March 02, 2009 09:29 PM UTC

Penry for Governor? Um, No

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• by: Colorado Pols

Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry is apparently beginning to seriously engage in discussions about running for Governor, and may soon file paperwork to make it official. Penry is doing this quietly while he tries to gauge support for a potential run against Gov. Bill Ritter, and trying to keep this quiet is probably the smartest thing Penry has done in months.

Our prediction? Penry doesn’t actually end up running for Governor in 2010. And here’s why…

Penry has long been touted by Republicans as a “rising star” in the Party, but like many “rising stars” who have come before him (from both parties), Penry’s just not ready to move from “rising” to actual “star.”

We know what some of you conspiracy theorists might think – that say this because we think Penry is actually the toughest candidate to potentially challenge Ritter and we’re trying to tear him down before that happens. Quite the contrary, in fact. As it stands now, Penry would be one of the weakest candidates Republicans could put forth in 2010 because he is absolutely not what they need to lead the ticket.

To be sure, Penry has enjoyed a swift rise among the GOP. But what we have learned from his brief time thus far as Senate Minority Leader is that he’s not young and fresh – he’s young and old. He may be young (he’s 33), but Penry is actually no different in political philosophy or leadership than any of the other right-wing failures that have damaged the GOP in recent years. Republicans have not adjusted to the changing political climate in Colorado by running moderate candidates; instead, they have trotted out old-school right-wing thinkers with no new ideas like Bob Schaffer, only to watch them get pummeled in the general election by Democrats who are able to appear more moderate than they might actually be.

A Penry candidacy would be the same thing in different packaging. By refusing to lead his caucus in deflecting the terribly damaging comments made last week by Sens. Scott Renfroe and Dave Schultheis, Penry showed that he a) isn’t ready to lead his own caucus, much less an entire state, and b) his ideology is really little different from the right-wing of the party. That’s a not a good combination for a candidate for Governor.

Or consider what we wrote last summer when we discussed “The Political Death of Josh Penry“:

We wrote earlier this week about Republican Sen. Josh Penry’s bizarre comments about his plan to divert state money to speed up a section of I-70 in his district. Penry’s quote basically amounted to saying that he thinks voters would prefer to see an improved I-70 than to preserve their water resources.

The plan devised by Penry and fellow “wunderkind” Cory Gardner is basically an “earmark,” which is something that is normally reserved for members of congress and less often seen by state legislators. Whether it passes or fails – and it’s almost certainly going to fail – Penry and Gardner just irrevocably damaged their future political careers. For a quick primer, see how The Denver Post rips into their idea today:

Coloradans deserve reasonable solutions to our state’s transportation problems.

Instead, we’re left with either nothing, which has been the governor’s plan the past two years, or schemes, including this latest Republican plan that actually drains funds from Colorado water projects into a single pork-barrel project on Interstate 70.

The more Penry tries to do, the more it becomes obvious that the would-be emperor has no clothes. Does this mean that Penry will never be Governor of Colorado? Of course not, but it does mean that he is absolutely not ready to run for Governor or any other statewide office in the near future. Penry is going nowhere until he either moves to the middle, which isn’t likely to happen, or Colorado moves back to the right, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

If Penry does attempt a run for Governor, where is his base? It’s no secret that the business community is not all that impressed with Penry, particularly given his laughably-stupid ballot measure plan last fall. Penry is a career politician who hasn’t done anything else of note outside of the legislature. It’s also no secret that the moderate branch of the party – what’s left of it, anyway – considers Penry to be just another right-wing soldier. Penry may or may not be well-liked along the Western Slope, but who cares? Nearly 90 percent of Colorado voters live along the Front Range between Ft. Collins and Pueblo. Being a Western Slope candidate doesn’t mean anything anymore, and the numbers prove that out.

Even if Penry were to somehow win a primary against Marc Holtzman, which we don’t think he could, he could only do it by running as far to the right as possible. That would leave a general election of a younger Bob Schaffer (ideology-wise) against the moderate Ritter. It’s not hard to predict who wins that one.

All of this leads back to our first prediction – that Penry won’t actually run for governor. Our guess is that he dips his toes in the water with pressure from Dick Wadhams, who also doesn’t understand that Colorado has shifted politically, but ultimately finds that he won’t be able to raise the money or generate the support needed to win both a Republican primary and a general election. He’ll stay where he is and make the safe decision to run for re-election in 2010 instead.

In some ways, Penry is in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Penry had been a 33-year-old Senate leader for the GOP eight years ago, he might have been the perfect candidate to head a statewide ticket. But things have changed a lot in the last decade, and Penry has not. He had a chance as Senate Minority Leader to show bold, innovative leadership for the GOP. But he didn’t. Penry is what he is, which isn’t what works in Colorado right now.