Thirty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro was the main draw at a fundraiser for Sen. Gary Hart at the Executive Tower Inn. She was helping him retire the $3 million debt left over from his presidential run a year earlier, when he gave Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale a run for his money in the primary race. Ferraro was barraged by autograph seekers and admirers who simply wanted to shake her hand and tell her how much she’d done to advance the cause of women.

Shepherded by Executive Tower Inn proprietor Chat Paterson, two young daughters of a hotel employee, Casi Smith, 8, and Jodi Smith, 9, were elated to meet Ferraro and told her they wanted to grow up to be president. In her remarks at the $25-a-plate breakfast, Ferraro mentioned meeting the young girls as symbolic of the progress made by women. She was excited about the prospect of former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s run for in the Republican primaries. “It’s great,” Ferraro said in bipartisan fashion, “because we’re going to have women out there taking their rightful position in national politics.” Noting that she had no intention of voting for Kirkpatrick, Ferraro added, “but not because of her style, but I won’t vote for her because of her substance.” Turning her attention to the 1988 presidential election, Ferraro minced no words about the potential Republican nominee, Vice President George H.W. Bush. “He seemed to have a sensible approach to what was going on,” she said, talking about Bush’s run in the 1980 GOP primary. “When he got the nomination (for vice president), he flipped over on everything.” Ferraro said she had been “absolutely floored” by Bush’s performance in their vice presidential debate the year before, saying he had gone from serious to giddy, from happy to sad. If she’d acted like that, Ferraro said, people would have called attention to her “mood swings.” …

… “If this is the future, pass the razor blades,” wrote Statesman arts and theater critic Miller Hudson in a review of Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000, by Gov. Dick Lamm. Comparing Lamm to the Puritans who settled New England, Hudson called the Democrat “America’s contemporary Cassandra,” and said his new book “assaults us with alarms” about the future United States. Written as a series of memos, speeches and policy papers submitted to a fictional president in the year 2000, the book, Hudson said, was well written and entertaining, though “unrelievedly bleak.” “Are these the imaginings of a madman, or the unheeded warnings of a prescient prophet?” Hudson asks, deciding that the social traumas Lamm portrays are “little more than straight-line extrapolations from current trends,” so cannot be dismissed out of hand. In the end, the critic said, “Governor Gloom” was more than merely an author reading national tea leaves. Because he had another year or so in office, he could help shape the future. “Setting off the fire alarms simply isn’t sufficient. His concerns would prove more convincing if he were using his ‘bully pulpit’ more forcefully to promote public policy changes,” including tackling looming problems with Social Security, federal spending and immigration. …

… Republican Senate candidates Terry Considine, state Sen. Martha Ezzard and U.S. Rep. Ken Kramer fielded a series of questions about national priorities. Considine and Kramer said the first bill they would introduce would be to balance the federal budget — by cutting spending, Considine emphasized — while Ezzard said she’d launch with water legislation that said, “in no uncertain terms, that Colorado should have autonomy to control its own water.” Regarding the defense budget, Considine said emphasizing the Strategic Defense Initiative made more sense than pouring money into aircraft carriers. Ezzrd said she agreed with a freeze on defense spending, along with all other departments, and wanted to see a change in procurement policies. Kramer said he’d be game to reduce increases in military spending but opposed cuts. All three said that reducing federal spending and cutting the deficit was the most pressing national issue. “And, of course, peace,” Ezzard added.

Fifty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Columnist Byron Johnson lamented the days when prisoners would emerge back into society wearing “a badly made suit, which practically labeled him an ex-con,” with only “a few dollars and a bus ticket” in his pocket. Efforts to rehabilitate convicts were working, he said, and measures such as the “compassionate” furloughs granted federal prisoners — to handle family emergencies or even interview for a potential employer for work after release. “In tomorrow’s world we will finally accept the admonition to abandon vengeance,” Johnson wrote. “We will come to understand that we must love the unlovely, not only to redeem them, but to save ourselves” …

… State Rep. Mark Hogan, D-Denver, charged Republican Gov. John Love with “playing a lopsided game of trick-or-treat with Colorado taxpayers,” resulting in plenty of tricks but few treats, at a speech in Greeley. “As a candidate, Love knocked on doors offering voters a bag of campaign wares which he promised contained a tasty income tax cut. However, the touted tax cut turned out to be only quick-melting camouflage hiding layer upon layer of bitter-tasting new taxes and special fees,” Hogan said. Keeping the Halloween metaphor going, Hogan said, “His bag of tricks were in evidence everywhere. In the field of higher education, the trick turned out to be increased tuitions. … Always the same promised treat of an income tax cut; always the taxpayer left holding Love’s bulging bag of tricks.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com