Posted by Dan_Slater | Posted in 06 Governor's Race, 06 Legislative Races, 2006 Congressional, 2006 Elections, County Parties, Events, Other 2006 Statewide Races | Posted on 26-08-2006
I should be sleeping now, getting ready for another busy day tomorrow, but I wanted to share my day with all of you.
I began the morning by driving with my daughter over to Pueblo, where we were going to participate in the State Fair Parade. We joined Bill Ritter and Abel Tapia, who were both riding through the parade on horseback, as they greeted the crowd.
The State Fair Parade is an interesting creature. It is one of the most unforgiving parades for political entries. For some reason, the folks who run the parade haven’t figured out that candidates for office are gonna’ show up at the parade and try to greet voters. They ban any type of campaign signs — signs can’t say “vote” or have the word “for” on them. As a result, most folks put duct tape over the name of the office and those words. It is quite a silly exercise.
For Bill Ritter’s campaign, they had printed a sign that just said “Ritter For All Seasons” — the theme of the parade was “for all seasons”. So we didn’t have a problem. The most notable issue of political problems came in 2004, when the Pete Coors campaign workers just would not comply with the rules and they were removed from the parade. Pete Coors himself was there, and was relegated to riding on an entry for a state house candidate.
Anyway, the response in Pueblo was phenomenal. We were two spaces behind the Beauprez folks, so we could compare the response for them with our response. People were truly energized when we went by — they were clapping and cheering — a real sense of excitement for the Democrat. Beauprez’s folks, though, just could not seem to drum up the same kind of enthusiasm. Definitely a good sign.
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I then returned to Canon City to attend the Fremont Dems’ picnic and rally. Fremont had a lot of great Dem leaders around, including Senator Ken Salazar. Senator Salazar did a great job reving up the crowd, and promising to work to keep our legislature in Democratic hands. He then turned the podium over to Barbara O’Brien, who gave a great talk about what is at stake in the governor’s race. Several others spoke, including Congressional candidate Jay Fawcett, State House candidates Buffie McFadyen(HD47), Anna Lord (HD21) and Curtis Imrie (HD60). Mickey Griego, the candidate for SD2 spoke, as did several of our county candidates.
There was a crowd of well over 100 in attendance on this cool summer day in Canon City. Folks seemed to really be energized about Democrats in Canon City.
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I then left Canon City and drove up to Denver for a forum sponsored by Democracy for America-Denver. I was on a panel which included Bill Winter’s campaign manager, Rep. Morgan Carroll, and CU Regent Michael Carrigan. It was a pleasant change of pace to get away from the four to five minute speeches that I normally give at Party functions and talk in a lot more depth about issues and strategies. The panel discussion was about President Bush’s failures and how we take advantage of those failures here in Colorado as Democrats.
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I’m finally back home. I’ll head out early in the morning for Durango, where they’re holding their annual BBQ / Picnic at the Isgar ranch. I’ll post more about that tomorrow night or Monday morning. In the meantime, I have pictures from today already up at: