When I do these "my lunch with..." things I listen. I may ask a question or two but mostly I just listen. And every politician is happy to spend an hour talking. It's the nature of the job, and with an hour to fill, the real interesting part is what they choose to discuss.
Except Speaker Romanoff. He answers questions quietly and succinctly. And that's it. He also isn't selling anything. Granted he's not running for office this November but he has an initiative for the ballot. He's supporting numerous Dems actively. And no sales job at all.
This is a person 100% focused on making the system work. There's no "me, me, me" in The Speaker. I think this is key to his success and to the great respect he's held in. And at the same time he's a very engaging speaker.
He takes a lot of pride in referendum C, primarily in working with everyone involved to get enough support, and all the critical key players, on-board. What the basic compromise had to be was pretty obvious to most, but convincing everyone that this is the best that was acceptable to all - that was an amazing effort. They say success has a million parents while failure is an orphan. But Romanoff was a key player in making this happen and he views that as one of his major accomplishments, as he should.
He talked at length (meaning more than 3 sentences) about how the recently passed budget meant more money to fund critical programs, and the individuals this reached and how much it meant for them. He sees how what they do in the legislature can mean the world to those we help. Having legislation make a difference clearly drives him.
He also talked about the mess we have with TABOR and the other spending requirements in the constitution. It was interesting listening to him talk about this, the various approaches to fixing it, the trade-offs with each approach, and the ramifications of each solution. He definitely knows this subject very well. Even more important, he's clearly open to working toward a whatever solution will work & can pass rather than being locked into a single solution.
How to govern kept coming up and he clearly views the job of legislating as a responsibility to work together to craft solutions. He clearly was bothered that the budget passed on a party line vote (1 Republican in each house also voted for it). He takes pride in moving good Republican sponsored legislation forward rather than using the Republican party approach of killing anything with a Democratic sponsor. Again, taking his responsibility to legislate seriously.
At the end I asked him if he had a magic wand, what would be his one wish. He said to get a guaranteed level of adequate funding for education - pre-school through higher ed. What's interesting is education funding came up at most tangentially throughout the conversation before then. And I had assumed his wish would be to untangle the TABOR/etc mess. So interesting answer.
He's definitely a rock star. A very likable rock star. And an exceptional legislator.
ps - I asked him what he's going to do next. I got the standard "I have no idea." He's concentrating now on getting Dems elected in November, his initiative, and graduating from law school (1 last class this fall).
