June 30, 2008 08:25 PM UTC

My breakfast with Pat

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• by: DavidThi808

I feel sorry for the Republicans in this state. Many of their elected officials are mediocre and they appear to have a monopoly on cringe-inducing ones. Now add to that the comparison of state chairs, Pat Waak vs Dick Wadhams. It’s like the L.A. Lakers against a middle school basketball team.

Pat is the party den mother. She clearly views her job as making sure everything gets done, is done correctly, and everyone is working well together. And the proof of her effectiveness is that you don’t see or hear of any intra-party fight here. Yes occasionally someone is bitching but she does her job so well she makes it look easy.

Pat has been in politics forever, working at the federal level as well as the state level. She has a boatload of experience, not just in campaigning, but in accomplishing things. She exudes the quiet confidence of someone who knows how to get the job done.

What most impressed me was here is someone who is totally devoted to politics, living it every day, and not a word, not a peep about any preference in the CD-2 or SD-18 primaries. Her goal is the success of the party. I saw her do the same thing speaking to the Obama delegates before the CD-2 convention where she did a great job of not disagreeing with the leaders there who wanted to have all except the anointed delegates drop out, but still encouraged people to run.

She has this ability to stay neutral and yet encourage people in a certain direction.

She takes a lot of pride in getting ref C passed. 2006 was a good year all-around for us Dems here in Colorado and there is a lot to point to. So it’s interesting that she looks at the issue that was key to the state’s future more than any specific candidate. I take that as indicative of someone who views her role as doing what is best for Colorado first. And I think that is a good thing, not just for our state, but also for the party because long term success comes from our doing what’s best for the state.

Trying to sooth the hurt feelings of the Clinton supporters came up repeatedly. I have a feeling that this is taking a lot of her time right now. Back to the den mother role, that’s a key part. And again, based on the fact that very little of that conflict is making it into the media, I’d say she is doing a good job of working this out.

She also talked a lot about working out exactly how the Obama campaign will fit with the State party. A lot of what she talked about was making sure it was set up to work well, what positions were key to fill, and having people situated so that communication naturally flowed between the various groups. She’s definitely not an empire builder.

Her official focus is Obama and Udall and she did talk at length about both of those campaigns and what they are doing to make those successful. And she kept coming back to that both of these require a lot of hard work to be successful. So she is definitely not taking anything for granted.

She also talked about Betsy Markey, Joe Whitcomb, and Hank Eng. She thinks Betsy and Joe have very good chances and that CD-5 is possible. Unlikely maybe (CD-5), but possible. In other words, she is not turning the state party into an Obama-only machine. Nor into an Obama/Udall-only machine. She’s running a Colorado Democrats machine.

I wonder what she will do next. She has been heavily involved in politics forever and clearly loves the work. My guess is that she will be given a job in the Obama administration and we will hear nothing about her in that job – because what she manages will work efficiently, effectively, and with no drama.

We’ve got a really good state party den mother chair.

First posted at Liberal and Loving It