October 13, 2011 03:04 AM UTC

Pueblo County Clerk Lionized on National Television

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• by: Colorado Pols

We didn’t want this interview from Monday night’s Rachel Maddow Show (excerpt below) to escape mention. In Colorado, we have a huge number of public servants, both elected and appointed (or simply hired) who work their entire career without ever rising to any kind of prominence–certainly not a moment where something you do becomes a major news story, and your career has a chance to ascend beyond any plans you previously had entertained.

And then you stand up to your Secretary of State over voting rights:

And suddenly, you are lowly Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz…on national television. We included a little under two minutes of Maddow’s lead-in on the subject of voting rights, because, well, it’s fairly riveting. Ortiz contrasts with that by deferring questions about politics, but relating his “excitement” over Scott Gessler’s court defeat last Friday which enabled Ortiz to send ballots to “inactive” voters and the remainder of his deployed military.

Which comes across pretty well, honestly. And despite Ortiz’s deference on the politics of all this, we have to say that the image of Ortiz bounding out of court to order his staff to immediately send ballots to deployed military ought to be worth, well, a promotion someday. It’s better political capital than Congressman Doug Lamborn ever earned.