Granted, Colorado’s divorce rate is somewhat higher than the national average, but is that a sufficient cause to subject us to a “We must protect the sanctity of marriage” campaign this year?
Like it or not, we’re likely to get one. Last week, the Colorado Coalition for Marriage appeared, and it plans to support an amendment to our state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Since state law already does that, it’s hard to see how a constitutional provision would make any difference.
That, however, is not the point. Nor are they really interested in protecting us from whatever might happen if a married gay couple moved in across the street. The point is that the right-thinkers want their Republican puppets to regain control of our General Assembly. They need to get their people to the polls. And there’s nothing like a “protect marriage” measure on the ballot to summon the faithful to the ballot box.
They’re going to need all the turnout they can get if Marc Holtzman wins the Republican nomination for governor. All this time, I had thought he was a conservative, but now it turns out he’s a revolutionary. That’s what his campaign manager, Dick Leggitt, said last week. “We’re in the process of starting a revolution, and we understand that some people are going to get off the train as it goes down the tracks.”
It would be revolutionary if the state government started supporting passenger rail transportation in Colorado, but Leggitt was speaking metaphorically.
Leggitt’s comments came after Holtzman tore into Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who is not a candidate for governor, but might be. In military terms, Holtzman made a pre-emptive strike at Hickenlooper. Asked on a radio call-in show whether he’d jump out of an airplane during his campaign, as Hickenlooper did in a commercial supporting Referendum C last year, Holtzman said, “If elected governor, I would be a workhorse, not a show horse.”
That’s an old line that didn’t work in 1978, the first time I heard it. Republican Ted Strickland was running against incumbent Democrat Dick Lamm for governor, and that fall we were treated to televised pictures of horses and the announcement that “Colorado needs a workhorse, not a show horse.” Lamm easily won re-election.
Politicians ought to be careful when using equine imagery, because there are many of us who, when seeing a candidate and a horse, immediately think of one end of a horse, and it’s not the head. Besides, the slogan makes no sense now when workhorses are show horses. Those Clydesdales pulling a beer wagon are for show, not for supplying the local tavern.
Indeed, it’s been 30 years since I’ve seen work horses actually working. Some ranchers around Kremmling did their winter feeding with teams hitched to big sleds. It seemed archaic even then, but I did inquire. The rancher told me, “The horses start every morning, which you can’t say for a tractor when it’s 40 below. And with a tractor, you’ve got to have two guys out there, one to drive it and the other to stand on the sled and toss hay to the cows. With horses, one guy can stand in the sled and do it all.”
I suspect, though, that we will never see Holtzman harnessed to a hay sleigh in yard-deep snow on a gelid morning, no matter how much of a workhorse he promises to be. Holtzman’s horse comments were part of other criticisms of Hickenlooper, whom he accused of promoting an “overly secularist agenda.” The last time I checked, the mayoralty of Denver was a secular office. A bishop is supposed to have a religious agenda, but not a mayor.
Then Holtzman went on to describe Denver as “that rogue city,” which inspired former Denver City Councilman Ed Thomas to quit the campaign. “I spent nine years of my professional life developing parts of what you describe as a ‘rogue city,”‘ Thomas wrote in a letter to Holtzman. “The gratuitous insults directed at John Hickenlooper and his administration were unfortunate and unnecessary.”
No apology was forthcoming. “Marc calls them as he sees them,” campaign manager Leggitt said. I’m all for candor. I just wonder what Holtzman sees. Maybe he’s wearing blinders, like many workhorses in harness.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
