A mysterious man who no one claims to know was caught on video slipping $20 bills to volunteers supporting embattled Colorado state Sen. Angela Giron, who is facing a recall effort over her support for tough new gun-control laws.
Through a spokesman, Giron said she doesn’t know the man, who approached three people waving pro-Giron signs at a rally in Pueblo last weekend, and gave them each a $20 bill.
“The volunteers don’t know who the guy is,” Chris Shallow, campaign manager of Pueblo United For Angela, told 9News. “He didn’t tell them his name. Sen. Giron doesn’t know who this guy is. I am treating this money as an anonymous contribution.”
He added that the man might have been planted by Giron’s opponents to make her look bad, despite that one of the videos shows her appearing to have a conversation with the man.
The video shows Giron supporters holding signs and standing in front of tables set up by opponents gathering signatures for the recall. The tablers eventually called the police to force the protesters to move. While Giron is shown speaking to officers, an elderly man with a beard is seen doling out cash, which at least one volunteer appears to put in her pocket.
“I think it speaks for itself,” Victor Head, president of the pro-gun Pueblo Freedom and Rights, told 9News. “It looks like they’re paying people to protest us.”
Giron is one of two Colorado Senate Democrats facing a recall push. Both her opponents and those of Senate President John Morse have turned in more than the required number of signatures needed to trigger a recall election.
The secretary of state’s office must first verify the signatures and a spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the office routinely invalidates as much as 30 percent.
Last week, Head said he was confident his group would have enough to force an election against Giron because of the careful methods his signature gatherers used to verify voters before they were allowed to sign petitions.
Shallow told 9News that he collected the $60 handed out by the mystery man and that he would turn it over to the state’s unclaimed property fund.
Videos can be seen at the Colorado Peak Politics blog, which first posted them.
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