Thirty-five Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Former U.S. Rep. Wayne Aspinall declared that Colorado was “back in the big leagues” as he introduced divisive Coloradan Interior Secretary James Watt at the annual Club 20 banquet in Grand Junction. Watt, who noted he carried a Navajo arrowhead to “be protected from newspaper reporters and TV people,” held a combative press conference a couple hours earlier inside a noisy hangar at the airport, where he got into an argument with a reporter who asked about the Reagan administration’s plans to weaken the Clean Air Act. “Why ask me? Did the Sierra Club ask you to ask me? My aides tell me not to bait people, but I know your sources,” Watt thundered. Noting that Interior dealt with “over 220 groups,” he claimed that “only eight” have come out against him. “Some of my aides hoped to improve my image. They’ve given up on that. But everyone loves me.” A relaxed and confident Watt, however, received three standing ovations from Club 20 fans at the Holiday Inn. Noting that he’d prayed Ronald Reagan wouldn’t ask him to take on the mess at Interior – an entrenched bureaucracy and “unrelenting pressure from special interests” had made the department nearly unmanageable – Watt said he nonetheless answered the call when it came. Bringing former Colorado House Speaker Bob Burford along to run the Bureau of Land Management, Watt said, “Critics told the most malicious, vile lies, but we didn’t bother to answer them. We were bringing change to America.” That included instituting a “multiple use” policy on the 341 million BLM acres, including mining, drilling, logging and grazing. “Who will the land be managed for? For a few backpackers or for us?” he asked. …

… Colorado Republican Party Chairman Bo Callaway introduced Bob Teeter to a gaggle of reporters citing a passage in a recent article about the GOP pollster: “There are four men that President (Ronald) Reagan listens to. Bob Teeter is one of them.” Teeter, who had risen to prominence as President Gerald Ford’s pollster in the 1976 campaign, unveiled results of an in-depth survey of Colorado voters in an effort to help state Republicans spot “the burning issues of 1982.” The good news: It appeared two-term Gov. Dick Lamm might be vulnerable if he opted to seek a third term, but state voters also thought the Democrat shared their middle-of-the-road values of protecting the environment while boosting economic growth. Using “computers to single out 800 individuals and extract educated conclusions as to what all the rest are thinking,” Teeter found that pollution and the environment topped voter concerns, with 10 percent citing the paired topic as the key issue. Water was second, with 8 percent, followed by the 6 percent who chose solving problems with Social Security, 5 percent pointing to oil shale development and 4 percent picking population growth. The big question, Teeter said, was whether Reaganomics would work fast enough “for the ‘Me Now!’ Pepsi generation,” or whether the Democrats who sided with Reagan in 1980 would treat that as a brief flirtation and return to the fold in future elections. …

… According to a comprehensive survey of county Democratic Party chairs, sentiment was strong that Dick Lamm should seek a third term as governor, and state Rep. Betty Orten was the overwhelming choice to run for secretary of state in 1982, but there was no clear choice for a candidate for attorney general in the wake of Democrat J.D. MacFarlane’s announcement he wouldn’t seek another term. Colorado first lady Dottie Lamm, who was recovering from breast cancer surgery, and U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder topped the list of “most admired” Democratic women, with Lt. Gov. Nancy Dick and state Sen. Polly Baca Barragan also receiving numerous mentions. …

… Forget the endless wrangling over congressional reapportionment between Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm and Republican lawmakers – the state GOP had just sued in federal court to demand maps by Nov. 10, a year before the 1982 election – wrote Salida-based contributing columnist Ed Quillen. “If the Legislature is busy arguing about redistricting, it can’t also be busy passing unconstitutional pornography laws, moronic prohibitions of un-definable drug paraphernalia or resolutions on ‘Americanism’ sponsored by Sam Zakhem,” Quillen wrote. Instead, it was time to admit that Colorado didn’t make any sense as a state – its borders fell along arbitrary survey lines, not any natural boundaries – and dismantle the rectangle. “Once we abandon the sentimental notion that we have to keep Colorado intact,” he wrote, “redistricting becomes easy – make it someone else’s headache.” Quillen’s remedy was simple: give the San Luis Valley to New Mexico, let Nebraska have the northeast farming acres, turn over northwestern Colorado to Wyoming, give canyon country to Utah and the Arkansas Valley to Kansas. That would leave just the Denver metro area and some close mountain land, and that ought to be easy to slice up. “Colorado might have been a good idea 120 years ago, when a few miners drew lines on a crude map and argued whether to call it Jefferson, Idaho or Colorado territory,” Quillen concluded. “But it’s an idea whose time has passed. Let’s get out of the state business. The General Assembly is proof in itself that we aren’t very good at it.” …

… Wil Armstrong, son of U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong, had taken up the bass guitar and was performing with a rock combo alongside some friends in the Virginia suburbs, where the family lived. The younger Armstrong was making “some pretty good sounds” on the electric strings, mom Ellen Armstrong said, although she only chuckled when asked what the senator’s favorite rock-and-roll song was. It was unlikely, local media observers assured The Statesman, that Armstrong’s flagship radio station, top-rated KEZW, would drop its easy-listening format for the more raucous sounds of Wil’s band. In other news from the household, daughter Anne Armstrong had “flown the coop” and was starting college at the University of Denver.