Weld County Commissioner Scott James announced Wednesday that he’d seek the Republican nomination to challenge freshman Rep. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s 8th District, prompting Democrats to immediately blast him for an anti-abortion, Islamophobic rant he delivered as a talk radio host in 2007.
James, as Media Matters documented at the time, declared “the civilization that you know … will be overtaken by those who would like you to practice Sharia law … just by mass numbers” because “the European cheese weenies simply aren’t breeding.” James continued, “You can do the math and see the rapid decline of … civilization,” before saying of the United Kingdom, “Their birth rate declining, the abortion rate increasing. You do the math. You don’t have the sanctity for the life like that, your society will simply extinguish.”
Democrats also went after James, who remained on the radio after winning his seat on the county commission in 2018, for his vote the next year to designate Weld County as a “Second Amendment sanctuary.” That action, which authorized the county sheriff to “exercise of his sound discretion to not enforce against any citizen an unconstitutional firearms law,” came in response to a new red flag law that allows family and household members, as well as law enforcement officials, to petition a judge to confiscate firearms from an individual they fear is dangerous. “Taking constitutional rights away from citizens under the guise that it is for the ‘greater good’ is a very dangerous path to walk down,” James said at the time, “and one we do not support.”