If the state fair were giving out awards in the “What was he thinking?” category, former Republican state Rep. Jim Snook would take this year’s prize.
Snook was asked to resign his at-large seat on the Colorado State Fair board of commissioners right in the middle of the biggest event of the year for pulling a sophomoric stunt.
Snook over-ate while participating in a food tasting contest at the fair, which in and of itself isn’t a big deal. But Snook decided to cap his 15 minutes of indigestion by asking a cameraman from a local TV station who was filming the contest to point the camera in his direction as he got sick in a trash can. The footage never aired.
Witnesses were duly grossed out, as were other board members when they learned of the stunt. (Witnesses reported that Snook made himself sick by sticking a plastic utensil down his throat.)
One official, who declined to be named, said Snook was “trying to be funny.” “We’re supposed to be making our food look good, not this,” said the official.
Snook agreed it was “bad judgment.”
“I was literally sick, but I shouldn’t have done it in front of the camera,” said Snook. “It wasn’t anything that most people resign for, like something fraudulent or immoral. It was a joke that went bad.”
Officials at the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the fair, weren’t laughing. They confirmed that Snook resigned his seat.
Coloradans keep political pace
When it comes to presidential campaign targeting, Colorado will be in the “major leagues” in the 2008 election, says political consultant Rick Ridder, president and co-founder of Denver-based RBI Strategy & Research. That’s in contrast to recent election cycles when Colorado was “treated like a minor league team.”
Ridder bases his prediction on a recent RBI survey of 500 likely presidential voters showing name identification among front-running candidates for both parties “surprisingly high in Colorado.”
Hillary Clinton is known by 95 percent of Colorado voters, Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani by 89 percent apiece, and Mitt Romney is at the bottom with a respectable 67 percent name recognition. Name I.D. does not equate to popularity, however. Giuliani narrowly leads Clinton and Obama in head-to-head matchups, the RBI poll shows.
The survey doesn’t say this, but having the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August is a likely factor in Coloradans’ higher political astuteness this far ahead of the elections.
The poll also shows Gov. Bill Ritter remarkably popular with voters eight months into his first term, and not just among Democrats in his own party. The survey shows 70 percent of unaffiliated voters approve of Ritter, as do 52 percent of Republicans.
House vacancies likely
House Democrats could have two seats to fill by vacancy committees before the year is out. Rep. Mike Cerbo of Denver and Rep. Dorothy Butcher of Pueblo appear on the brink of taking other jobs. Both appear to be in relatively safe Democratic districts.
At least three candidates have been mentioned for Butcher’s seat and one for Cerbo’s.
Cerbo and Butcher also are both in leadership positions that might have to be filled before the next session. Cerbo is chairman of the House Democratic caucus and Butcher is House majority whip.
Butcher is in line to fill a vacancy on Pueblo’s county commission. The vacancy committee meets Sept. 27 to appoint the replacement. Cerbo is in line to become president of the AFL-CIO.
Julia C. Martinez () is a member of the Denver Post editorial board.
