Today is election day in Longmont, Colorado -- tomorrow we will find out if Comcast's record-breaking campaign of lies has scared enough voters to prevent the
community from using its infrastructure to encourage broadband competition.
It looks like Comcast will break the $300,000 mark, funneling the money through the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association. Two years ago, it spent over $245,000 in a similar effort -- setting the record for most amount spent on a local election in Longmont.
Comcast and its anti-competition allies will spend approximately 10x as much as the total amount spent on the entire mayoral campaign. All to stop the city from having an alternative to the cable/DSL duopoly.
In a
recent news story about the absurd spending level, the present Mayor struck an indifferent tone:
“It doesn't really matter at this stage of the game,” Baum said. “It's going to the electorate. The electorate will vote. And we will know on Tuesday how they voted – if they believe a $300,000 ad campaign, or if they believe the people they've entrusted their votes to.”
Both incumbents and challengers in the City Council race have unanimously endorsed 2A over the course of the campaign.
The
Boulder Weekly has even weighed in on Comcast's campaign of lies and misinformation,
tying it to their efforts two years ago:
In 2009, a similar campaign called “No Blank Check” was bankrolled to the tune of nearly $250,000, primarily by the telecommunications industry. That campaign, which was successful in defeating the measure, was labeled as misleading by city officials because it claimed money would be taken from police and firefighters to fund city telecommunications services.
“It was actually just the opposite of what No Blank Check was saying,” Tom Roiniotis, director of Longmont Power and Communications, told Boulder Weekly this summer. “They were saying we were going to have to lay off police and firefighters. Nothing could be further from the truth.
