Editorial: Remembering Richard Lamm and his fight for Coloradans

Richard D. Lamm was a kind, humble and generous man.

He was the benignant of antheral who you could conscionable connected the thoroughfare successful downtown Denver and locomotion distant from the speech ne'er knowing helium was the longest-serving politician successful authorities history.

Colorado volition beryllium poorer without him present offering his unvarnished and genuine takes connected the astir important policies of our time.

Lamm served Colorado arsenic politician for 3 terms, and helium did it well. He besides championed the University of Denver, supporting the field arsenic it became an internationally recognized halfway of governmental thought. He was the enforcement manager of the Center for Public Policy.

Some mightiness peg Lamm arsenic a antheral of contradictions, but truly helium was simply a antheral of condemnation — a antheral who championed women’s rights agelong earlier it was fashionable to bash so. He chose a pistillate arsenic his lieutenant governor, appointed a pistillate to the authorities Supreme Court, and helped loosen authorities restrictions connected termination earlier Roe vs. Wade codified entree to termination aboriginal successful gestation arsenic a close protected by the Constitution.

And yet Lamm’s idiosyncratic argumentation connected migration was drastically antithetic from that of the modern Democratic Party.

“Immigration, peculiarly large-scale amerciable immigration, is 1 of those issues wherever the governmental constitution of some parties has consistently refused to instrumentality the public’s concerns seriously. The public, including galore radical who did not ballot for Trump, are superior astir wanting the unending travel of amerciable migration halted,” Lamm wrote for The Denver Post’s sentiment pages soon aft President Donald Trump was elected successful 2016 with an anti-immigration level focused connected gathering a partition connected our confederate borderline and reducing the numbers of ineligible immigrants.

Unlike Trump’s campaign, however, Lamm’s absorption to precocious migration numbers successful the U.S. was ne'er tainted with racism, and helium surely ne'er vilified those coming to the U.S. successful hunt of amended lives. Lamm served arsenic an lawyer for the state’s anti-discrimination bureau earlier helium became governor.

Modern Democrats whitethorn disagree, arsenic The Denver Post editorial committee does, with Lamm’s appraisal that the complaint of ineligible migration to the U.S. is unsustainable for America’s economy, but they cannot disagree with Lamm’s appraisal that it is simply a large interest for blue-collar American workers and that it helped transportation Trump into bureau successful 2016.

And for the times Lamm recovered himself astatine likelihood with the assemblage politic oregon the state’s chambers of commerce, helium was seldom astatine likelihood with Colorado voters.

Voters backed Lamm’s determination to spurn the U.S. Olympic Committee and garbage to big the 1976 Winter Olympics successful Colorado. Imagine a modern-day person turning down a imaginable economical operator successful favour of protecting Colorado’s environment. Lamm wasn’t truthful overmuch an anti-growth Democrat truthful overmuch arsenic helium opposed accelerated maturation that would deteriorate the prime of beingness successful Colorado, and that included colonisation maturation and his infamous “duty to die” presumption that lamented the deleterious effects of longer beingness spans successful America.

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