Gov. Bill Ritter chatted about politics, energy and immigration today during his first appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Ritter appeared with fellow Democrat Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming to talk about politics in the West on the first show hosted by Tom Brokaw — who has been named interim moderator — since the death of Tim Russert earlier this month.
The show was broadcast from Jackson Hole, Wyo., site of the Western Governors’ Association. A taped segment with Brokaw interviewing Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California aired later in the broadcast.
Brokaw asked Ritter and Freudenthal whether a Democrat like Barack Obama could win their states. Brokaw pointed to polling numbers showing that in Colorado, Obama was 5 points ahead of Republican John McCain.
“I think that Sen. Obama has great opportunity to win in Colorado,” Ritter said. “The people of Colorado are independent thinkers, they’re future-looking and they’re also optimistic.
“And I think he’s captured that language in his campaign. The things that he’s talked about are very much things that resonate with the people of the West and certainly the people in Colorado.”
Ritter also discounted notions that Obama wouldn’t do well with Hispanics.
“Obama wins, I think, among Hispanics hands down,” the governor said, “and he does that because he has a language about education that really is, again, it’s about optimism but it’s also about reforming the system, and I think Hispanic voters pay attention to that.”
Brokaw asked about energy production. Would Ritter support a nuclear power plant in Colorado?
“It’s going to be part of our future as a country,” Ritter said without answering the question directly. “It (nuclear energy) already provides about 20 percent of the energy to this country. But I think the thing that we (governors) both are saying is we have to have a national energy policy, and it has to be a combination of how we produce traditional resources and how we do it in a clean way.”
When the country has a sensible energy policy, it could go to “the nuclear place,” Ritter said.
The conversation turned to immigration.
“What would happen in Colorado if all the illegal immigrants in the state, the so-called undocumented workers, were forced to go back to Mexico?” Brokaw asked Ritter.
“We rely on foreign-born workers in the construction industry, the service industries and the agricultural industry,” Ritter said, “and it really does hamper our ability to get foreign-born workers in if we don’t have really a sensible immigration policy, which I think the country currently lacks.”
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
