She is one of the “Fab Five” who stunned the country in 1998 by making Arizona the first in the nation to elect women to all five top state offices. And she’s one of only eight female governors in the U.S.
So naturally, when Janet Napolitano came through town on a fundraising trip Wednesday, a lot of Colorado women with political ambitions were eager to learn her secrets for success.
The most important one, she said: “You can’t win if you don’t run.”
For the record, Joan Fitz-Gerald was not in the room.
But businesswoman Judi Wagner, former Lt. Gov. Gail Schoettler and many others who have urged the Senate president to run for the Democratic nomination for governor were.
Napolitano’s message was not directed at them as much as at those uninitiated in the world of the partisan slugfest. Her lesson was one of brutal political realism: “It’s not glamorous, let me tell you.”
When she was elected attorney general in 1998, she said she started with one campaign worker. She rented a $125-a-month room “in a tenement with razor wire on the roof.
“There was him, me, a folding table, two chairs and two phones,” she said.
They spent six or seven hours a day there calling supporters and raising money.
Politics is not for sissies.
Four years later, she was back on the phones, this time running for governor.
When she won, the political pundits didn’t know what was more surprising – that Arizona voters were the first in the nation to elect two successive female governors or that they’d picked a Democrat.
So what’s her real secret – besides great stamina and a willingness to spend ridiculous hours on the phone?
It’s obvious: Napolitano has mastered the art of the message.
For example, she said people overwhelmingly support strong protections for the environment, but “I hardly ever use the word ‘environmentalist’ because in the newspapers, it’s always preceded by the word ‘radical.”‘
Instead, she talks about good stewardship of the land for future generations.
“It’s a concept people get,” she said, especially in Arizona, where water is like gold and where the Census Bureau estimates that by 2030 the population will hit 12 million, making it the 10th- most populous state in the country.
Environmentalism may be a dirty word, she said, but protecting the quality of life is sacred.
Napolitano also has seized national attention recently by declaring a state of emergency in counties along the Mexican border, thereby freeing $1.5 million in disaster funds to help address the runaway problems of illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
As a former U.S. attorney, Napolitano said, “I hate to criticize the federal government, but I’m fed up to here with the failure to secure our borders.”
The border patrol is woefully understaffed and underfunded, she said. It’s important to “lay this problem right at the administration’s doorstep.”
And one message that she never fails to deliver is that she’s a fiscal conservative.
In her first year in the governor’s office, she said, she balanced a state budget that was $1 billion in the red without cutting funds for K-12 or higher education.
In fact, she said, she came up with more money for state universities.
For political hopefuls in Colorado, a state facing the prospect of abandoning the whole concept of public universities, Napolitano wasn’t just a role model, she was a diva.
By the time the governor was finished, political neophytes Rebecca McClellan, who’s running for the Centennial City Council, and Jill Conrad, a candidate for the Denver School Board, were working the room like seasoned pros.
Petitions were being circulated. Checks were being written. Dreams were being born.
Nobody mentioned that Friday is the 85th anniversary of women’s suffrage in America. It didn’t matter. This was the perfect way to celebrate.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
