June 06, 2011 05:18 PM UTC

Why I voted for Hancock for Mayor

• 11 Comments
• by: SSG_Dan

(I have no toe in the water of  this election.  I respect Dan’s fierce loyalty to  vets. – promoted by MADCO)

I still think it’s a “Cream of the Crap” election. Let me explain why I choose the lesser evil.

As most of the members of this fine website know, I am a veterans advocate. I am pretty ruthless in my treatment of political figures who either ignore or use vets for political gain. But I am also painfully aware of the struggles and issues our returning warriors face, so I try and work with the existing structures in the city & state to help these vets as best I can.  

So, as a followup to my open letter to the Mayoral candidates I posted on May 18th, I tried to contact both campaigns to get their specific policy positions on what they would do for vets if elected. This was spurred by an email from the Romer campaign before Memorial Day weekend, which made four very nice-sounding but empty statements on these issues.

Initially, neither campaign got back to me. And neither campaign has jack shit on veterans issues on their web site. But over the next week, both a Romer and Hancock canvasser dropped by to chat, and that ended up revealing (to me) quite a bit about each campaign.

In the case of Romer supporter, he admitted that he had nothing on Vets issues, and launched into the usual shtick about how “Chris will create jobs blah blah blah” and asked for my vote. The Hancock canvasser also admitted that he had nothing on the issue, but promised that someone would get back to me.  

And they did. By that evening, I had several calls from the Hancock campaign, all of which admitted their ignorance on the issue, but that they wanted to hear more. I eventually had a great discussion with a member of the campaign, who asked for my input and any documents I had on the issue, which I emailed to the campaign office. By this weekend, I was contacted by a senior official, and I have a meeting this afternoon to talk specifics.

So while that process played out (in fairness) I tried calling the Romer campaign for one last attempt, and I got one of their policy dudes who repeated the same talking points on the email, and got testy with me when I pressed him for details.

Specifically, I pointed out that several of the things that Romer is saying he’ll create for vets ALREADY EXISTS in the City & County of Denver Infrastructure. All the Policy Dude can respond with was the usual – “Chris will create jobs for vets because he has experience in the private industry,” mixed in with a lot of passive-aggressive shots at Hancock.

In the end, he listened to my positions on the issue, and asked for some of the same documents. I got this response:

“Thank you so much for all this information, Daniel – really enjoyed our conversation the other day. Hope to catch up soon. ”

In the end, I had this realization – despite his numerous warts, Michael Hancock knows what the City & County of Denver has, and as a result, can probably get to work faster on fixing some things and expanding others. Will he be as radical in changing things as Romer? Probably not, but he won’t spend the first few months figuring out what the hell he now “owns” like Chris will have to do.

But a sound bite from Romer over the weekend pushed me to go with Hancock. He kept repeating his shtick about “how he’ll create jobs because I have experience in the private industry.”

Really? More than Mayor Hick? Your tiny amount of industry experience is somehow better than Hick’s, and what he’s done over the last bunch of years is crap compared to your plan?

I don’t think so.

Chris Romer may be able to bring some state, industry, and federal connections to the office if he get’s elected. But this is a race for Mayor – a city job. And I want the guy (or gal) that has that kind of experience over someone that doesn’t know what he’s getting into, but thinks he does.