CASTLE ROCK, Colo. – A school board election campaign in Colorado’s Douglas County School District has taken a nasty turn.

Broadcast journalist-turned-school board candidate Ronda Scholting is facing stinging criticism for a campaign video that portrays her opponent – incumbent board member Meghann Silverthorn – as being critical of Douglas County voters.

The Colorado Observer reports that Scholting’s one-minute and thirty-two second video contains audio of Silverthorn calling district residents “just uninformed soccer moms who really don’t know the issues.”

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It’s a potentially damning sound byte that could cost Silverthorn the election.

There’s only one problem with it: It never happened.

A Colorado Observer editorial notes that Scholting “deleted nearly two minutes of (an old) interview to splice together the misleading (eight-second) sound byte she attributes to her opponent.”

The phony audio drew so much criticism from talk radio and various community members that Scholting has since removed the ad from its prominent position on her campaign’s Facebook page, the Observer reported yesterday.

Why would a simple school board race turn into a D.C.-style political campaign filled with dirty tricks?

Local talk-show host Mike Rosen offered this explanation to the Observer: “(Scholting’s) willful and wanton misrepresentation of the conversation in that video is just a sign of how desperate liberal Democrats and the teachers’ union are to win back control of the DougCo school board so they can bring back the union and kill the current board’s long-needed improvements.”

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He may be on to something.

Over the past year, the Douglas County school board has made a number of operational changes, including a salary plan that pays teachers based on their market value. For instance, a high school calculus teacher will earn more than an elementary school art teacher.

In the collectivist world of teacher unions, that’s a radical and unacceptable concept.

So was the board’s decision to no longer recognize the Douglas County Federation of Teachers as the bargaining agent for the district’s educators.

The union and their political lapdogs hated that change, and are eager to reverse it.

Thus, Scholting’s dirty tricks campaign.

For her part, Silverthorn is making the most of her opponent’s lapse in judgment: “This event has caused me to question (Scholting’s) integrity: If she is willing to go to those lengths to deceive our community, how can we trust her with our kids’ education?”