Senate President Leroy Garcia is about to get a brief promotion.

Thursday, he will be the state’s temporary chief executive, as both Gov. Jared Polis and Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera are scheduled to be out of the state. He intends to sign a couple of proclamations in Pueblo, according to a spokesman, although they wouldn’t say what the nature of those proclamations are about.

Polis will be at the National Governors Association’s summer meeting in Salt Lake City. Primavera is participating in a national security conference in Pennsylvania through the end of the day Thursday.

Garcia, Democrat of Pueblo, is on the receiving end of some interesting suggestions on what he might do — or not do — with all that power as acting governor. So far, he’s been silent about what he intends to do during his hours in charge. So some of his colleagues and acquaintances are, um, helping him out.

From Sen. Dominick Moreno, Democrat of Commerce City and chair of the Joint Budget Committee: “You cannot make Pueblo the state capitol by executive order.” Added Rep. Daneya Esgar, Democrat of Pueblo, “I’ll find a way to make this happen.

From former Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff, who had a similar opportunity as acting governor: “I had this gig for a day too, @Leroy_Garcia. (@OldNewsman [the handle of veteran Colorado political reporter Charles Ashby] may remember it as one of the greatest days in state history). Hope you and [wife] Michelle live it up! And tell [sons] Jeremiah and Xan the Governor’s Residence is a perfect place for parties.”

There’s also the chile wars, including a current battle between Polis and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham over which state has the best chiles. Putting a Pueblan in charge of Colorado could lead to war, or something ….

Ashby, currently with the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, suggested Garcia ought to make Grand Junction the state capitol for a couple of hours. Another tweet from Ashby, however, suggests he may be quaking in fear at the idea of letting Garcia run the state. 

Capitol M could not help but notice the location stamp on this tweet: Redlands, Colorado, which is about 30 miles east of the Colorado-Utah state line. Looks like Ashby is making a run for the border.

In other matters …

Checking in on Hickenlooper

This week saw the return of the John Hickenlooper many of us recognize — occasionally goofy and endearing, rather than the stiff on the stage at the last presidential debate. This week, our former guv took on cycling, Hilary Clinton and Ivanka Trump:

• He participated in RAGBRAI, aka the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, both in cycling gear and on stage with the banjo. You will remember that Hickenlooper was a cycling advocate during his days as Guv, promoting professional bike races like the USA Pro Cycling Race and pushing a $100 million “Bike Health Initiative” to make Colorado the best place in the nation to ride a bike.

• Hickenlooper chided former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for not liking the “right” Goldfish crackers. Shot back the former first lady: “And they say you’re a moderate.”

• After Ivanka Trump cited statistics on Colorado’s great economic success, part of her visit to Lockheed Martin Space in Jefferson County this week, Hickenlooper tweeted back to her that he is running for president based on our state’s economic success. “Can I count on your support?” he asked. No response from the White House on that one.

Four decades of history & leadership

This week, Department of Natural Resources head Dan Gibbs posted a picture of himself taken at the governor’s mansion along with eight former executive directors of the Department of Natural Resources.

From left to right, second row: Bob Randall, Wade Buchanan, former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, Russ George, Mike King and Jim Martin; front row: Jim Lockhead, Gibbs and Harris Sherman.

Some of those guys have gone on to other things: Salazar, of course, was Colorado’s attorney general, a senator and Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration; Sherman also served in the Obama administrator as Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, US Department of Agriculture. Wade Buchanan started up a little think tank known as the Bell Policy Center.

Russ George has done a little of everything: former speaker of the House, president of Colorado Northwestern Community College and a stint as executive director in the Colorado Department of Transportation. He’s now heading up the Interbasin Compact Committee, which facilitates conversations among the state’s eight basin roundtables (they’re putting together projects tied to the state water plan, among other things).

Finally…

Senate GOP spox Sage Naumann has uncovered something of a scandal and a bit of a mystery. He’s fond of state history, especially as it pertains to the Gold Dome.

In a look at a 2006 “Historical Structural Assessment” of the state Capitol (you really have to be a history geek to pour through stuff like that), Naumann found a breadcrumb trail that led to a 1971 Daily Sentinel article about a door, originally designed exclusively for the  Capitol, that made its way to a Denver apartment building.

Here’s how that happened, according to Naumann and the Daily Sentinel: In 1957, architect Jared Morse proposed demolishing the Capitol and building a new one, to be known as the State Office Building Complex, complete with a 550-foot tower. That idea didn’t fly, obviously.

But in the remodeling that went on just a few years later, Morse “discovered” that several doors handcrafted for the Capitol had been discarded. One wound up as the door to the main entrance of the Daily Sentinel. The other went to an apartment building that Morse owned.

The location of that apartment building is not known, but if anyone knows if that door is still hanging in Denver, please write in.

Marianne Goodland’s Capitol M column looks at the lighter side (usually) of life at the state Capitol.

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–