Romanoff draws a crowd in Centennial

1/12/2010 - Centennial Citizen - Peter Jones - Amid a shuffling of political chairs, U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff made a campaign stop on Jan. 7 in Centennial’s Willow Creek neighborhood.

While taking questions from an audience of about 100 residents in the neighborhood’s clubhouse, the senatorial hopeful playfully dismissed a suggestion that he seek the Democratic nomination for governor instead.

“We get a lot of calls to that effect, but not all of them from Sen. Bennet’s campaign,” Romanoff joked.

The former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, is running a primary challenge to incumbent Michael Bennet, who was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter last year after President Obama tapped Sen. Ken Salazar to be U.S. secretary of the interior.

When Ritter announced this month that he would not seek a second term as governor, Romanoff, a Denver Democrat, emerged as one of the leading potential candidates to replace him. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has since announced he will be a candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Although Centennial’s District 3 is largely Republican, the politically mixed audience was mostly receptive to Romanoff’s pitch for bipartisan reform of healthcare and energy policy.

“I’m running for the Senate because I want to bring the same bipartisan leadership that we’ve been able to build in Colorado to a town where it seems in such short supply. It’s almost invisible,” the former House speaker said.

Romanoff is critical of the U.S. Senate health care bill that will soon be reconciled with a House version. The candidate believes Senate Democrats made a mistake when they removed the public insurance option from its reform measure.

“Congress has chosen to pass a bill that requires every American to purchase insurance, but does too little to make the policies affordable,” he said. “... It’s not worth sacrificing our principles in order to achieve some cosmetic commitment to bipartisanship.”

The candidate, who pledged not to accept contributions from corporate special-interest groups, tied the state of the final Senate bill to efforts by lobbyists for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but you can connect the dots without too much trouble,” he said. “If you allow large corporate special-interest groups to bankroll Congress, you ought not be surprised.”

When pressed twice by an audience member, Romanoff stopped short of saying he would vote against the Senate bill in its current form.

With respect to energy policy, the candidate advocated reducing the income tax and offsetting it with a new pollution or carbon-based tax.

“Even if global warming is a fad that will go away on its own,” he said, “the worst thing that will happen if we ... reduce our reliance on foreign fossil fuel and use our natural resources as alternatives is we will succeed in creating millions of good green-powered jobs, clean up our skies, protect our public health and defend our national security.”

Romanoff stressed that reducing the national debt will become more of a mathematical issue than a political one as Congress moves forward in coming years.

“We’re spending 3 or 4 billion dollars a year — not fixing roads or bridges, or teaching children or treating illness. We’re spending it on interest,” he said.

Romanoff’s Willow Creek appearance was organized by neighborhood resident Laura Hoeppner, a Democratic activist who served on the elected Centennial Charter Commission in 2008.

The candidate was introduced by District 3 City Councilmember Patrick Anderson, who is actively working on Romanoff’s primary campaign.

“I actually quit my job to go work for Andrew in this race because I believe in it so much,” he said. “He remembers what’s important in politics. It’s not all about becoming a U.S. senator. It’s also about getting people elected to school board, to city council because we’re all involved in this community of ours and we all have a role.”