Following his recent — and surprising — announcement that he , I paid a visit to Ken Salazar last week. My thought was that the former secretary of the Interior, U.S. senator and Colorado attorney general, a public servant with more than a generation of public policy and political experience, was closing this chapter in his life and moving on.
After all, he and his wife, Hope, are helping care for a granddaughter with severe autism. Hope struggles with rheumatoid arthritis and other medical problems. Salazar’s 87-year-old father-in-law lives with the family and needs care.
Further, the political environment has morphed in recent years into something vastly unlike the one Salazar served in all those years.
I departed the hour-long interview unconvinced that Ken Salazar is done. He said from the outset he needed to honor his familial obligations first, but that doing so might only preclude him from active politics “for a couple of years.” He ended our time together by noting that he was only 62, and, with a smile, suggested I check back with him on his plans in a year.
I am not trying to make too much out of this. But I find it interesting, considering the observations Salazar made during our hour-long interview. In sum: Salazar believes what is desperately needed in our politics is a return to the kind of statesmanship he practiced in his career, and he provided examples that put him in the role of working hand-in-hand with powerful Republicans.
I got to know about Salazar in a more involved way during the run-up to Denver’s hosting of the Democratic National Convention in 2008. In his signature white cowboy hat, Salazar served as a useful symbol for the Democrats’ argument that Western Democrats differed from Rust Belt union types and coastal liberals.
A member of the Gang of 14 in 2005, Salazar was one of the seven Democrats who joined with seven Republicans to stop — interestingly enough — both a Democratic filibuster and a Republican nuclear option effort over Bush administration judicial nominees.
Western public servants like Salazar, the Democratic script-writers argued, thought differently about the world. The legacy of the frontier was one of cooperation in the face of extreme challenges, a suiting backdrop for Salazar, who grew up in a ranching family in the San Luis Valley, and who extolled the virtues of bipartisanship.
The political messaging also fit with that of the party’s nominee, Barack Obama: that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as red states and blue states, but as the United States.
How times have changed. Last week we saw definitively that Democrats and Republicans have decided to engage in all-out partisan war.
I visited Salazar the day before Democrats refused to give Neil Gorsuch an up-or-down vote, and Republicans scrapped the filibuster for all future Supreme Court confirmation votes.
Salazar came in to his office from a lunchtime meeting wearing a black hat, as if in mourning. He expressed deep disappointment and dismay at the present state of our politics.
Salazar talked about important bills Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were able to pass during his first few years in the chamber, such as the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. He noted that the effort led him to meet with President George W. Bush many times as he and fellow Democrats worked with Republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham to make it so.
“Through 2008, my sense is that we were still producing some significant things,” Salazar said. “There were some disagreements on issues like Iraq and other kinds of issues that would come up, but in reality it was still a very functional place.”
Another of the exchanges is even more telling. Salazar talked about a New York Times column he had read while he served as Colorado’s attorney general written by former President Gerald Ford. The op-ed called for a more inclusive America. At the time, Salazar had joined other attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in support of the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy. Salazar got his law degree at the university. Ford, of course, was also an alum.
Instead of acting unilaterally, the Democratic AG called the Republican president and asked him to join the cause.
“He said, ‘Absolutely. I believe in that cause,’ ” Salazar said.
Salazar said Ford’s op-ed was one of the seminal pieces of his own political history. He and the other attorneys general used it in their efforts “as evidence that this is not a Democrat or a Republican issue. It ought to be about everybody coming together to make sure we look around the board room, or we look around the cabinet room, and we see that we’re inclusive.”
The chairman of Hillary Clinton’s transition team then noted that, had the electoral tally turned out differently, we would see a cabinet reflective of America’s diversity.
Salazar’s message is that what could have been remains the Democrats’ strength in trying to climb back into power.
Pretty words, or a future platform? We’ll have to keep watching.
Email editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett at cplunkett@denverpost.com.
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