Colorado Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia announced last month that he will step away from his post late next spring to take a higher-paying and more secure job as president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
Garcia’s pending departure raises anew two long-debated political questions: Does Colorado really need a lieutenant governor? And, if the office is retained, should it be reframed, or redesigned, with added responsibilities?
Former three-term Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm and former Republican Lt. Gov. Ted Strickland have favored eliminating the office to save money. The few public opinion polls taken on this issue over the years indicate about only a third of the public favoring its retention. Most Coloradans frankly don’t much know about the job, have never met a lieutenant governor, couldn’t name one, and assume it is some sort of state-level “vice-presidency” for ceremonial duties. (Try, yourself, to name several recent lieutenant governors, or match them to the governors in the table below.)
Former three-term Democratic Gov. Roy Romer told us recently that he would keep the lieutenant governorship pretty much as it is. He worries about efforts to “beef it up” with added responsibilities. “We don’t need a co-governorship or anything like that,” added Romer.
Most people who have worked in or around the governor’s office agree that the current arrangements are best: Let each new governor customize how he wishes to utilize his lieutenant governor.
Colorado’s lieutenant governor has only two constitutional duties. First, to act as governor when the governor is out of state or ill. The other is to succeed the governor if the governor dies, retires or is impeached. At least four lieutenant governors became governors because of this succession provision (in 1905, 1937, 1950 and 1973). A few former lieutenants ran for and won the governorship in their own right, such as Stephen McNichols (1957-1963).
Recent lieutenant governors, by statutory (legislative) provision, have chaired the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs, and task forces such as on early childhood education or the Colorado Space Coalition. They also have served, at the pleasure of their governors, in the Cabinet and taken on special policy assignments. Most have performed ceremonial and representational chores on behalf of the governors they have served.
A few governors and their lieutenants have had frosty or negative relationships.
As of 2001, party nominees for governor personally select their lieutenant governor running mate, and the two run as a team in the November general election. Nowadays, however, there is intense pressure on governors, and on would-be governors, to select a running mate who has a different gender, race or ethnicity, and represents a different geographic region of the state.
The lieutenant governorship may only be a heartbeat away from the governorship, but its $68,500-a-year salary is embarrassingly meager. (New legislation, Senate Bill 288, provides a salary increase for statewide elected officials, so that the lieutenant governor will earn $97,040 in 2019). Gov. Hickenlooper had to get legislative approval to combine Joe Garcia’s lieutenant governorship job with a job as executive director for the Department of Higher Education (an executive branch job) in order to make it affordable for Garcia to accept the lieutenant governorship. (The General Assembly gave this approval in 2011 per Hickenlooper’s request.) It was the first time that was done. It made, as Garcia has told us, for an extremely busy and demanding set of responsibilities.
The very fact that Garcia did a fine job in both positions and, in addition, served as a member of Hickenlooper’s inner circle of political counselors understandably raises questions about whether the job of lieutenant governor is really a full-time job.
Several states (including Utah and Arizona) don’t have the office of lieutenant governor, and seem to get along well without it. These states provide for succession by passing the gubernatorial reigns either to the state secretary of state or to a member of the leadership in the state legislature.
We are for keeping the office of lieutenant governor, and are pleased that its salary will be increased, but believe its pay should be even higher.
The best reason for keeping the office is that it provides for a political ally of the elected governor to succeed to the governorship in case a governor leaves office before the end of his term. In this case, the outgoing governor will likely be followed by a member of the same political party, someone who shares the same general positions on major political issues in the state.
If the outgoing governor is succeeded by the secretary of state or by the state Senate president, there is a risk that the new governor will belong to the other party and not support the outgoing governor’s major programs. As with the office of the U.S. vice presidency, the state lieutenant governorship provides for constitutional continuity
We oppose adding formal responsibilities to the office of the lieutenant governorship. We would let each governor decide best how to use their lieutenant governor. The Hickenlooper-Garcia model worked well, but the model should vary from governor to governor.
Adding formal duties to the office would limit the governor’s discretion to use the lieutenant governor’s specific talents or expertise. The next lieutenant governor may be, like Gov. Bill Ritter’s lieutenant governor, an expert on children’s issues, or on regulatory issues, or water or natural resources. The governor should have the ability to utilize such talents depending on the individual. Specifying responsibilities in advance would handicap governors both at the selection stage and in the operation of the office.
Imagine for a moment if, at the national level, there had been specified duties for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Even Richard Nixon knew he had made a mistake in selecting Agnew. Remember that Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t even talking to his vice president, John Garner, in the late 1930s. Vice presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney were, to be sure, influential in their respective presidential administrations, but decidedly less so near the end of their terms as the relationships with their presidents frayed.
Dwight Eisenhower was asked, in 1960, what major contribution his vice president, Richard Nixon, had made. Ike famously replied that he would have to think about it and get back to the reporter in a week or so.
Colorado’s lieutenant governorship, while not a well-defined job, has served Colorado reasonably well. Joe Garcia deserves our gratitude. But even if not ideal, this is yet another case of not needing to fix what isn’t broken.
Meanwhile, Hickenlooper will nominate a new lieutenant governor this spring, before the end of the 2016 General Assembly. Political pros say Hickenlooper is unlikely to choose one of the several plausible candidates for the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor (such as Ken Salazar, Michael Johnston or Cary Kennedy), as he probably would not want to pre-empt the regular Democratic Party selection processes.
But there are dozens of others ready and willing to accept the job despite its vague responsibilities and low pay.
Thomas E. Cronin is McHugh professor of American institutions and leadership at Colorado College. Robert D. Loevy is professor emeritus of political science at Colorado College.
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