019s campaign. He also held a public forum<\/a> April 25 at West Custer County Library in Westcliffe, library staff confirmed.<\/p>\n Tipton last visited Durango for a town hall in August 2017 after he toured the Gold King Mine with Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sens. Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet.<\/p>\n Those events \u2013 and others \u2013 were not listed on the defunct events page<\/a> on Tipton\u2019s website, which hasn\u2019t been updated since March 7, 2017 \u2013 834 days ago.<\/p>\n The DCCC spent between $1,100 and $5,600 on the inaccurate ads, according to data publicly available on Facebook\u2019s ad library. The English-language ad ran while Congress was on recess June 14-17, and the Spanish ad remains active.<\/p>\n Fortney is \u201cnot concerned by the DCCC\u2019s early involvement because these tiny spending levels amount to a cheap PR stunt, not an actual investment in the race,\u201d he said in an email to The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n While the ads did not account for many of Tipton\u2019s public appearances in Colorado, some Democrats still feel he does not engage enough with voters. \u201cWe kind of have a joke that we don\u2019t really remember what he looks like,\u201d Carol Cure, party chairwoman of the La Plata County Democrats, told the Herald last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tipton was elected to Congress in 2010 and is serving his fifth two-year term. So far, two Democrats have announced bids to challenge Tipton in 2020 \u2013 Diane Mitsch Bush of Steamboat Springs and Root Routledge of Durango. Mitsch Bush was last year\u2019s Democratic nominee and lost to Tipton by 8 percentage points, 51.52% to 43.55%, in the general election.<\/p>\n James Marshall is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Where\u2019s Tipton?\u2019 rely on outdated website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,265,1722,23],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-politics","tag-regional-elections","tag-u-s-rep-scott-tipton"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65890"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}