Third Party Candidates in US Senate Race

Colorado’s major party candidates held their only televised debate of the election on Tuesday October 11th. KUSA Channel 9 hosted the debate at the History Colorado museum in downtown Denver, but the Green Party candidate and Libertarian candidate were excluded from participating.

Arn Menconi is a former Democrat, serving two terms as an Eagle County Commissioner. He is now the Green Party candidate for the US Senate race and says that the race is really about Michael Bennet, the Democratic candidate. “This is a race for Michael Bennet, Daryl Glenn is not even in the race.”

“Michael Bennett is taking over $14 million from special interest money, from Wall Street, from drug companies, from oil and gas companies, from lobbyists, and he is making deals that benefit them and he is not representing Colorado.”

Menconi says that Bennet has served corporate donors instead of Colorado voters through his support of the Dark Act “he’s not in favor of labeling the GMOs because he’s taking money from those types of organizations.  The one that concerns me the most is when he takes money from the big banks, Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and he’ll come out and say that he has voted on legislation that has infringed upon the bankers, but he’s not fighting against them after the fraud that occurred in 2008. He’s not fighting to re-enact Glass-Steagall.  If he wants to do what he says he’s doing in terms of getting money out of politics, stop taking special interest money.”

Menconi is against the Trans Pacific Partnership, supports a ban on fracking and is in favor of universal healthcare.

“Coloradoans have inadequate or no health insurance and health insurance is going up and they either want a free market health insurance which is only going to cost more money or they want to try somehow to fix Obama Care…it can’t be fixed. Then we have endless wars that are going on for the next 2 generations. If you’re 15 or under, you’ve known nothing but war going on and that is sucking up trillions of dollars, killing millions of people, innocent people abroad. Michael Bennet and Daryl Glenn have no problem with the fact that the United States government is working on an arms based economy where Yemen, half of the country is now faced with famine and refugees, and that’s because we’re arming Saudi Arabia. When does this stop?  They’re both going to represent the interests of the multi-national corporations that continue to feed off endless war, global warming, inequality gap and racial injustice.”

Lily Tang Williams was also excluded from the televised debate. The Libertarian candidate had been included in a previous debate with Bennet and Glenn. She has offered to wear a body camera if elected to congress so that Coloradoans can see exactly what she is doing while she is serving them in DC. She says a lack of transparency in government has led to cynicism and distrust on the part of voters.

She says she is not in favor of banning of fracking but the oil and gas companies should be held responsible for damages.

“I’m still not very convinced what is the true reason that fracking is really bad.  Also understanding that that is how we have affordable energy now to use for consumers.”

Tang Williams is opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership. “As a Libertarian I support free trade, but this deal is not convincing to me that it’s really free trade. It’s negotiated in secret, thousands of pages, and who benefits?”

Arn Menconi and Lily Tang Williams have embarked on a state-wide campus debate tour. They debated at CU Boulder on Thursday September 15^th.  Listen to the debate here.

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