The Governor's Chessboard

A Lifetime of Public Policy

Richard D. Lamm

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press - Fulcrum
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781682752593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Exploring the life and political career of Governor Richard D. Lamm, The Governor's Chessboard, is an intimate look at a prominent politician, including many of his successes, challenges, and defeats. Politics in America is not a place for boat-rockers, but Governor Lamm successfully made a name for himself by going against the tide of popular opinion. He violated most of the conventional rules of American politics, chiefly by taking on a number of very controversial issues, including abortion rights, civil rights, and immigration. He has always marched to the beat of his own drum, and he continues to do so, well into his eighties.

1. AN UNLIKELY POLITICIAN

SLIDING DOORS

Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a fascinating movie called Sliding Doors. In it, she is running to catch a subway and the doors close right in front of her. She takes the next train, and the movie takes her life in one direction. Then the movie goes back to the same scene, but this time she sticks out her hand and the doors open, she gets on, and her whole life goes in a different, and happier, direction. A haunting metaphor. I think of two sliding-door experiences in my life. The first was in November of 1961 when I moved to Denver and encountered the sliding door that allowed me to meet my future wife, Dottie.

Right after I graduated from Berkeley Law in June of 1961, and after spending the summer in San Francisco studying for the California and Colorado Bar, I decided to move to Colorado. Not precisely a sliding door but rather a carefully thought out comparison between my memories of being stationed in Colorado and the magical city of San Francisco. “Magical” it was, but three thousand people a day were moving to California.

After taking the California Bar in August (I had already flown to Colorado to take the bar there), my friend Phil Hammer decided to go to Washington, D.C., to try to get a job with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Sounded perfect! I decided to join him. When we got there, we discovered that every other young liberal law graduate had the same idea. We were interviewed, and although we were encouraged, we were told it would be a long, uncertain wait, so I decided to go to Colorado. I do not classify this as a sliding-door experience, as it wasn’t a spontaneous decision but was instead the product of months of thought and comparison. I contrast this to how I met my lovely wife, Dottie. I tremble when I think of how close we came to never having met.

I arrived in Denver in November of 1961. Soon after, my friend Jan Hess from the University of Wisconsin, who was teaching in Denver, said there was a party she’d try to get me and my roommate, Fred, invited to. It was then that the doors slid.

Jan called Dottie, one of the party’s hosts, and asked if she could bring two friends. Dottie refused, as the invitation list had become unmanageable. She was sorry, and the doors were almost closed when Jan started to cry. She wanted to come to the party, but she couldn’t without bringing the two of us. These were real tears because Jan was and remains sincere, honest, and guileless. Dottie, moved by the tears, finally said yes. My fate was sealed.

We arrived at the party, and there was Dottie. She was surrounded by lots of people, so I went to the phone and copied the telephone number. I knew this was a woman I badly wanted to meet. There was something about Dottie that impressed me at first glance: she was like no other woman I had ever met.

Three days later I called and invited her out for a beer. She politely said no, asking, “Which one were you?” I told her I was one of the guys Jan Hess had brought, but she still said no. I knew enough not to push too hard, so I told her I would call in exactly a week and ask again. I noted the time and exactly one week later I called again, on the exact hour I had originally called. She was impressed by this, and this time she said yes. The sliding doors opened and I waltzed right in.

I am proud to have become a politician despite the profession’s low standing in the public esteem. In 1959, I was urged to support John F. Kennedy by my dear friend and law-school roommate, Phil Hammer. I had voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, my very first vote. But to be young is to be liberal and passionate, and I was soon mesmerized by JFK. I did little for the Kennedy campaign in 1960 because, as a law student, I was studying hard to make the transfer from the University of California, Hastings, to the University of California, Boalt Hall (Berkeley). However, I was soon bitten by the political bug. And when I made the move to Denver in 1961, I immediately got involved with the Young Democrats, rising quickly to the top of the organization (no big deal—no one else wanted the job). I then got involved in Senator John Carroll’s 1962 Senate campaign, which he lost to Peter Dominick.

This was a time when lots of young people were passionate about public policy. And, like me, lots of young people were attracted to JFK, politics, and the civil rights movement, and the Young Democrats grew into a large and successful organization. I was an accountant by day, but I was elected vice president of the Colorado Young Democrats in 1965 (lawyer Frank Plaut was president), and I began casting around for something meaningful to do. I soon organized a “Bury Goldwater” hootenanny with the help of my new friend Harry Tuft, who ran The Denver Folklore Center where I would retreat periodically to get relief from the pressures of my accounting job. Almost every artist, almost every musician we contacted was willing to volunteer, and we had a great event with a large and appreciative crowd. We turned the money over to the state party, and it was there that I met Dale Tooley., the chair of the Denver Democratic Party. A year and a half later, Dale came to me and encouraged me to run for the state legislature. The election was “at-large,” which meant eighteen Democrats and eighteen Republicans ran for the eighteen legislative house seats allocated to Denver. At the county assembly in the summer of 1966 I received more delegate votes than any of the other newcomers. Little did I know, but I was soon to get incredibly drawn into the world of public policy and politics.

I was asked to spend a day shepherding around Hubert Humphrey, which was a real experience. What a happy campaigner! What a “Happy Warrior!” I got him back to his hotel about ten p.m., and I was wrung out and dying for the day to be over. But Senator Humphrey stood in the hotel lobby until midnight shaking the hands of one and all. Had it been me, I would have been up in the bathtub with my book, happy that the day was over. It is the difference between an introvert and an extrovert. Hubert got his batteries recharged by shaking hands, while my batteries recharged in solitude and reading a book.

The success of our “Bury Goldwater” hootenanny inspired Harry Tuft to come to me and propose we act as impresario to a certain group in Denver. Harry had arranged a loan at a bank but needed a cosigner. The first rule of being a lawyer is not to borrow or loan, but I did cosign the note to the bank. We rented the old Denver Auditorium, obligating ourselves to several thousand more dollars, and tried to sell tickets. Practically nothing. A dribble of sales. No interest in our group, which was not as well-known as we had thought. We were looking at a disaster!

The Monday before the performance, Time Magazine had our group on the cover. The Mamas and the Papas and their songs were working their way up the music charts. Talk about luck! The phones rang off the hook, we opened up another sales office, and by the night of concert we knew we had a great success. They were a huge hit.

After the performance, we had a cast party, and it was the first time I ever saw people smoking funny cigarettes and my first experience with marijuana. One of our ticket agents ran off with four thousand dollars, but we managed to pay back our loan, pay for the venue, and still make a lot of money.

After that, we brought in Judy Collins and Ravi Shankar and made money on both. Little did we know the promise of this business, and the vacuum we left by our myopia was soon filled by rock-concert mogul Barry Fey. Oh, well…

Harry Tuft remains a close friend to this day. I met him as I walked home from my accounting job in 1962, and the Folklore Center became a place I would go after work to relax in the mood of the beatnik and folk music movement. Work filling out tax returns all day then chill at the Folklore Center. Perfect balance.

RUNNING FOR THE LEGISLATURE

During the summer and fall of 1966, I was busy campaigning for one of Denver’s legislative seats. Lord, I loved that first legislative campaign. The fall of 1966 was before Vietnam split the Democratic Party. All of Denver was the election district, and I got to go to Italian dinners, Black churches, Hispanic dances, and German polka parties at the Denver Turnverein. Dottie would often accompany me, and it became a family project. I won the election easily and arranged my newly minted law practice to accommodate serving in the legislature.

Early in January 1967, I walked into the Colorado House chambers. I was thirty-one years old and was awed. It is hard not to be awed by the House chambers, and I certainly never thought I would go any higher. I had only been in Colorado for five years, I had limited money, and I knew no one of importance in the entire state. I was audacious, but so were the other hundred legislators. How could I best serve my constituents? How would I ever make my mark? My world was very frenetic with my law practice, the legislature, and my family. Dottie, as always, was a great help. Answering the constantly ringing phone, cooking meals, making coffee and cookies for volunteers, and hosting a series of beer parties in our basement. Meanwhile, she was working as a psychiatric social worker with challenged young people, which often weighed on her. Life was like drinking out of a fire hydrant. But I was happy, and both Dottie and I loved our life.

I was involved in an array of issues during those years. I tried to get some land use planning legislation and tried to get a 5 cents deposit on glass bottles and was deeply involved in most of the environmental legislation.

In 1969 a Chicago group, “The First National Conference on Environment and Population,” asked me to be their president. I accepted and we organized a large conference in Chicago at which Dennis Hayes announced the first Earth Day. It was not a paid job and it involved at least one weekend a month back in Chicago. In the course of these duties I flew back and forth to Chicago more times than I want to remember. We had a wonderful conference and helped publicize a wide range of environmental issues. Paul Ehrlich asked me to be on the board of Zero Population Growth and then when he stepped down, asked me to be the next president. More trips around the nation but speaking and working on issues I felt deeply about.

It was a yeasty and exciting time in my life. In a shift that was seldom seen in Demography, the population growth rate plummeted. The birth rate headed down starting in 1964 and stayed down. Women had access to contraception and (in many states) abortion and we were successful and even smug. We had been bit players in an incredible social movement.

Dottie meanwhile was actively involved in the Woman’s movement and was mentoring a number of young women in politics and in life generally. Both of us actively involved in a variety of issues, raising children and enjoying a busy and productive life.

One example was the issue of dams in the Grand Canyon. In 1963, I had taken a raft trip down the Colorado River just as the gates to the Glen Canyon Dam were closing creating Lake Powell. We put the trip together ourselves and were able to see the wondrous rock formations later depicted in the Sierra Club book “The Place No One Knew.” When the Corp. of Engineers proposed in 1969 two additional dams in the Grand Canyon we formed a national group that eventually helped save the Grand Canyon from those dams. I flew back to Washington D.C. to testify before Mo Udall’s committee against the dams and got to know even better David Brower who had been the head of the Sierra Club for years. David had offered me a job in 1961 just as I was finishing at Berkeley but I turned him down mainly because I wanted to work in the civil rights area and didn’t want to live in California. I could see already how crowded and congested it was becoming. I always had Colorado in the back of my mind, but at the time of graduation I was open to anyplace that wasn’t California. Three thousand people a day were moving into California during those years. Traffic, smog, and congestion were defacing that beautiful state.

My eight years in the legislature were some of the happiest in my life. Heather was born, Scott was thriving, and I loved the University of Denver and loved my role in the legislature. My life was incredibly busy but it had a certain balance to it.

GETTING ESTABLISHED IN DENVER

The Young Democrats wasn’t the only activity I got involved in after moving to Denver. For instance, I also joined Toastmasters, a civic group dedicated to making people better public speakers. The possibility of a career as a trial lawyer was always a prospect for me. I was covering more than one base.

ROCK CLIMBING IN BOULDER

Every Monday night about fifty of us, mostly men at first, would meet for dinner. Two members would be asked in advance to make an eight- to ten-minute speech, and the rest of us would be randomly chosen without notice and given a subject to speak on for two minutes. Questions ranged widely, ranging from “How will the Broncos do next season?” to “What should the US policy be toward Cuba?” Great way to develop extemporaneous speaking skills, but very intimidating. I learned a great deal about speaking from Toastmasters, but it was finally crowded out by Young Democrats and by my growing confidence in my own speaking ability. Toastmasters worked!

I also started a Conservation section of the Colorado Mountain Club. Dottie and I spent a lot of weekends with the Colorado Mountain Club, but as we began to feel more confident in the mountains, the two of us climbed increasingly without the club.

I have always had a sense of finiteness. From college on, I have thought that suburbs were ugly, inefficient, and a false hope. That growth of population and the economy could not go on forever. My parents had been big supporters of Planned Parenthood, so part of it was in my upbringing. The sign “Watch Us Grow!,” which was on billboards outside many towns in America, always made me think and speculate. Is that really what the citizens of that town wanted? Watching Madison or San Francisco or Denver grow, it was always alarming to me, and I certainly felt it to be an aesthetic insult. Was this development necessary? Was it well planned and designed? It always seemed to me we gave away our open space too easily. Local government is always too easily seduced by development.

But by far the larger issue for me was how to stabilize the population, both worldwide and in the United States, and to find a way to develop a sustainable economy.

I also realized early on that “finiteness” was important in planning your career and life. We do not live forever, and the knowledge that someday we die is key to knowing how to live. We only get one chance and it is important to think about how we spend our limited time.

THE ABORTION DEBATE

Once I was immersed in politics, democracy clearly worked for me. And looking back on my career, I see I had one trait that, more than any other, made me successful in that arena. It sounds self-serving—even a brag—so I can understand the reader’s skepticism, but I believe I succeeded because I fought for what I believed in. And while I acknowledge that history is filled with people in life and politics who go down in flames while fighting for an issue about which they’re passionate, it is a lesson that is important for the current generation to learn, quixotic as it may sound. I believe that, more than any skill or trait, fighting for what I believed in was what propelled me in my political career. In addition, my timing was auspicious: when I was first elected to the Colorado legislature, I looked for a way to make the world a better place. Dottie and I had lived in South America for six months after we got married in May of 1963, in often-primitive conditions, traveled by bus to many remote areas, and learned in our travels that generally in South America one-quarter of the hospital beds were taken up by women who had had botched abortions. We had met and talked with the Marino fathers of the Catholic Church who were handing out birth control to their parishioners in Peru because, despite the church’s ban on artificial birth control, “It was clearly less sinful than abortion,” which they admitted was an epidemic. Dottie, a nascent feminist even then, was particularly and personally outraged. “How can the law force unwilling women to have unwanted children?” Most of these victims already had large families and were desperate to limit the number of children they had, but who had no alternative other than illegal abortion, usually performed by someone without medical training. Birth control was generally illegal both in Peru and all of South America because of the Catholic Church. We saw the male-dominated oligarchy, where the same small group of families sent one son to the family business, one to politics, and one to the church, monopolize most of the wealth and political power and then produce policies that killed or ruined thousands of women who felt they could not adequately care for an additional child. We saw clearly in South America, and still believe today, that the law can’t say whether a woman will have an abortion, it can only say where. Desperate women, following their own conscience, were going to prevent unwanted pregnancies one way or another. South America was Exhibit A for this viewpoint.

The art of passing successful legislation is the practice of marshaling—and in some cases manufacturing—the necessary support for attainable goals. In a representative government, responding as it must to the wishes of the constituents, legislation is by necessity closely tied up with public opinion. Al Smith, one of the world’s most practical politicians, stated it thus: “A politician can’t be so far ahead of the band he can’t hear the music.” It can, by definition, be no other way. No politician who is too far out front of public o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. An Unlikely Politician
• 2. On the Road to Governorship
• 3. Governor!
• 4. Beyond the Governor
• 5. Back in the Fray: Political Backlash
• 6. Ten Commandments of Community
• About the Author