Junction Daily Blog: Western Colorado Talk and Opinion

Endorsements Explained

October 4, 2006

In case any of you think that the Daily Sentinel Editorial Board took a sudden, unexplained turn to the left this year with its legislative endorsements, you only needed to be at the League of Women Voters candidate forum last night to understand its picks.

I'm not going to mention any names, but there were six men in the front of the room last night. One of them came across as an irritating, petulant blowhard. Another came across as an intellectual lightweight whose most complicated utterings about the legislative process were mere slogans. The most creativity exhibited by anyone last night was those two explaining their qualifications; how a lifetime of feeding at the public trough could be equated to "less-government" conservatism. The remaining four were a group of bright, knowledgeable people, outside-the-box thinkers; people you wouldn't mind sending to the General Assembly whether you agree with their views or not. Of those four who impressed me last night, three of them were the three Sentinel picks.

The League format doesn't lend itself to discovering differences between the candidates. All six candidates answer the same questions. There's a lot of "me too" in that format. It would be better for me, at least, if they asked the same question to a pair of candidates running for the same office, so I could see the contrasts.

Not that the League format is bad. Asking a group of people to solve a problem is a pretty accurate simulation of what good legislators do. It was interesting to watch each of the good ones feed off the ideas of the others. The best potential legislators in the group last night were the ones who could accept the positive aspects of each others' positions and use their own ideas to shore up each others' shortcomings. That's what you do in a group problem-solving situation, and that's how I want my elected representatives to act in Denver.

I did walk away shaking my head, however. I watched a couple of so-called conservatives tell me my taxes are too high, but then proceed to tell me out of the other sides of their mouths that they want to hire hundreds of new gas well inspectors, build new schools, new colleges, new roads, new dams, new prisons, and damned near everything else. I'm not one of those voters who thinks you can get something for nothing. You want to do something new? Tell me what good it does me and what sacrifices I'll have to make to get it and I'll make up my mind from there.

The saddest thing about the forum was looking around the room and realizing that most of the people in attendance were either campaign shills, forum sponsors, or members of the candidates' families. I wonder how many voters will walk into a voting booth this year armed with nothing but so-called "knowledge" from negative campaign ads. Judging by last night's turnout, I'd guess most of them.

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I guess the Superintendent of Schools quit listening to his lawyers and actually read the Colorado Statutes for himself, like you had the opportunity to do yesterday if you followed the link I gave you.

Title 22, Article 63 of the Colorado Revised Statutes isn't just there to protect the good teachers, it also provides a process for getting rid of the bad ones. At no time should that law ever be used as an excuse to retain problem teachers. I don't know what the Superintendent was thinking before he changed his mind, but I'm glad he changed it.

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OK, let me get this right. Did the City just go to voters and ask for permission to go into debt to build the Highway from WalMart to WalMart, and now the City plans to ask the voters to raise their own taxes to pay off the debt?

I'll certainly be watching that one closely between now and April, particularly how it's sold to the voters. Is that going to be what Emily Litella might have called a "Lappi dance?"

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