It appeared as if Michael Bennet had finally cracked.
How else can you explain the Denver Public Schools superintendent’s decision to shut down neighborhood schools just one month before a critical school board election? It’s political suicide to leave two of your biggest supporters on the board, president Theresa Peña and vice president Bruce Hoyt, twisting in the wind to face an angry electorate.
In politics, much like in comedy, timing is everything and his couldn’t have been worse.
Or at least that’s how it seemed on that Monday in early October when he announced the largest school closure plan in DPS history to a crowded room of parents and teachers. News of the closures spread quickly over websites and through text messages and phone calls. The town was buzzing. Eight schools closed. Three thousand students, and hundreds of teachers, affected.
Then, later that night, the Colorado Rockies played what many consider to be the greatest game in the history of Colorado baseball. They defeated the San Diego Padres in 13 long innings to win entry into the playoffs.
By Tuesday morning, the town was still buzzing. But this time it was about Rockies baseball.
And with ballots now in the hands of voters, that’s still the buzz.
The Rockies have become Michael Bennet’s “Limon tornado.”
That’s a term wags in this business often use to refer to an event that takes the pressure off a politician. It goes back to 1990, when Westword broke a story about the alleged marital infidelities of then-Gov. Roy Romer. The story accused Romer of having an affair with longtime aide B.J. Thornberry. Romer denied it.
Hours later, before the story could gain traction with any other media outlets, a tornado sliced through the town of Limon. The next morning Romer was there, sleeves rolled up, sifting through the rubble. Nary a word was ever said about the Westword story.
(Of course, he was busted some eight years later when a videotape of a six-minute liplock with said aide surfaced. But for nearly a decade his secret was hidden by the Limon tornado.)
The morning after Bennet’s announcement, the Rocky Mountain News ran a photograph of the leader of the teachers union checking the Rockies score on her BlackBerry during his presentation.
She’s fully engaged in this debate, of course, but clearly Rocktober has won over the hearts and minds of other Denverites. It quickly muscled the closures off the front pages and out of TV newscasts.
That might be a home run for Bennet, Peña and Hoyt at the polls, but ultimately Denver loses if the community is not engaged.
Bennet was advised by a citizens group to announce the closures in July, giving him the political cover he needed to avoid making a hard-to-swallow announcement so close to an election. But he worried, and rightly so, that even more students would flee the schools if an announcement was made before classes could begin.
Ultimately, he made the right call and the district put forward a solid plan that’s anything but business as usual.
Sure, Bennet may have become the Rockies’ biggest fan in recent weeks, but his plan will hold up to scrutiny when the joys of Rocktober fade. And if these daring attempts at reform are going to succeed, Denverites will need to rally around DPS with the same fervor.
After all, these changes will be around, and the impact felt, long after World Series fever subsides.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
