Americans always have been ambivalent about the rich and generally either rueful for or disgusted with the poor.
But we’re absolute suckers for the against-all-odds, poor-kid-makes-good story.
That’s especially true in politics, where the great personal story is a hoary tradition going back at least to Abe Lincoln and appearing most recently in Ken Salazar’s Senate campaign last year.
His story of growing up in the San Luis Valley without electricity or indoor plumbing was a staple of his stump speeches, interviews and TV ads.
Now, as the 2006 governor’s race gets rolling, the competition for the most heartwarming story of personal struggle already has begun, and former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter’s is veritable Hollywood material.
Ritter was the sixth of 12 kids reared on an old-fashioned family farm east of Aurora. They raised cows, pigs, chickens and a couple of horses, and his father moonlighted doing construction work to keep the bills paid.
He said he started working when he was 5, doing the “chicken chores,” which any farm kid will tell you are the absolute worst. As he grew older, he helped farm land they leased in the area, and “I hand-milked cows before dawn every morning until I was 17 years old.”
When he was 13, his father took off.
In addition to working two jobs, Ritter’s father “also drank,” Ritter said, which contributed to the demise of the marriage. His mother was left alone to handle the farm and the kids.
To help pay the bills, Ritter took a job at 14, working construction full time in the summers and part time during the school year.
In the ninth grade, he entered a Catholic seminary to study for the priesthood, but after two years he transferred to high school in Aurora. He continued to work in construction, joining the union as a pipe-layer when he was 18.
When he graduated from high school, he was awarded a half-scholarship to Notre Dame and seriously considered going, “but there were still six of us at home and my mother said that the other half of the cost of Notre Dame was more than her annual income.” So he enrolled at Colorado State University, living in a construction trailer in Wyoming and working his way through college and law school.
Even after he was married and working in the DA’s office, he managed to add a little adversity to an otherwise comfortable existence.
In 1987, he, his wife and their 18-month-old son moved to Zambia, where they spent three years working in a nutrition program. Their second child was born in a rural health center there.
“It was a fantastic experience,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many people in the 15 years since we’ve been back from Africa have said to us, ‘I wish I would have done that.”‘
He thought about that when he was mulling the decision about running for governor.
“I finally decided I would go for it because then I won’t have to tell my grandkids, ‘I wish I would have run for governor.”‘
While a great personal story often produces positive media coverage, CSU political science professor John Straayer said getting elected “takes more than that.”
Party identification, professional reputation and stands on the issues are far more influential.
Ritter’s reputation as DA or his position as an anti-choice Democrat will be key factors for most voters, he said.
But regardless of what it means to voters, Ritter said his personal history is the reason he’s running.
It’s why he’s willing to interrupt a career in private practice and gamble on a long shot.
“I learned a lot of important lessons through all of that in my childhood. We started out with nothing, really,” he said.
“One thing you know from that experience is that going back to nothing isn’t all that bad.”
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
