ANDREW Romanoff is running for the US Senate, locked in a bitter primary with Sen. Michael Bennet.
When Sen. Ken Salazar moved to the Dept. of Interior, Romanoff thought Gov. Ritter should have named Romanoff to the seat.
Romanoff has a tremendous sense of entitlement to this seat, yet, when asked about it, he simply says, the governor gets one vote. Three million other votes Im claiming.
Our interview, which took place before the recent precinct caucuses, ranges over a wide range of domestic issues his primary expertise.
But not just the issues. Romanoff is dead certain that he possesses the legislative skills to make a far better senator than Bennet. He says he learned the art in the Colorado legislature, where he advanced to speaker of the house.
I have a better ability to bring Democrats and Republicans together to solve the toughest problems.
He also says he knows Colorado better than any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, in the race.
Various Democratic leaders urged Romanoff to run against Bill Ritter for governor, but Romanoff said his skills are suited to the Senate, and thats where hes set his sights.
Since Romanoff believes that Bennet agrees with him on most domestic issues, people dont have to change horses in voting for Romanoff, he says.
His top domestic issues are health care, the economy and climate change. Human rights also trigger his passion.
HE is focused on the primary election, Aug. 10.
Im focused mostly on the concerns of my constituents, not the other candidates.
There is a gulf between the chatter of the blogs and the political pundits, who like to follow ups and downs of polls and the money chase. Sometimes they generate their own story line.
He has a point. He made that statement before the recent precinct caucuses, in which he performed much better than predicted.
Dont read the blogs. My campaign, like my career, is focused on people of Colorado. Most citizens dont read these blogs either. They are trying to heat their homes, fuel their cars, pay their mortgage.
Im the only candidate who is refusing to accept corporate cash and PAC money.
He feels its corrupting.
Drug companies and big banks would not be spending millions on members of Congress if they got nothing in return.
Are all members of Congress corrupt?
Its a conflict of interest when they need to regulate the industries they accept money from.
Someone asked me, says Romanoff, what if candidates didnt have to raise money at all? Just debate the issues, think about policy and get free air time instead of dialing for dollars.
That would dramatically reshape the pool of candidates who might run and win. Right now, Washington operates on a pay to play system.
He says the recent Supreme Court decision removing all restrictions on campaign donations by corporations is dangerous for democracy. How are corporations people?
ON health care: This crisis is killing us. 75,000 people are dying from a treatable or preventable illness because they cant afford insurance.
We have to reform the way we finance health care and the way we deliver it.
Financing: End the 70-year experiment of employer-based insurance.
It might have made more sense when people kept jobs for life. Make coverage portable. The House and Senate bills patch together a broken system.
The for profit insurance model itself is flawed in this sense: The best way to make a profit is to exclude as many sick people as possible and deny as many claims as possible.
I didnt reach this conclusion lightly. I met a lot of people in Colorado who thought they were insured until they got sick.
A better approach is to give everyone access to a basic package that they can supplement.
A more dramatic shift would be to take the folks who are pushing paper and put them to work treating patients.
Our competitors in the industrialized world do their insurance at a fraction of the cost. $7,500 per person in the US is spent on health insurance. In European countries Switzerland, Germany its $3,500 per person, with outcomes as good or better.
I ASK Romanoff how he would break the gridlock in Congress.
In all modesty, I have a better ability to forge consensus than anyone else in the race. You can look at my record, and the people who have evaluated my record. The State Legislative Leaders Foundation and other bodies. I was Public Official of the Year in 2008.
Its tougher in DC. Im not naive about this. One of the ways we found common ground in Colorado was to find moderate Republicans, who are in short supply in DC.
I never thought my party had a magical monopoly on good ideas. I tried to understand where my colleagues were coming from, what was important for them, what principles Im not willing to sacrifice, and what preferences we could both bend to meet in the middle.
On some issues, no compromise is possible.
He concedes that if the other side only wants to win seats and not compromise, you cant work with them.
I was the last Democrat to hold the title of minority leader in the Colorado House. You can use all your time and power to maneuver your way back into the majority. Or you can try to solve some problems. Democrats got very good at criticizing the other team. I directed my staff to end that practice.
I told them, I dont want a single release issued that doesnt contain a solution or an idea.
That turned out to be a good way to govern and a good way to show the voters you could govern. Which they gave me a chance to do in 2004.
In Colorado we dont talk bills to death. We take up or down votes. We conduct our votes in the open. We dont trade votes. Dont attach unrelated provisions to bills. Congress could benefit from Colorados common sense.
The US Senate has become the place where good ideas go to die. I didnt coin that.
Not that we should avoid a contest at all costs and squash dissent. Thats ludicrous.
ASKED about the economy, he says:
My first jobs were scooping ice cream, mopping floors, sorting car parts. It was a good way to make some money as a kid. But not the sort of jobs we can support an entire economy on.
The shift from an industrial to a service economy has dislocated a lot of workers. Its forced America to compete with entire countries which can offer labor at lower costs.
We can bring jobs back home by ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. We can make it easier for small business to get access to credit and capital.
We ought to educate our workforce to compete in a global economy. That means K-12 and higher ed and lifelong learning. Americans will change jobs. We need to keep our skills up to date.
We will never be the cheapest place to do business. We need to be the smartest.
The cost of insurance is driving a lot of companies out of business or out of the healthcare business.
Reforming practices on Wall St. is essential. Millions are losing their homes, paychecks, savings, in part because they fell victim to abuse or deceptive practices at the hands of some of the biggest financial institutions of America.
One reform: restore the separation that once exited between commercial and investment banking. It was repealed in 1999. It needs to be restored.
ON human rights:
I have been to China twice and brought that subject up in Beijing.
My take is that we ought to do everything we can to use our moral suasion, economic policy and international leadership [to improve Chinas human rights].
Economic policy: I think we ought to take a countrys human rights activities into account in issuing Most Favored Nation status.
I was an amateur diplomat at the time and didnt get very far. China persecutes practitioners of Falon Gung, subsidizes the Sudanese government, which in turn subsidizes the Janjaweed.
I sponsored a bill to divest from companies that do business with Sudan.
Human rights is a central passion of mine.
These problems are too big for a state to solve on its own. People are dying around the world, sometimes at the hands of their own government. Our government in its silence is acquiescing.
As an American and a Jew I find that indefensible.
