Gambling for governor

Can a poor man run for governor of Colorado? Can we trust him?

Essentially, that's the thrust of the Denver Post's front-page story today about Republican gubernatorial hopeful Dan Maes.

Maes finally released limited information about his family income on Tuesday, after refusing to release income-tax returns to the Post, as the newspaper had asked, for the past several months.

The information released Tuesday shows why. Maes and his wife are poor people despite Maes' business having had one good $300,000 year.

Again, the thrust of the Post's coverage is: Can Colorado trust a small-business owner who has barely been able to cover the costs of his family's survival for the past 10 years as a governor responsible for maintaining and managing a multi-billion-dollar state budget.

It's a somewhat legitimate question, but it belies the Post's prejudice in favor of the rich and obviously successful. Presuming, of course, that only the rich are successful.

Most small-business owners struggle to make a living; that's why help for small business is a middle-income issue that gets to the heart of an economic recovery. That's why banks resist government calls to increase lending to small businesses. The risks are high.

Maes doesn't have to be ashamed of his small-business record of not-so-great revenue growth. But he shouldn't hide it from voters. Republican money men may not vote for it; even Democrats will not look favorably upon it. But voters should know how much of a bluff his lifestyle has been.

It's the only way for voters to make the safest bet on a future leader.

Hick gets my vote, along with all the other Dems

Behind the monitor of my computer, hanging on the wall of my study beneath a window looking out to the blue sky, hangs a copy of the ColoradoBiz cover for the September 2003 issue.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's picture claims the cover art, and behind him is the faint image of the Colorado state flag. Inside that magazine, I interviewed Hick and asked him if he wanted to be governor. Of course, he told me then that all he wanted to be was a good mayor.

On Saturday, I shouted aye! when 4,000-plus Colorado Democratic delegates to the state assembly, me included, were asked to award the party's nomination for governor to Hickenlooper by acclamation. It was my first ever Democratic state assembly after 42 years of voting, most of them as a news reporter.

Now I'm a blogger, though, and no longer constrained by the feigned objectivity of the newspaper reporter. I can serve as a delegate in the party I support and write about it to my heart's content.

So at the risk of driving Hickenlooper from the race, I'm going to endorse him as I made an early endorsement of Gov. Bill Ritter, who thereupon quit running for the office.

I'm also endorsing Andrew Romanoff, who I was a delegate for from Arapahoe County. If rhetoric helped Barack Obama gain the White House, Romanoff sounded more like a presidential candidate Saturday than a former school superintendent, and that's probably why he polled 60.4 percent of the delegates' votes compared with Michael Bennet's 39.6 percent, just 9.6 points more than the required 30 percent needed to take a place on the August primary ballot.

Obviously, I hope the former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives beats the appointed incumbent senator as soundly after a summer of campaigning as he has in earlier precinct caucuses, county assemblies, and now the state assembly.

And then, as far as I'm concerned, you can vote Democratic down the whole ballot. Everything I heard on Saturday fit my political preferences just fine, including a minority plank added to the Colorado Democratic Party platform. It vented opposition to the new Arizona anti-immigrant law, which I have opposed since the day it was signed. (See an earlier post below.)

I can say I enjoyed the assembly a lot more than any of the earlier procedures you have to endure to become a delgate to the statewide confab. It was run efficiently, and demonstrated the energy of Colorado Democrats' commitment to improving the lives of all Coloradans no matter their political convictions.