Dear Grant,

Are we seriously still talking about this? “This,” being the increasingly desperate effort to unseat Sheriff Denim Starnes led by former undersheriff Jim Hunsicker. The aggrieved and his supporters allege incompetence, malfeasance and worse in letters to this paper and Mr. Hunsicker’s on-again, off-again website.

Unsuccessful in convincing the public to pursue a recall election or demand Starnes’ resignation, Mr. Hunsicker has abandoned politics for litigation. Determined to oust the sheriff by any means, he now alleges “election fraud,” claiming Mr. Starnes was not a resident of Hinsdale County for a year prior to his taking office as required by the Colorado Constitution.
I am not an attorney, and Mr. Hunsicker isn’t either. That hasn’t stopped him from acting as his own counsel and submitting a whopper of a complaint to the district court in Gunnison, asking a judge to remove Mr. Starnes from his office. His attempt at adding – without consent or legal merit – “the People of Hinsdale County” as co-complainants was rejected on filing. Leave the rest of us out of this, please.

Notably absent from his complaint is any compelling evidence of Mr. Starnes’ residence outside Hinsdale County before March 2024, when Mr. Hunsicker agrees Starnes moved to a home on South Gunnison Avenue in Lake City.
Mr. Hunsicker filed his legal case after unsuccessfully petitioning the district attorney in June to take up the matter. Their refusal to do so should have given him pause. I can read state statutes, too, and it’s my armchair lawyer opinion that Mr. Hunsicker’s time to challenge the election was within 10 days of votes being counted (CRS 1-11-213 (4)) or better, within 5 days of Mr. Starnes’ petition to appear on the ballot (CRS 1-4-909 (1)).

He didn’t object then, of course, and in any event Mr. Starnes won 56% of the vote in November. Courts are rightly reluctant to unseat public officials on the urging of aggrieved former employees who contest an election long since certified and after the statutory windows for challenge.

Allow me to further address Diane Bruce’s audacious assertion in these pages last week that opposing opinions are “not appropriate to be unfolded in this venue,” and the co-opting of this paper’s opinion section for this tragicomedy.
First, the easy part: This is the opinion section. People share their opinions. You may disagree with some of them. The county GOP chairwoman’s position on public expression is shameful but unsurprising, given the party’s recent abandonment of free-speech principles.

More importantly, the Silver World opinion pages are not a bathroom wall on which anyone will inscribe their grievances and accusations. Mr. Hunsicker and his supporters have been platformed on these pages for long enough to bring the goods, and they have nothing new to say. The First Amendment shields individuals from government censorship; there is no constitutional right to have your letters printed in a newspaper. I encourage the editor to select letters and op-eds for print based on their contribution to a substantive community dialogue.
Enough of “this.”

_{Brad Jones
Lake City}