Twenty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Denver voters sent Wellington Webb, the city’s first African-American mayor, a “somber message” on Election Day, handing a win to City Councilwoman Mary DeGroot in the first round of balloting. DeGroot edged the incumbent by a whisker, just 0.1 percent of the vote, though she had been running far behind Webb in polls, with less than 30 percent in surveys. DeGroot made good on her objective to turn out her base in southeast Denver, where voters flocked to the polls in record numbers, although turnout city-wide was as low as anyone could remember. Webb’s plan had been to counteract challengers by getting out the vote in northeast Denver — “But, apparently, nobody was home,” the Statesman reported. Candidate John Frew urged his supporters to vote by mail, in an approach adopted from Pat Schroeder’s congressional campaign, but after the 6,000 mail ballots had arrived, additional votes were few and far between. Auditor Bob Crider had expected to make the run-off but barely cleared 9 percent of the vote with scattered support and no apparent base. The big news was DeGroot’s “hidden” vote. “Even the most idealistic observer has to note that the ‘race’ issue is in this election to stay,” The Statesman noted. Not only did the “white” precincts in south Denver want to take back city government, pundits observed, but black and Latino residents, who had held power through two Federico Peña terms and four years of Webb, “apparently … don’t care whether or not they give it up.” Webb didn’t help matters when he canceled all media appearances on election night, exacerbating strained relations with both Denver dailies (both had endorsed DeGroot). …

… State Sen. Charlie Duke, R-Monument, was sparking an avalanche of criticism over his remarks implicating the federal government in the recent Oklahoma City bombing. Leaders of both parties denounced the self-proclaimed “revolutionary,” and a recall effort was stirring. Duke had blasted the “liberal media” for linking the bombing suspects to “patriot” movements and anti-government militia and claimed he had a “reliable informant in the Justice Department” who assured him that the Feds were behind the explosion. El Paso County GOP chairman Bob Gardner was having none of it. “To make that kind of charge or imply it without evidence is irresponsible,” he said. Gardner’s opinion was backed up by the overwhelming majority of callers to county Republican headquarters, with condemnation outpacing support for Duke by a 20-to-1 ratio. State Democratic Party chairman Mike Beatty piled on further, calling on Duke to come clean about more than 1,000 phone calls placed from Duke’s legislative office to a number of militias around the country, including some where witnesses reported bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh had visited. “I believe that Sen. Duke is placing dozens of phone calls every month to the extremist and the so-called patriot organizations and to racist organizations,” Beatty charged. He demanded that Duke reimburse taxpayers for the calls and “stop this irresponsible and paranoid investigation at state expense.” For his part, Duke said he was merely following up on “bona fide allegations” that the government was behind the massacre, adding, “I hope and pray that it’s false.” But Duke wasn’t backing down from what he called reasonable suspicions that the Feds were capable of such atrocities, citing the confrontations in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.

Thirty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … After spending a week in Washington, D.C. — more on that below — the Statesman staff returned to find its offices padlocked, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service, in response to a dispute over taxes from two years earlier. “Rumors were flying around all week about the possible demise of this publication,” wrote publisher Bob Sweeney in his “Statesmanlike” weekly column. “We’re sorry to disappoint anyone, but the Statesman is still in business and will remain so for hopefully many more years.” Even the venerable Gossip column took its eye off politics for an item about the shuttered offices, noting that Statesman writer Miller Hudson had stopped by to drop off an article, only to discover that the taxman had cometh. “So what if we are temporarily without phones, records, files, typewriters, desks, etc.,” the anonymous Gossip scribe wrote. “We’ve got ink in our blood and a little adversity never hurt us.” In fact, while sorting out the tax troubles, there would be several Statesman offices around town: a Cherry Hills bureau at Sweeney’s Villager newspaper offices and an East Capitol Hill bureau at editor Jody Hope Strogoff’s place. “We thank those who stick with us through thick and thin, mainly thin,” Sweeney cracked. He boasted that the issue in readers’ hands was unusually thick with ads, a result of the staff putting shoulders to the “advertising wheel” and learning that lots of businesses and political organizations wanted to reach Statesman readers. “We thank the IRS for awakening a sleeping giant and giving us a good kick in the rear, which has done wonders for the finances of this newspaper.” …

… Statesman operations had transplanted to the nation’s capital the previous week to cover the Wirth Washington Seminar, U.S. Rep. Tim Wirth’s annual three-day event bringing together constituents to get a glimpse at the federal government’s inner workings. The economy was recovering, said the director of the Congressional Budget Office, and Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Gray, the Democratic chairman of the House Budget Committee, talked about balancing the budget with cuts to defense rather than social programs. Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich talked about the partisan protest over seating a Democratic congressman from Indiana — he’d won by just four votes after several recounts — and then got to budgetary matters, calling himself a “cheap hawk” when it comes to defense spending. Colorado Republicans blasted Gingrich’s appearance at the seminar, worrying that it benefited Wirth if the Democrat decided to run for the Senate in the 1986 election. Another speaker was Wisconsin’s Les Aspin, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who recounted his appearance at a Wirth campaign event 11 years earlier, when the West Denver Democrat was first running for Congress. Aspin was greeted by Wirth’s wife, Wren, who was planting vegetables in the garden as a small crowd of campaign staffers gathered for a backyard barbecue — hardly the heavy-hitting event the powerful lawmaker had been expecting. “If this thing gets off the ground, we’ll win everywhere,” Aspin recalled thinking. Of course, Wirth swept incumbent Republican Don Brotzman from office in the wake of Watergate, and “Aspin had to admit that he’d eaten a little crow about his initial impression of ‘Wirthless’ that summer of 1974.”

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com