In a graphic new campaign video that’s prompting criticism, one of the two Democrats running in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race this year gets pepper sprayed to underline a proposal to halt school shootings.
Levi Tillemann, who is vying for a chance to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, in the 6th Congressional District wants to place pepper spray and other nonlethal weapons in schools to thwart active shooters and other potential threats.
It’s his alternative to calls from some conservatives to arm teachers with guns to protect their students.
“Wow, that’s intense,” Tillemann says in the video, as he douses his face in soapy water and sprays his intensely red eyes with a garden hose after being hit in the face with pepper spray.
The roughly 2-minute spot features an Aurora Public School board member, Kevin Cox, saying “common-sense” gun regulations aren’t enough to keep students safe as he endorses the proposal.
But the video is raising a lot of questions across social media and in Colorado political circles, as Tillemann faces a well-funded and establishment-backed Democratic primary opponent in Denver attorney Jason Crow. And at least one school-safety group that’s pro-gun control — along with the state’s largest teachers organization — aren’t fully embracing Tillemann’s idea.
Ken Toltz, who co-founded the organization Safe Campus Colorado, called the video “a mad-cap stunt” and said he couldn’t really take the idea seriously.
“I couldn’t even watch it a second time because it’s reckless and irresponsible to film that kind of stunt and put it on Facebook,” said Toltz, a fellow Democrat who made an unsuccessful bid in the 6th Congressional District in 2000.
Amie Baca-Oehlert, vice president of the Colorado Education Association, also pushed back on the concept, saying the money it would take to implement such an idea would be better spent elsewhere.
“We are for having mental health supports in school,” she said, explaining that the union has taken a similar position on arming teachers with guns.
Tillemann rejected criticism of the video and defended the spot as the result of his campaign’s hard work to stop school violence. They initially considered more police K-9s in schools — to sniff out gunpowder and stop assailants — as a primary proposal before switching over to pepper spray.
“We are at a political impasse when it comes to this topic,” he said. “Dozens and dozens of kids are being gunned down in this country. …The solutions that are being offered by both Democrats and Republicans aren’t working. That’s why I sat down with my team and we thought through ways that we could get around the talking points that have been mouthed by party apparatchik for decades. This was the best solution that we could come up with.”
Cox, the school board member, agrees. “Something is better than nothing, I think, and this is a very inexpensive solution,” he said, adding that pepper spray can quickly be incorporated in schools.
Tillemann says his idea came after consultation with the medical and criminal justice communities. It would involve training for educators and storing pepper spray in a safe way in classrooms. “This will stop anyone in their tracks,” he says in the video.
“I love to hear people calling this a stunt without calling this a viable alternative,” he said to a Denver Post reporter. “If I hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have been on the phone right now.”
Tillemann says he consulted with medical professionals and law enforcement before filming the video last week in his brother’s backyard. (“This is dangerous — Do not attempt,” a disclaimer reads in the video.)
“I would say, without a doubt, it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” he said. “Nothing compares to this.”
Unusual political ads and videos aren’t new to Colorado — although Tillemann’s is probably the most painful a candidate in the state has endured in recent memory.
In April, Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a Democratic candidate for governor, got a tattoo in an effort to sway voters.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, when he was mayor of Denver, jumped out of an airplane in 2008 to try to persuade voters to back a statewide tax reform measure.
