From Paul Thompson, Douglas County Dems Chair

Jon Caldara is not a happy camper today as legislators head home after a highly successful session. The guru of the all-government-is-evil set had been riding high on the hog earlier in the decade as his disciples, led by John Andrews, went to work sowing vitriol in the state capitol, and reaping the stench of a decaying state government. By helping dysfunctional people win legislative seats, Caldara had gone a long way toward making his dreams come true, creating an evil government in his image.

Sure, state government had been like a rusty old Chevy that needed more and more money to keep it going. Voters toyed with the idea of crashing their old Chevy into a bridge pier to put it out of its misery. But they realized just in time that this isn’t such a great idea if you’re still sitting in the driver’s seat.

With the help of simple-minded media, we’d been led to believe that every election was a choice between wastefulness or destruction. We’d been electing people whose only talent was elementary school mud-slinging, and building the expectation that the legislature is a playpen for the most immature people we can find, people lacking the brainpower to earn more than $30,000 per year.

Fortunately, this was not our only choice. Contrary to what Jon Caldara had been telling us, and in spite of his best efforts, we discovered better options. There are people in this world willing to work in jobs where they are vastly underpaid relative to their skills. People whose worldview includes taking responsibility for problems and solving them, not simply blaming others for them. People smart enough, and motivated enough, to see our complex world as it is, and find clever and elegant ways of making it better. People motivated by a feeling of mutual responsibility.

Andrew Romanoff is one of those people, the new breed of adults who are now in power in the State House. He has set a new tone for the institution, taking people’s concerns seriously, even those of the opposing party, and looking for common ground and practical solutions. At a time when party warfare so often involves each side looking for a bigger bazooka to blast the other, Romanoff adopted a much more clever approach: listen to the other side and solve their problems, disarm the partisan militants by taking away their reason for bickering.

Romanoff’s willingness to listen to Republicans and take them seriously, makes him perhaps more conservative than other Democrats, more respectful of tradition and more cautious, more willing to balance competing interests, and less willing to spend money. Sometimes it’s frustrating for the Democratic base. But it’s infuriating for outside troublemakers like Caldara, who make their living on conflict. It’s challenging for local newspapers, who find it much easier to invent conflicts than to sit down and carefully explain a complex issue.

Words can’t describe how much fun it is to watch people like Mike May and Ted Harvey try to come up with partisan zingers to blast the Democratic leadership. How do you criticize this year’s highly successful legislation on energy efficiency, cutting health care costs, strengthening of schools, and consumer protection; when so much of it was supported by both parties and especially by the business community? How can you complain that the legislature did all of this within the bounds of Tabor, and further saved the taxpayers’ money by finishing early? Mike May tries to work up a head of partisan steam, but then has to let it out and criticize the color of Romanoff’s tie.

It will be especially interesting to hear from Dick Wadhams, the new Republican State Chair who was described by fellow Republican Senator Nancy Spence as the “The meanest, roughest, toughest, take-no-prisoners SOB we can hire.” He’ll soon be on TV whining about how those awful Democrats take all the fun out of politics by actually solving problems with bipartisan support. Spence’s comments will come back to haunt her when she realizes Wadhams’ mean and nasty approach is no longer wanted here.

Yes, the adults are back in charge, much to the voters’ satisfaction. We now have sustained proof that government can work for the good of the people.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 11:54 am and is filed under Counties, 2007 Legislative Session. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.