Article Contributed on: 9/18/2008 4:20:38 PM
When I was registered as a Republican from 1974 to 2007, I sometimes got the feeling that my GOP enemies (it's only paranoia if they weren't really my enemies) thought I was a RINO (Republican In Name ONLY.)
Now that I'm a Democrat, one of my good friends who is also a Democrat calls me a Democrat-for-a-Day, suspecting that on the inside I'm still sending secret reports to the Republican National Committee headquarters.
Over my 30 years with the GOP, I eventually started voting a straight Republican ticket in every election, except for changing my registration to Democrat once before to vote for
Ben Nighthorse Campbell in the primary against
Dick Lamm to help my barber at the time Yuma who had Raule's of Newark.
The first president I ever voted for was
Hubert Humphry, and I didn't register as a Republican until after I returned to graduate school and feel under the spell of the attractive young women at the College Republican table, which spell was deepened with National CR Chair
Karl Rove came to Denver to conduct a Student Fieldman School, or as the Washington Post called it the Dirty Political Tricks School. Over the following couple of years I helped Karl & Crew present the School at a few different colleges around the country, and I used what I learned to become President of the Graduate Student Association at DU (winning by one vote with a crowd of business school supporters I brought to the voters box just as time expired to vote) and Colorado Chair of College Republicans.
Betty Ann Dittemore asked me to run for her seat,
Chris Paulson has told me that if I'd decided to do it he wouldn't have run. It was a very safe Republican seat, so who knows what would have happened if I'd gone ahead with it.
Earlier this year I changed my registration to Democrat just in time to vote in the February 5 caucus as a Democrat. I was asked to serve on the Denver County Platform committee and was able to kill an effort to put in a plank to kill our wonderful Colorado neighborhood caucus system.
I'm much more of a believer in our great two-party system and our wonderful Colorado neighborhood precinct caucus system for nominating to the primary ballot than I am in either party itself. As a conservative (at least I see myself as a conservative) Democrat, I'm proud to be following in the footsteps of
Harry Truman and
Abraham Lincoln (my friend
David Fogel, former Denver Chair, is sure that if Lincoln were alive today he'd be a Democrat.)
My Archbishop
Charles Chaput in his wonderful new book
Render Unto Ceasar says that being in a political party is no substitute for thinking, and I certainly agree with that. Maybe I am a DINO (Democrat IN Name Only), would that be such a bad thing?
Right now? I'm trying to figure out how to best serve my neighbors between now and the elections in November. If you have any ideas, please let me know, OK? Send me an email, or better yet, join us for Denver Speakers Corner in Civic Center Park one Sunday afternoon. Details and optional RSVP are at
http://cocacop.meetup.com/2