{"id":808083,"date":"2020-06-04T11:14:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=384469"},"modified":"2020-06-04T16:55:39","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T22:55:39","slug":"former-da-candidate-calls-out-heidi-mccollum-for-falsely-playing-first-female-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/former-da-candidate-calls-out-heidi-mccollum-for-falsely-playing-first-female-card\/","title":{"rendered":"Former DA candidate calls out Heidi McCollum for falsely playing \u2018first female\u2019 card"},"content":{"rendered":"

The race for district attorney in Colorado\u2019s 5th Judicial District has created the first dust-up of this local campaign season.<\/p>\n

Democrats Heidi McCollum and Braden Angel are vying for their party\u2019s nomination. In a campaign email that was associated with a women\u2019s DA candidate forum, McCollum claimed to be the first woman to run for District Attorney in Colorado\u2019s Fifth Judicial District.<\/a> She\u2019s not, said Sanam Mehrnia, a Summit County woman who ran as an independent in 2016.<\/p>\n

Mehrnia called McCollum\u2019s claim \u201cfalse\u201d and \u201cgrossly insulting\u201d in a letter to the editor<\/a> that was sent to the Vail Daily and the Summit Daily News.<\/p>\n

McCollum apologized for her campaign piece\u2019s \u201clack of clarity.\u201d She said it referred to her participation in a panel of five Democratic women running for District Attorney\u2019s offices across Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the first woman to be nominated by the Democratic Party in the Fifth Judicial District making it onto the primary ballot for District Attorney,\u201d McCollum said in a statement. \u201cWhile Ms. Mehrnia ran as an unaffiliated and did, in fact, petition onto the ballot, we\u2019ve still never had a Democratic woman be able to say the same \u2014 until now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angel, McCollum\u2019s Democratic primary opponent, said it\u2019s a matter of integrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that honesty and integrity are of utmost importance in a District Attorney,\u201d Angel said in a statement. \u201cIn the current political climate, it is imperative that the community is able to trust and rely upon their elected officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mehrnia said, \u201cas a female it is insulting for Ms. McCollum to falsely play the \u201cfirst female card.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHeidi McCollum\u2019s boss and direct supervisor, Bruce Brown, was my opponent in 2016 and thus she has actual knowledge that her statement is untrue,\u201d Mehrnia wrote in her letter in which she also voiced her support for Angel. \u201cMs. McCollum either decided to purposefully ignore\/discount my presence and falsely take credit for my achievement or as the result of incompetence, forgot. Either of these possibilities demonstrates that she is not competent to be District Attorney.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCollum thanked Mehrnia for speaking up and said women are needed in politics now more than ever in mountain communities and across Colorado to promote the advancement of science, protect the environment and natural resources, support a woman\u2019s right to choose, support marriage equality, and criminal justice reform for rehabilitation before incarceration, and accountability of law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith events over the past week throughout our nation stemming from the murder of George Floyd, we all need to practice speaking up when we see or hear an injustice, no matter how small. Thank you Ms. Mehrnia for speaking up when you saw something that you thought was wrong,\u201d McCollum said.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The race for district attorney in Colorado\u2019s 5th Judicial District has created the first dust-up of this local campaign season. Democrats Heidi McCollum and Braden Angel are vying for their party\u2019s nomination. In a campaign email that was associated with a women\u2019s DA candidate forum, McCollum claimed to be the first woman to run for District […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-808083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-07 05:31:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808094,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808083\/revisions\/808094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}