Days before the June 30 primary, new developments emerged in a controversy involving a fake Reddit post and a fired campaign staffer in Boulder’s University of Colorado Board of Regents race.
Last week, Boulder City Councilmember Mark Wallach withdrew his endorsement of former state Rep. Edie Hooton and endorsed her opponent, attorney Kubs Lalchandani, instead.
Wallach said he withdrew his endorsement because of Hooton’s handling of the controversy, which began after Boulder Reporting Lab reported that her campaign manager, Anna Wert, posted on Reddit while posing as a CU parent. The post criticized Lalchandani’s legal work in Florida, questioned his ties to Boulder and alleged he had connections to the cryptocurrency industry before it was deleted within hours. Lalchandani has disputed those claims.
Wert, 24, has lost two campaign jobs since the post was published. District Attorney Michael Dougherty removed her as campaign manager for his attorney general campaign, saying the conduct “crosses a line” and amounted to an ethical violation by another campaign. Dougherty said nothing similar had occurred in his campaign and described Wert as intelligent and hardworking.
Hooton dismissed Wert from her regent campaign the following day.
Wallach said his concern was not the fake post itself, but Hooton’s decision to fire Wert and her explanation of what she knew before the post was published. Wallach said he does not believe Hooton’s account of what happened.
The central factual dispute is what Hooton knew before the post was published, and whether Wert acted on her own.
The day after the post surfaced, on June 17, Hooton told Boulder Reporting Lab she “knew nothing about” it. In a June 23 interview, she said Wert had discussed the idea with her beforehand but that she rejected it.
“I knew she wanted to do it, and I said absolutely not,” Hooton said. “We are not doing that.”
She later added: “I did not, and would never, authorize any post attacking a fellow Democrat.”
Several sources close to the campaign gave Boulder Reporting Lab a different account, saying Hooton approved the post before it was published. Hooton denies that.
Wert told Boulder Reporting Lab on June 19 that the post was not Hooton’s idea but did not say whether Hooton approved it before it was published. Boulder Reporting Lab also reviewed communications exchanged after the post became public, including messages in which Wert apologized to Hooton after she was identified as the post’s author. Those communications do not resolve what occurred before the post was published.
Wallach has hired Wert for previous city council campaigns and described her as “absolutely first rate.” Wallach said one reason he questioned Hooton’s account was that Wert had never posted anything for his campaigns without approval.
“It was a misjudgment, but I don’t think it was Anna’s misjudgment on her own,” Wallach said. He said he believes the idea that Wert acted alone “is just not so.” He added that he was looking for “a response that took responsibility.”
Asked about Wallach’s comments, Hooton said she did not approve the Reddit post before it was published.
In the final days before the primary, the controversy has shifted attention from the issues in the race to questions about campaign conduct and accountability.
Read: Meet the candidates for Boulder’s CU Board of Regents seat in the 2026 Democratic primary
After Wallach withdrew his endorsement, Hooton posted an apology on Facebook.
“It is with deep regret that I had to let my staffer go for an unauthorized post,” she wrote. “She is young and made a mistake, something we all have done in our youth, and she deserves grace. Regardless of the circumstances, I take full responsibility for the actions of my campaign. I have apologized to CU Regent candidate Kubs Lalchandani.”
In statements to Boulder Reporting Lab, Hooton reiterated that she took full responsibility. She said she regretted not making that clearer in earlier statements, in which she repeated criticisms of Lalchandani that also appeared in the Reddit post and described the controversy as a distraction from the issues in the race.
“I take responsibility, because it’s my campaign, and she was the only staffer I had,” Hooton said.
Lalchandani did not respond directly to a question about Hooton’s apology but said in a statement that “Anna Wert called and apologized and I readily accepted her apology. I also offered to help her put this episode behind her in any way I can.”
The District 2 CU regent seat represents a large swath of northwestern Colorado stretching to Steamboat Springs. Boulder has been a focus of the race because CU Boulder is in the district and all three candidates live in the city. Because the district overwhelmingly votes Democratic, the winner of the June 30 primary is likely to win the seat in November.
Even before the controversy, the race was expected to be competitive, and in a down-ballot contest, endorsements from prominent local elected officials and political leaders can carry added weight.
Wallach’s endorsement switch contrasted with Dougherty’s decision to continue supporting Hooton. Dougherty said he maintained his endorsement because he believed Hooton did not know about the post in advance and because she dismissed Wert after learning about it, which he said “reflected the seriousness of the matter.” Hooton also continues to hold endorsements from many local Democratic leaders, including state Sen. Judy Amabile and Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett.
Campaign spending has also accelerated ahead of the primary.
Hooton, who has contributed $40,000 of her own money to her campaign, recently spent about $16,000 on an ad emphasizing her gender and opposition to President Trump’s attacks on higher education.
Colorado Within Reach, an independent expenditure committee whose only reported donor is the Colorado Value Project, a nonprofit described as a dark money group because it does not publicly disclose its donors, has spent roughly $65,000 on mailers supporting Hooton and about $6,000 on attack ads opposing Lalchandani, according to campaign finance filings. The group was formed May 13 and has spent only on the regents race.
The Colorado Value Project and Colorado Within Reach share the same registered agent, Ashley Stevens, who was mentioned in a 2017 Open Secrets article about nonprofit political spending in Colorado. Campaign finance records show Stevens is also the registered agent for 11 independent expenditure committees and more than a dozen nonprofit organizations.
Hooton said she doesn’t know who is behind the group.
Earlier this month, Lalchandani spent $25,000 on digital advertising with Dialogues Digital, a firm that has also worked on Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s attorney general campaign.
And the third candidate, geospatial data scientist Murray Smith, has invested more than $111,000 of his own money into the race and recently spent nearly $50,000 on campaign mailers. He also spent $30,000 gathering signatures to secure a place on the ballot earlier in the race. Hooton and Lalchandani qualified through the Democratic Party’s assembly process.
