Andrea Mérida has been a political pariah in the Democratic and Green parties. She appears to be motivated by personal monetary gain.
During Michael Bennet’s first campaign for US Senator Andrea wrote articles, for pay, attacking Bennett’s performance as superintendent of the Denver public school district. When Bennett won the election Andrea became a persona non grata in the Democratic Party. She was elected to the Denver school board with the support of a teachers union. While on the school board, she overspent her allowance by some $8000. Andrea was the target of at least two recall attempts during her single term on the Denver School Board. Andrea withdrew her bid for re-election after the teachers’ union endorses another candidate for her seat.
Andrea switched to the green party before her the end of her term on the Denver School Board. She was elected as a state cochair of the Green Party of Colorado in 2015. She has held onto the cochair position ever since. In 2017, Harry Hempy and Judy Harrington were banned from participating in the Green Party of Colorado because they were involved in the complaint that was filed against her with the national party. The process involved malfeasance and bylaws changes to enable the state party Council (steering committee) to take this action. Much of Andrea‘s malfeasance is documented in a complaint that a group of Colorado Green party members submitted to the national Green Party. By January 2018 All greens who supported our complaint were purged from participating in the Green Party of Colorado. As a result most of the local party chapters in Colorado dropped their affiliation with the state party. The number of Green Party affiliates in Colorado has dropped by about 50% since the purge.
From 2017 to the present Andrea has solicited nominations for candidates who would hire her to be their campaign manager for pay. This is an unprecedented conflict of interest for a Green Party of Colorado officer. One case involved Julie Banuelos, who ran for a nonpartisan Denver school board office. Andrea pocketed at least $5300 from being campaign manager. Andrea personally received about one third of all donations made to the campaign.
In a later campaign, Annie Martinez agreed to have Andrea as her paid campaign manager for pay, but fired her soon after.
Finally, Andrea recruited Howie Hawkins to run for the Green party candidate for President of the United States in 2020 on the condition that he pay her to be his campaign manager. After he hired Andrea she conspired to exclude other candidates from receiving fair and equal treatment during the national Green Party primary process. Seven other candidates who sought the Green Party’s nomination for president filed complaints against the Green Party of the United States. These candidates accused Green Party leaders of “rigging” the party’s primary process in favor of Howie Hawkins’ while systematically discriminating against all other candidates for the nomination. Hawkins received only about 500,000 votes, about one third of the votes received by Dr. Jill Stein in 2016.
In approximately 2019 the authoritarian faction that had seized control of the Green Party of Colorado organization instituted a “Green Party poll tax,” requiring that Greens in Colorado pay dues to the party as a precondition to attending and participating in the party’s annual assembly. That is probably not legal. The illegitimate “Green Party of Colorado” regularly operates without a party Treasurer, another violation of bylaws, and refuses to provide financial statements at annual assemblies, a clear violation of Green Party bylaws.
Multiple Anonymous Authors