Your readers rightfully expect to see hear strong opinions from The Gazette’s editors, and a vigorous endorsement of Bob Beauprez’s candidacy would not have surprised many people. But while The Gazette’s editors are entitled to their opinions about the Republican primary candidates, they are not entitled to invent their own facts.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows my candidacy is as far from a one-issue campaign as you can get. I launched my campaign a year ago a few days after the incumbent governor refused to sign the order for the execution of convicted murderer Nathan Dunlap, who had exhausted all of his many appeals. My campaign has highlighted John Hickenlooper’s lack of leadership on a host of issues, especially his endorsement of a 1 billion dollar tax increase and the lack of a serious private sector job creation strategy for Colorado’s 168,000 unemployed – unemployment that is 50 percent greater than we had before the recession hit in 2008.

Regarding my position on immigration reform, if The Gazette’s editors were paying attention to the race, they would know – and maybe acknowledge – that in the dozens of speeches and appearances in the campaign over the past year I have seldom mentioned illegal immigration unless someone asked a question about it. That is because it is primarily a federal issue, one Congress must resolve, hopefully without too much further usurpation by an imperial president acting unconstitutionally to make laws, instead of enforcing them.

As far as I can tell, no Republican candidate in this race supports a general amnesty for 15 million illegals, and all of us support border security as a necessary first step toward genuine immigration reform.

Finally, I say this to the editors’ call for candidates Mike Kopp and Scott Gessler to quit the race and endorse Bob Beauprez to “solve Colorado’s Tancredo problem.” It is arrogant and hypocritical beyond description for the editor of a Republican-leaning newspaper to tell one over 900,000 registered Republican voters that their voices should be silenced so that the big boys can dictate the party’s nominee for governor.

The Gazette should go open the textbook for Politics 101 and find the chapter titled “Party Primaries.” There they will discover that Colorado Republican voters get to make that choice among the duly nominated candidates – not the governor of Texas, not the party’s deep pockets, not Karl Rove, and not newspaper editors.

If I win the June 24 primary, it will be because I have raised the right issues and persuaded Republican voters I will wage a winning campaign against an incompetent, ultraliberal incumbent who listens to Michael Bloomberg, Al Gore and Barack Obama more than he does to the people of Colorado.

Every poll shows I have more support among Independents than any other Republican candidate. Polls also show that 2014 is shaping up as a Republican year, a year in which Republicans can win statewide races in Colorado if we remain unified.

Hopefully, The Gazette’s editors will decide to play a positive role in that upcoming contest, not a poisonous one marked by lies, distortions and innuendos.

As for my campaign and my program for Colorado, I will trust the voters more than the whims and biases of newspaper editors.

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Tom Tancredo represented the Colorado’s Sixth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009 and is one of several Republican candidates running for governor.