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It says something about the state of the Colorado economy that the Republicans are having so much trouble finding a Rich White Guy to run for governor.
One announced candidate, Mike Strang, almost lost his ranch in financial reverses a few years ago; anyone who's ever seen the sheriff approach with foreclosure papers on the family homestead is obviously not rich. The latest entry, John Andrews of the Independence Institute, is unlikely to be rich, because if you're wealthy, you endow a conservative think tank, not work at one.
As for Robin Heid, the candidate who rightly holds that governments are more dangerous than drugs, he was on a campaign swing through the hustings last Sunday afternoon and dropped by for an hour. I didn't ask him for a financial statement, but the odds are high that he's not rich, either, based on this evidence:
· The campaign vehicle is indeed a Cadillac, but it's an old one. The only similar car I know belongs to our sometime piano teacher, who's neither rich nor white.
· His road manager was able to translate the
bumper sticker on my pickup, which says Chinga el ingles
oficial.
He even wanted one. That is not the act of
anyone connected to a Rich White Guy.
· Our other Easter visitors included a mine
electrician from Kremmling, a Pueblo musician and his
family, and my happily unemployed neighbor from across the
street. Ours is simply not a living room that will ever
appear on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
; why
would Heid be the exception?
But that doesn't explain the shortage of Rich White Guys to serve as GOP standard-bearers, so I consulted an expert, my friend Kirby Perschbacher.
As a small-town boy who, through hard work, grew up to be president of the largest construction company hereabouts, he should be ideal Republican material. Further, most of his business consists of building custom vacation homes in upscale hideaways, so he deals a lot with Rich White Guys.
But my customers mostly come from out-of-state --
Texas and California,
he explained. If I wanted to
build mountain housing that Coloradans could afford, I'd be
in the mobile home business, or maybe we'd be sewing
tents.
Until a couple years ago, Kirby was a registered Republican who attended his precinct caucus and voted at the county assembly. I asked why he quit the party.
All that time, the Republicans were in power in
Washington, handing out plenty of lucrative HUD graft. If I
could have got in on one of those scam developments, where
you could inflate the construction costs and then collect
subsidized rents based on the padded value of the property,
I'd be in fat city now. Isn't that why most contractors get
interested in politics?
But do the Republicans look after their own? Hell,
no, they never notified me of these great American
opportunities, even though I was a good party member. Never
even hinted. They didn't keep me informed; they let other
folks raid the public treasury, but not me or many other
loyal Colorado Republicans. I figured if I was stuck
running an honest business anyway, I might as well do the
honest thing and quit that useless party. The Republicans
really fell down on the job when they were passing out the
gravy in Colorado, and that's why they've got a severe
shortage of Rich White Guys this year.
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