PRESS RELEASE

Contact:  Integrity Matters

integritymatterscos@gmail.com

719-466-1066

 

Recall Shifts to Vote Against Wayne Williams for Mayor

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky

 

November 18th, 2022, Colorado Springs, CO - Today is the deadline to turn in petition signatures for the recall of Wayne Williams.  As previously communicated, Integrity Matters withdrew the recall of Stephannie Fortune after she publicly announced she will not be running for a City Council seat in April 2023.  Though on the Wayne Williams recall, we are disappointed to report that we did not garner the 24,000 signatures needed to proceed to the next step of signature verification, we are overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from the hundreds of volunteers and thousands of voters across the city.  Please know that all of the hard work everyone has done is not without enormous benefit.  Thousands of voters, most of whom did not know who Wayne Williams or Stephannie Fortune were, now are far more educated on why these individuals have not and do not serve the public interests and are beholden to the special interests, the developers, who put them into office.  We are not deterred and will continue to inform and educate the electorate why Wayne Williams would be catastrophic for public interests, especially public safety. 

 

Much was learned in this process and the many stories from our volunteer events over the last two months as well as shocking mails concerned citizens shared with us affirmed the recall effort many times over.  We have no regrets and look forward to the pursuit of integrity in leadership and life.  For those who want more elaboration on what we believe the challenges were in this recall, below is a summary:

• Short Notice - The decision to recall Wayne Williams was triggered by the extraordinarily deceptive statements made by Williams concerning the alleged Public Service Announcement (PSA) he and the Secretary of State Griswold made in July of this year. Wayne Williams claimed he was told this political campaign ad, disguised as a PSA, would run prior to the June primaries and not after the primary election.  Open records documents from the Secretary of State showed these statements were the height of disinformation which is, ironically, exactly what the alleged PSA was promoting.  This issue alone motivated many of our volunteers and angry petition-signers.

• Politically Motivated Interference -  From the onset, the City threw up roadblock after roadblock in getting this effort off the ground including but not limited to claiming our word counts were wrong when they were not, not being in the office and having no replacement present to resolve these problems, leaving town for a week without a designated person, slow-walking questions, and the Office of City Attorney steadfastly refused to provide a timeline for the process ensuring the issue of the Williams Recall would be brought to the citizens prior to the April 2023 Municipal Elections.  Had Integrity Matters gotten the signatures required, we would have still needed to have the petition sections verified by the City Clerk's Office, and then get a vote scheduled with City Council to set the election outside of the 90 day window for it to be scheduled prior to April.  We heard from the media that other groups faced similar hurdles in petitioning our government so much so that they requested the media be present in meetings to set the petition with the City.  We complained numerous times publicly about this obstructionist behavior and are now investigating filing a complaint with the Attorney General for violating our 1st Amendment Rights.  This is just further proof we all need to vote wisely for both the Mayoral and City Council seats in April to stop this abuse of the electorate.

• Distracted Electorate -  Due to the above obstructionist behavior, the timing of the Wayne Williams Recall effort had to compete for attention during one of the most divisive election cycles in US history.

• Criminal Activity - Other politician campaigns have reported to the City Police Department the theft of a few of their signs.  Over 300 of our signs in a very concentrated area of the City, namely the Broadmoor area, were stolen in what we believe was an organized, targeted effort which stretched our resources.  On a positive note, this crime ring was unable to stop the signs, city-wide, from being seen by hundreds of thousands of people.

All of this has strengthened our resolve to focus on electing leaders who value integrity and will represent the public who voted them into office as opposed to the special interests who fund them into office.  We are even more certain that the leadership of Colorado Springs must be replaced to stop these consistent votes for developers against public outcry over safety and everyday lifestyle issues which are destroying our way of life and endangering our lives.  The good news is that there are many excellent choices for Mayor and City Council.  If we work together in the coming months and use the tools, email and our social media, we have to inform and educate. We can ounter the giant advertising campaigns the developers have planned and, we can restore integrity in our leadership and elect leaders who will vote for our public safety, our environment and the lifestyle which we wish to protect.

 

Integrity Matters will continue to work to provide our citizens relevant information so voters can make informed choices.  Thanks to the efforts of our volunteers for whom we have deep respect and gratitude, we now have thousands of individuals, from every walk of life and from every neighborhood in this city, to carry this movement forward.  Wayne Gretzky was absolutely correct in noting, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."  We have many more shots to take. 

 

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Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching.