“Hey, in this year I’m telling you anything is possible. Anything… And I have a hell of a lot of better chance of winning in a three-way race than a Republican — at least those two Republicans do in a two-way race. I don’t know anybody — do you know anybody, really, who knows anything about politics who actually thinks that either one of those two guys could win a general election? I just can’t imagine. I know I’ve said anything is possible, but that, I don’t think that’s one of those things.”

On the GOP candidates Dan Maes and Scott McInnis:

TT: I mean when you consider the amount of money that Dan Maes would have to raise from no sources — who’s going to give him money? When you consider the problems poor Scott has had, is having, that will be constantly made the front-page news for the entire campaign, if not by The (Denver) Post then by his opponent, Mr. Hickenlooper, I just don’t know how you could put this thing together. So I was hoping against hope, to tell you the truth, that somebody would take the offer [to step down] and that the Republican Party could start the process right now, really, looking for somebody to replace them the day after the primary.

On the GOP Platform for Prosperity:

CS: The Platform for Prosperity was part of the reason that you wound up supporting Scott McInnis after Josh Penry dropped out of the race?


TT: Josh and I both wrote it and took it to (McInnis) and yes, that is the reason why we both ended up supporting him.

CS: Will that be your platform for your run?


TT: You bet. Well, certainly a big part of it, you bet.

CS: So we might have the odd circumstance of two candidates running on the same platform?


TT: Right, it’s possible (laughs), with one being able to win and one not (laughs).

On the American Constitution Party platform:

CS: There are some things in the American Constitution Party platform that have drawn some attention lately. Are you entirely on board with the ACP?


TT: We all know that party platforms are pretty much wish lists. And in the perfect world sometimes these things — well, I shouldn’t say that. Yeah, I have no qualms about running as a Constitution Party nominee and their platform is, for the most part, I think, certainly acceptable to me.

Former Colorado Independent reporter Ernest Luning conducted the interview for the Statesman and, unsurprisingly, it’s excellent well-informed work.

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State Latino leaders endorse Gov. Bill Ritter (photo: Joe Boven)

Ritter emphasized that he would continue to work toward establishing greater equity in the Colorado education system in order to provide greater access for Latino students. The move, he said, was part of drive to create a better more highly skilled workforce across the state. He also underlined the benefits brought by last year’s Health Care Affordability Act, which he said added 100,000 more people to the ranks of the insured.

“Latinos and Latinas are disproportionately uninsured” in Colorado, he said. So although the act is designed to lift up all of the citizens of the state, “there is disproportionate benefit oftentimes for communities of color.”

State Sen. Able Tapia of Pueblo acknowledged that he had been concerned with Ritter’s votes against union interests and the appointment of Michael Bennet to Ken Salazar’s Senate seat. That was a lost opportunity for the Latino community here, he said. But Tapia told The Colorado Independent that he sat down with Ritter and discussed his concerns and he came away satisfied.

Tapia said Ritter told him that the largely unreported reasoning behind the choice of Bennet, for example, was purely practical.

“He said that looking at the new Obama administration and its focus on education, the governor saw Michael Bennet as the best fit to help bring federal education dollars to the state and to work well generally with the new administration.”

Tapia said federal stimulus dollars have lifted the economy of Pueblo and commended the governor for helping pass state legislation that will allow high school students to earn credits toward college. He said that it’s a valuable step to bring in additional job training and raise earning potential. Tapia also praised Ritter for the work he’s done on the state budget, for “cutting into the bone” but doing so fairly.

Joe Salazar, founding member of the Colorado Latino Forum, which was organized to help place more Latinos in government as a response to Ritter’s appointments, said he believed Ritter “the right governor for the state of Colorado, not just Latinos.

“I think that the alternative is not right for Colorado,” he said.

Former state Sen. Polly Baca said she was looking for Ritter to veto anti-Latino bills such as the one that would put in place the employee verification system that Josh Penry, the Colorado Senate minority leader and former gubernatorial candidate, called for in a press conference held Monday. Baca said that she could only support such legislation if it were part of a larger immigration reform package.

“I want to see something that provides citizenship to those people who are here now,” she said.

Baca and Salazar would like to see elected officials support instead legislation that discourages racial discrimination. They pointed to coming legislation referred to as “Informed Consent.” The bill would mandate that police officers get written consent before performing body searches.

Ritter told The Colorado Independent that he couldn’t comment on the likelihood of his signing such a bill before he had the chance to review it.

All of Latino leaders agreed that choosing between Ritter and GOP rival Scott McInnis was easy. They shook their heads at the way McInnis seemed to embrace controversial anti-illegal immigrant firebrand and former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo in designing the “Platform for Prosperity” on which McInnis was now running.

“The Republican Party isn’t reaching out to the Latino community… They couldn’t care less about the Latino community,” Salazar said.

Baca said that Ritter would do well to continue to maintain open channels with the Latino community and to do that in part by attending Latino events where he could make further connections and pick up on Latino concerns.

“We are all here together today because we share one common vision,” Ritter said. “It isn’t about race, it isn’t about ethnicity. It is about people and it is about the promise of this state.”

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WSJ readers looking for substance in the Platform were also discouraged.

“Color me less than impressed,” writes someone named Colin, reporting at his “To Get Rich Is Glorious” blog. (The name of the blog is a quote from postmodern Chinese Communist Party leader and free market enthusiast Deng Xiaoping.) Colin criticizes the Platform as a sad mixture of not-very-conservative platitudes, “sops to various party factions” and borrowed thinking– some of it borrowed from pro-government Democrats!

Here’s how the WSJ summarized the Platform:

Key Points from the Colorado GOP’s ‘Platform for Prosperity’

* Oppose efforts to increase taxes and fees unless they’re put to a popular vote

* Restore a cap on state spending

* Invest in roads, bridges, higher education and workforce training

* Support a law to make health insurance portable from job to job

* Allow patients to purchase health insurance across state lines

* Promote responsible development of Colorado’s energy resources

* Expand charter schools

* Require employers to verify that their workers are in the U.S. legally

* Prohibit state grants for women’s health care to any organization that also provides abortions

* Oppose future stimulus bills

Here are some choice bits from sharp analyst Colin:

Of the ten items outlined, two of them — the first and last — aren’t even plans for action but rather statements of what the party will not do. Are they really so bereft of ideas that they must define themselves by what they are opposed to than what ideas they support?

What on earth does the third point have to do with limited government or conservative values? And have the Republicans really sunk to co-opting Democratic rhetoric about government spending being “investments”? Truly pathetic.

The fourth point shows a real lack of ambition. Serious health reform would not attempt to make employer-provided health care portable, but rather would seek to sever the connection between employment and health care. Introducing portability is simply another burden for business and helps to calcify the current system.

Where is the truly bold thinking? Solutions meant to address the true ills which face this country? Where are proposals for regulatory reform? Restoring personal freedom through a re-examination of drug policy (which diverts police resources)? A simplified tax code? Outsourcing government functions where possible?

If this is symptomatic of the national Republican party and the narrow thinking taking place in party corridors then Republicans deserve to wander the Sinai a bit longer.

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The governor’s office responds

Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer called the platform a list of platitudes that lacked specifics.

“This is a manifesto from the past. It is unrealistic in many areas. It is hypocritical in many areas. It is redundant concerning many of the things that Governor Ritter is already doing. And in many ways it is too extreme,” he said. “It just doesn’t represent the realities of today’s Colorado.”

Dreyer said that one of the chief criticisms levied by the document concerns the governor’s management of the budget. He took pains to refute attacks made by Republicans around the state and repeated in the document that Ritter increased the state payroll, for example. Anyone reading the newspapers and watching the news would understand that Ritter has been making dramatic spending cuts to state programs and seeking to ramp up the state’s unique new energy economy to help drive job growth, he said. Specifically, Ritter has ordered the elimination of 300 full-time state positions.

“The [state] work force directly under [Ritter's] purview today contains at least 500 employees less than it did when the economy began to tank a year ago,” Dreyer said.

He cited spending reductions such as the unpaid furlough days imposed on the state workers, as well as the proposed 2.5 percent pay cut. Employees will not receive any kind of a salary increase for at least two years.

“These are specific actions that are reducing spending by tens of millions of dollars. [Ritter] is creating a state government that is leaner, smarter, and more efficient and more reflective of this new economic reality.”

This “Platform for Prosperity” would essentially stop the new energy economy in its tracks, Dreyer said, “but the [new energy sector] is the brightest light in our entire economy.”

The new-energy sector, he said, is a perfect example of how Colorado can marry its unique natural and intellectual resources to build present and future economic sectors to capitalize on shifts in thinking and practice about energy all over the world. Colorado he said should keep attempting to build a national model for job creation and for business development and innovation.

Dreyer said that since Ritter has taken office the state’s new energy economy has helped to bring almost 20000 jobs in renewable energy and energy research into the state. Colorado now has the fourth-highest concentration of new energy jobs in the country.

“It is a large reason why our unemployment rate has declined for three months in a row, why our unemployment rate is 3 points below the national average, why experts say we will be one of the first states to come out of the recession, and why Colorado is repeatedly named one of the best states to do business in.”

Dreyer also criticized parts of the bill as hypocritical, citing Republican calls for investment into state infrastructure, in particular.

“Why did nearly every Republican lawmaker vote against the plan just this last legislative session to keep our roads and bridges safe?

Dreyer was discussing the FASTER legislation, which is expected to generate roughly $252 million annually for transportation projects, including improvements to more than 100 structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges.

Ritter has also supported a rainy day fund, Dreyer pointed out. The legislation would have implemented a plan to build the state reserve fund from the current 4 percent to 10 percent to protect critical state services during the next economic downturn. “It is currently raining,” Dreyer said.

Dreyer also mocked the GOP Platform’s asserted dedication to “reforming government and challenging the status quo” as if it were something new.

The platform states its adherent will “undertake a comprehensive review of state government to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, excess and abuse, freeing up dollars to spend on core areas that benefit the economy [and] conduct an evaluation of the state’s boards, commissions and task forces and look for ways to achieve savings through consolidation.”

Dreyer said that “every governor in the last decade has taken a review of state government.” He explained that when the Ritter administration took over in 2007, it found ways to save $200 million.

“I think they are trying to claim that it is something that we have not done. We have done it and we are implementing those measures to achieve the savings right now.”

Part of those measures include the Colorado Consolidation plan, which has streamlined and centralized the state’s vast system of information. The project helped Ritter win the National Association of State Chief Information Officers State Technology Champion Award, said Dreyer.

Interest groups respond

In addition to criticism from the Governor’s office, interest groups also found portions of the Platform misleading or difficult to reconcile with their experience on the ground.

The plan vows, for example, to “reinstate the Owens-era enforcement of the Constitutional ban on taxpayer funding for organizations that provide abortions.”

Monica McCaferty, media relations specialist for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told the Colorado Independent that the wording is clearly misleading.

“More than 93 percent of the care provided at Planned Parenthood is preventative,” for example, she said. “The state funding we receive primarily assists women, mostly low-income women, access to life-saving breast and cervical cancer screenings. We accept Medicaid, but in the state of Colorado, women are prohibited from using Medicaid to pay for an abortion with the exception of cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s life is in danger.” The claim “falsely represents our organization and the care they provide to nearly 128,000 women, men and young adults each year.”

Chandra Russo, Communications Coordinator for Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said that the platform’s statements concerning illegal immigration were reductive.

She said that increasing identification requirements and verification techniques in providing services, for example, would not only effect the illegal immigrant population, but the elderly and poor whom the programs are there to assist.

“It is hard for the elderly to get access to birth certificates and difficult for them to attain multiple forms of identification. The mentally ill often don’t have access to basic identity documents. So they are the ones who are really feeling the heat.”

In terms of the enforcing workplace hiring regulations, Russo said that while it is important that employees citizenship is verified in some manner, the system now is riddled with errors, especially where Latino and Muslim names are concerned. The platform doesn’t acknowledge that reality.

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In fact, the platform seems to have been designed primarily to give Penry an excuse to endorse McInnis, who in the last six months has schooled Penry in the way big-money party politics operate. McInnis waited in the wings all summer and fall, lining up big donors, while Penry hopped from stump to stump, casting about for dramatic things to say about big-spending Democrats even while Gov. Ritter every day was announcing new cuts to match the dramatically shrinking Colorado budget. The GOP “Platform for Prosperity” also succeeded in drawing into the fold firebrand Tancredo, who threatened mightily to derail McInnis’s plan to oust Penry and be done with serious primary challenges. Indeed Tancredo, fueled by name-recognition, grass-roots loyalty and conviction, seemed in the end to pose the real threat to McInnis. In just a week of making noise about maybe running in the wake of Penry’s abrupt withdrawal, “The Tank” effectively bolstered the power of the Penry camp.

Now, to the great chagrin of the Republican base and Democrats everywhere, Coloradans get the throwback cliched “Platform for Prosperity” where they could have had a real primary race, featuring The Tank colorfully pushing McInnis to the right at every turn.

For those not yet initiated, the platform declares that the new McInnis army will “create a leaner … government” in Colorado. Yet in a year, Colorado may well be the leanest state government in the country. The McInnis GOP will also “work together, tirelessly, to restore the economic security that has been taken from families all over Colorado.”

Read it and weep.

PLATFORM FOR PROSPERITY

November 2009

PREAMBLE

Colorado has fallen on hard times. We’ve seen our state economy hemorrhage jobs at the fastest pace since the 1940′s, and watched as personal incomes have declined more sharply than at any time since the 1950′s.

Bill Ritter and the Democrat-controlled Legislature responded by imposing massive increases in taxes and fees, broadly increasing the state payroll – despite an alleged “hiring freeze.” They have embraced an agenda that has increased the cost of doing business in Colorado, driven investment out of our state, and killed jobs.

Coloradans can’t afford another four years of Gov. Ritter’s failed policies. Republicans have better ideas, centered on common sense, innovation, respecting our taxpayers and businesses, and keeping government in check.

We believe that big government breeds small ideas. But smaller government gives citizens the freedom to breed big ideas.

Fortunately, voters will have the opportunity in 2010 to end the Democrat Party’s monopoly on power in Colorado and to restore checks and balances to an out-of-touch — and out-of-control — state government.

As Republican officeholders, and citizens seeking public office, we will restore faith in our government and prosperity to our state by putting forward the following Platform for Prosperity.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Returning Colorado to Prosperity

We will use our voices, votes and veto pen to improve and transform Colorado’s business climate so that our state is again a leader among the states.

We will:

• keep Colorado a low-tax state;
• put a top priority on investing in physical infrastructure (roads, bridges and water systems) and our human infrastructure (higher education and workforce training);
• pro-actively promote and encourage business investment and expansion in key Colorado job sectors;
• oppose unreasonable regulations, fees and business mandates;
• oppose efforts to weaken Colorado’s medical malpractice or construction defects tort protections;
• repeal the Ritter Administration’s executive order unionizing state government;
• appoint “pro-jobs” leaders to key government regulatory and oversight bodies.

Restoring Common Sense to Colorado’s Budget

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to restore fiscal common sense and respect for Colorado’s taxpayers. We will:

• oppose the systematic campaign of Democrats to increase taxes, significant fees, levies and surcharges without a vote of the people;
• restore the cap on state spending, and, until it is restored, oppose – and veto — spending above an annual 6 percent increase;
• oppose those who would use Colorado’s current budget challenges as a pretext to weaken taxpayer protections in the Constitution or in statute;
• support the creation of a Rainy Day Fund that will cushion the effects of economic emergencies, but will not allow politicians to get access to merely fund pet projects.

Reforming Government and Challenging the Status Quo

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to:

• undertake a comprehensive review of state government to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, excess and abuse, freeing up dollars to spend on core areas that benefit the economy;
• conduct an evaluation of the state’s boards, commissions and task forces and look for ways to achieve savings through consolidation.

More Energy, More Jobs: A Comprehensive Energy Policy

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to:

• support legislation, and revisions to state rules, that will promote the responsible development of all sources of energy, including wind, solar, hydroelectric, oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power;
• appoint individuals to key energy regulatory bodies who view Colorado’s energy resources as a strategic asset that, in balance with protecting the environment, can produce more energy for America and more jobs for Colorado.

Controlling Health Care Costs for Families and Business

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to support patient-driven reforms to contain the growing costs of healthcare — a growing burden on patients, their families, employers and our economy.

We will:

• support portability of coverage from job to job;
• reinstate the Owens-era enforcement of the Constitutional ban on taxpayer funding for organizations that provide abortions;
• support giving patients the right to purchase health insurance across state lines;
• oppose efforts to roll back Colorado’s landmark medical malpractice protections;
• oppose any effort to bring single-payer healthcare to Colorado.

Improving Education and Expanding Opportunity

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to:

• protect the rights of home school families;
• expand school choice in the form of charter schools, magnet schools and for at-risk students in under-performing public schools;

Defending Citizenship and the Rule of Law

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to:

• support a mandatory workplace verification mechanism that will assist employers in ensuring that their employees are in the United States legally;
• oppose so-called “sanctuary” policies, which violate state and federal law;
• work to block the award of state grant dollars to any local government enacting such a policy.

Pushing Back Against Growing Federal Power

We commit to using our voices, votes and veto pen to push back on a federal government that is too big, too intrusive, and all-too-eager to seize power from the states. We believe in protecting states’ rights under the Tenth Amendment. We oppose future “stimulus” bills or other federal spending bills that serve no valid economic purpose and only add to the federal deficit.

Keeping Communities Safe

We will give law enforcement and prosecutors the tools they need to keep communities and families safe.

We will:

• end the Ritter Administration’s early release program for criminals;
• oppose any legislation that would curtail the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms;
• support far tougher sentences for child sex predators;

Restoring the security that comes with a quality job is at the core of our Platform for Prosperity.

Governor Ritter and the Democrat-controlled Legislature have chosen a path, in these troubled times, that has ignored basic economic and fiscal responsibility and cost this state hundreds of jobs every day. They have turned back the clock and returned to outmoded and discredited tax-and-spend policies.

With this Platform for Prosperity, we will restore Colorado to its leading role as an innovator and job-creator among the states. We will create a leaner and more efficient government. We will expand job opportunities for our youth so that they will stay in Colorado and not be forced to pursue opportunities in other states. We will work together, tirelessly, to restore the economic security that has been taken from families all over Colorado.

Together, we will pursue one central truth: A good day starts with a good job.

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