An insidious strain of behavior seems to be running through Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and it isn’t a physical disease.

Even beyond their failed public policies that have left us with rising violent crime, rampant homelessness, soaring inflation and fentanyl pouring across an open border, this strain undermines our democratic process through highly questionable ethical behavior in their respective public offices.

Contrary to decades of professional and non-partisan stewardship by both parties, Democratic incumbent Jena Griswold is blindly partisan and she uses the office of secretary of state to feed her insatiable ambition.

Her incompetence knows no bounds. For the second consecutive election cycle, Griswold sent a voter registration form to 30,000 non-citizens who are not eligible to vote. She has had massive turnover in her senior staff and imposed non-disclosure agreements on these departing employees to conceal her incompetent leadership from the public.

Griswold constantly extols the evils of “dark money” but she brags about being the national chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) which is a blatantly partisan organization that raises and spends “dark money” supposedly outside the control of campaigns and political parties. As the chair of DASS who is running for reelection, this is a clear conflict of interest, not to mention breathtakingly hypocritical.

Defend Democracy is a far-left liberal group that recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a disgustingly false attack on Griswold’s Republican opponent, former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson, that claimed she was a stolen election conspiracist. Political Specialist Shaun Boyd of CBS4 called the ad a “complete distortion” and “shameless smear tactic” that was “blatantly dishonest” in her “Reality Check” of the truthfulness of the ad.

Defend Democracy and other shadowy groups such as End Citizens United benefit from the “dark money” the Griswold-led DASS raises. Shifting money around between these “dark money” groups is routine especially when they want to obfuscate the real source of funding.

Griswold should never have sought to be chair of DASS during her reelection campaign when that group could potentially support her campaign with the “dark money” she pretends to oppose.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Phil Weiser was nailed in a powerful video released by CBS4 showing him being wined and dined by the very corporations he and other attorneys general across the country are investigating or even suing.

Weiser actually chairs the Attorney General Alliance, a bipartisan group which sells access to corporations for these elected officials at a “tropical oceanfront paradise” in Maui, Hawaii.

Amazingly, the always media-hungry Weiser refused to answer questions about his lavish confab with corporate lobbyists who might be under investigation or sued by him and other attorneys general. If the Maui conference is such a legitimate public service, why wouldn’t Weiser want to share all the important insights he gained from hanging out with corporate lobbyists?

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, the self-proclaimed crusader against greedy corporate interests, appears to be engaging in the same hypocrisy as his fellow Democrats Griswold and Weiser.

Anti-corporation Bennet became a wealthy man working for one of Colorado’s most respected corporations, which has made him one of the richest members of the Senate. He self-righteously claims he does not accept corporate contributions to his campaign but he cheerfully deposits checks from political committees that do accept corporate contributions.

In an attempt to augment his anti-corporation credentials in the middle of a heated reelection campaign, Bennet’s first ad in July claimed he was fighting to ban members of Congress from making personal stock trades.

Bennet’s passion was so intense that he had not bothered to cosponsor the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, which was introduced in January, until two weeks after his ad started running. Bennet’s extensive investments are not in a “qualified blind trust” that the Act would require. If this act is so necessary to rein in congressional abuse, why hasn’t Bennet already imposed that standard on himself?

An oft-cited quotation is, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Colorado Democrats have a stranglehold on state government controlling every statewide office along with majorities in the state legislature.

The behavior of Griswold, Weiser and Bennet is a syndrome of a party that believes its electoral control is permanent and will not ever be seriously challenged.  It is time to restore some political balance in November or it will continue to fester.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.