It didn’t come as any real surprise that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper decided not to run for governor. It seemed like part of a trend: Both parties seem to have trouble getting candidates to seek higher office.
Think back to two years ago. Sen. Ben Campbell, elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1992 and a Republican in 1998, announced he would not seek re-election. There were two prominent GOP candidates who would have been hard for any Democrat to beat: Gov. Bill Owens, and Rep. Scott McInnis of Grand Junction. But neither wanted to run.
Eventually there arrived a Republican candidate, former Rep. Bob Schaffer from our 4th Congressional District, which covers northeastern Colorado. He could have had a lifetime seat in the House of Representatives, but he pledged to observe a three-term limit when he first ran and, unlike McInnis, he actually kept his promise. He also practiced some of the GOP’s “economy in government” talk, which meant he wasn’t real good at delivering pork to the home folks.
The couple of times I saw Schaffer on the stump that summer, he was articulate, knowledgeable and reasonably consistent. And he was a man of his word. The Republican honchos in our fair state must have been frightened by that, for they hastily recruited another candidate, Pete Coors, and many Schaffer supporters immediately jumped ship.
Coors had never run for elective office before, and it showed. Schaffer cleaned his clock in the debate I watched. Even so, Coors did win the primary, only to get defeated by Ken Salazar in November.
It appears that Colorado Republicans are divided into two camps. Call them the Purist Republicans, who thought Schaffer was a fine candidate, and the Pragmatic Republicans, who recruited Coors. This division seems to hold this year, with Marc Holtzman going after the Purist camp while Bob Beauprez seems favored by the Pragmatists.
Now this sort of strange scramble seems to be affecting Colorado Democrats. Hickenlooper was a strong candidate for governor, just as Owens or McInnis would have been a strong candidate for senator. It’s the first time in my memory that the mayor of Denver has enjoyed any discernible political support outside the city limits.
Denver, after all, is more liberal than the rest of the state, just as Colorado Springs is more conservative. That’s one reason that we don’t see a lot of statewide candidates for major offices from either of our two largest cities. Note that Owens calls Aurora home, Sen. Wayne Allard is from Loveland and Salazar emphasizes his roots in the San Luis Valley.
But Hickenlooper, perhaps because of his business background, could have convinced the rest of Colorado that he was not a gun-seizing socialist, which is how most Denver mayors are regarded out here in the boondocks.
His decision not to run leaves us with the schism in Colorado Democrats. I call it Labor Democrats vs. Green Democrats. It became apparent here a decade ago when there was a primary for a state House seat between Carl Miller of Leadville, a former union steward, and Jim Gelwicks of Gunnison. Miller talked about wages and health and education, and Gelwicks focused on environmental issues. Miller won, served through his four-term limit, and now sits on the state Public Utilities Commission.
Now look at the two announced Democratic candidates for governor. Former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter focuses on public health, education, incomes, the well-being of working families – traditional Labor Democrat issues. But that doesn’t excite many Green Democrats, which leaves an opening for state Rep. Gary Lindstrom of Summit County – and maybe a few others before the nomination process really gets rolling with precinct caucuses this spring.
With Hickenlooper out, there’s no rock star in the gubernatorial race. So we might as well prepare ourselves for some very public struggles between the two factions of both major parties. It could be quite a show.
Ed Quillen of Salida is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
