So, you thought some of last week’s Colorado school board races were contentious? They pale next to the raucous recall mounted against the board of commissioners down south in Custer County. The Take Back Custer County Recall Committee succeeded in persuading voters two dump two of the three commission incumbents on Election Day, with the third hanging on by 122 votes.

The bone of contention? Well, there were more than one. The Westcliffe-based Sangre de Christo Sentinel – which bills itself as, “The Voice of Conservative Colorado” and openly expressed support for the recall – called the election’s outcome “an astonishing display of voter revolt”:

The recall was the first of its kind in Custer County history. The effort … was a non-partisan, grass roots effort initiated due to Commissioner gross mismanagement (the Robin Young Affair) and constant attempts to push extremely unpopular measures (e.g., building codes, Dark Skies), which were never brought up during their campaigns, on the people of Custer County. A good example is the defeat of the Building Codes Ballot initiative (1A) by a huge margin. This effort was pushed incessantly by the Commissioners even after, in meeting after meeting, they were told by the vast majority of attendees that it was not wanted.

The Sentinel also picked up on this undercurrent:

… all three Commissioners ran as Republicans and were constant attendees at the Custer County Republican Central Committee meeting before their elections. Immediately after being elected all three never went to another meeting (except one by Hood that went poorly). All three also refused to attend this year’s Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, the premier Republican social event of the year.  … The three … were liberals posing as Republicans to deceitfully win elected office. And all three have paid a price.

Indeed, they have. Agree or disagree, you can’t say the voters didn’t have their reasons.