Cary Kennedy is tempted to bust a move for governor.
But the state treasurer is no fool. She’s too disciplined a Democrat to step out of line for a nomination that seems to have been handed automatically last week from Gov. Bill Ritter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to Mayor John Hickenlooper. And she’s too smart and strong to whine about being slighted.
Whether Kennedy steps forward, it should be noted that Democratic bosses have passed over one of the party’s best and brightest. Let it also be said, for the record, that she happens to be female.
“There’s a pecking order in Colorado politics, and the people in that pecking order are more comfortable supporting a woman for a down-ticket slot than for governor,” says Gail Schoettler, the former treasurer and lieutenant governor who snagged the 1998 Democratic nomination, then lost by a hair to Republican Bill Owens.
Schoettler isn’t the only one who has noticed the shortlist of potential candidates overlooks both of the women in statewide office.
Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien stood dutifully and silently by Ritter’s side Wednesday when he announced he was quitting his re-election bid for unspecified family reasons. It’s fair enough that she doesn’t aim to replace him.
But Kennedy, like Hickenlooper, has been eyeing a run for governor.
After working as a policy whiz and then winning office in 2006, she has steered Colorado’s treasury through the steepest economic downturn since the Depression. Under her watch, the state made positive interest earnings last year while most private investments plummeted. The worst she can be accused of is investing our tax dollars too conservatively.
I don’t think that by virtue of her three years as treasurer, she should skip to the front of the line.
Still, she deserves to be in the mix.
But that’s not how things work in Colorado, where the Democratic Party is led in name only by chairwoman Pat Waak. In the 40 hours it took for Ritter to quit, Salazar to pass and Hickenlooper presumably to lock up the nomination, a minion of 17th Street male power brokers — some of whom aren’t even members of the party — decided who’s a sure-bet, whose time it is and whose it isn’t. The groupthink echoed by pundits is that Salazar came first, then Hick, then Ed Perlmutter, Andrew Romanoff, et al., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Also weighing in on Friday was President Barack Obama, who gave a telephonic knuckle- bump to Denver’s mayor, yet has struggled to remember the name of the city’s seven-term congresswoman, Diana DeGette.
Seething, national women’s groups are pressing Kennedy to run. Schoettler, former first lady Dottie Lamm and other Democratic womenfolk are saying to heck with the pecking order. Meantime, Kennedy, the mother of tweens, is weighing her options.
“I believe I’m qualified to get into the race. But at this stage, I’m waiting to see what other folks are doing. Right now, I’m focused on serving as state treasurer,” she says. “There’s something to be said about having patience, both in terms of family and in terms of your career.”
It’s tough to make a case for a would-be candidate who isn’t making the case for herself.
And that’s too bad because it means for now, the statehouse dome is a ceiling still made of glass.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
