BY DWIGHT SHELLMAN
Starting this spring, local political party processes will ramp up. Woody Creekers should consider engaging this year. Here’s why
Mick Ireland is term-limited and cannot run again for county commissioner. Mick generally listened to Woody Creek positions about county activities here. Two Democrats — Rachael Richards and Jim True — are likely to seek to fill Mick’s position. This means there may be a contested Democratic primary on August 8.
You have to start much sooner than that — March 21 — if you care who is the top-line Democrat on the August ballot. If you want to be a part of the process, attend your neighborhood caucus on March 21 (locations and times will be in my next report).
At the caucus, you will help select some of your neighbors to be delegates to the Democratic county assembly (in May or June, usually, which I’ll also re-port in my next article).
The county party assemblies are important. The nominee who gets the most votes there gets the highest position in the primary ballot, considered the favored ballot position. It is also possible to shut out a prospective nominee who fails to get a minimum number of the delegate votes.
Picking a delegate at your neighborhood party caucus that will support your primary candidate may be very important to you and to Woody Creek.
Both True and Richards are proven campaigners and effective office holders. Both have sponsored and participated in progressive community programs and projects. True has more direct history in supporting Woody Creek, since he was a commissioner. Richards has supported housing projects in Woody Creek that we have opposed, but that was done from her limited position as a city official.
There are clear choices between these two potential candidates.
Richards, a former Aspen mayor and present City Council member, is a skilled practioner of Mick Ireland’s sophisticated and highly effective “get out the vote”·apparatus (database, phone banking, and canvassing of voters) wtith a proven record of exercising and updating this machinery –which be will up to date and ready to go. In my view, she is a practitioner of a take-no-prisoners approach to politics that has devolved from the national and state levels to the local level. This approach tends to invite into legitimate public policy debates the negative personal characterizations of those who oppose her.
True is an experienced former county commissioner whose approach is more judicious and focused on the public policy implications and never the personalities of those who disagree with him. However, True is not a “get out the vote” apparatchik like Richards, nor does he have the present apparatus or cadres of worker Richards will be able to mobilize.
One final note: You must be registered with your party to attend your party caucuses. (Republicans are having theirs too, but I am not yet up on what their issues are.) You will still be able to vote in the August primary if you register with your party by July 10. But by then the ballot positions and freeze-outs will already be decided by the Democrats who attended the March 21 caucus and the spring Pitkin County Democratic Assembly.
The year 2006 is a big year for elections in Colorado, not just in Pitkin County. Cut out the schedule below and paste it on your refrigerator, if you want to play a personal part in changing the way things are going in the state, the nation, and the world.
Dwight K. Shellman, Jr. is the Immediate Past Chair of the US National Ramsar Committee, the national committee that supports U.S. participation in the so-called Ramsar Convention — The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar, 1971). Since 1993 Shellman has been the President and General Counsel of Caddo Lake Institute. The Caddo Lake wetland ecosystem is located on the border between NE Texas and NW Louisiana. The Institute has actively used the Ramsar Convention, and its world-class technical guidance, as unifying themes for community-based local and international programs for the conservation and wise use of wetlands.
