December 19, 2006 12:45 AM UTC

Owens on Owens

• 5 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The Rocky Mountain News has a good Q&A with Governor Bill Owens today, which focuses more on politics than on policy stuff. Click below for some of the highlights:

In your first two years as governor, you cut taxes, improved roads, reformed schools. Then you lost Referendum A, the legislature went Democrat and your own party criticized you for supporting Referendum C. Would you have preferred to walk away like John Elway after winning the two Super Bowls?

No. I wouldn’t want to be a governor who only went after the sure things. I could have avoided controversial issues and had a 100 percent winning record.

If you define success as only backing those issues that win, you’re going to have a really weak governor, and our governors haven’t been like that. Even the best baseball players only bat .350.

And in the last years, I helped Colorado get through a budget crisis and I helped defeat some ballot measures that would have been bad for the state.

You passed up the chance to become a U.S. senator in 2004, so are you getting a kick out of the blogs that say you’re going to run for Senate in 2008?

I’ve been in elected office for 24 years. Tim Wirth was in for 20, Hank Brown for 22. A lot of time people think, “Oh Bill, you’re just getting started.” No, I’ve done this a long time. I’ve really loved what I’ve done. I’m not burned out. I’m not tired of being governor. But I am ready to pass it on to someone else…

…Could you have beaten Bill Ritter?

(Laughing) What do you think?

Many people have talked about the disarray in the Colorado Republican Party and whether you bear responsibility.

I take full responsibility for the mistakes made by my party, but I’m also certain that these things are cyclical.

I also know that my party has won only two of the last nine governor’s races. This is not an easy state to win a governor’s race if you’re a Republican.

Politics runs in cycles. This year was, I think, the bottom of our down cycle. I think in 2008 you will see a Sen. Hillary Clinton vs. a Sen. John McCain or a Mitt Romney, and I think that makes us a red state again.

Do you think, as some Republicans say, that you got “rolled” during the special session on illegal immigration?

Whoever is saying that must not have been paying attention. Colorado now has by all accounts the toughest laws regarding illegal immigration of any state, and that was a result of my personal involvement.

The prime example is House Bill 1023, which came from the House weak and anemic. On the Saturday afternoon of the special session, I walked up to the third floor of the Capitol and told the Senate committee considering the bill that it was completely unacceptable. I outlined the elements I considered essential and made it clear that anything less would be unacceptable.

As a result, the bill was overhauled and all of my requirements were included.

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