Forty Years Ago This Week: Nearly two dozen Republican Party county chairmen met in Denver to hammer out a strategy for the 1982 governor’s race and to make an initial attempt at winnowing down an extensive list of gubernatorial hopefuls, perhaps even drafting an ideal candidate who had yet to make a move.

One county chairman said that there was no final consensus on a single candidate to push, but that several chairmen hoped Congressman Hank Brown, CD-4, would step up.

Colorado Statesman reporters contacted Brown, who was in Washington D.C., for the session. Brown said he wasn’t being coy or leading anyone on about the gubernatorial race and laughed at the idea that party officials thought they could soften him up to accept the draft for governor.

“I’m content being a congressman,” Brown said. “I plan on staying in Washington for at least another year and a half.”

The ‘secret’ meeting miffed quite a few county chairmen who were not invited, including state GOP Chairman Bo Callaway.

“I knew about the meeting,” Callaway said. “But I was not invited to attend.”

Twenty Years Ago: While the Denver Metro area was plagued with out of control growth, clogged highways and pollution, San Juan County was suffering from the inverse.

“We can’t climb the hillsides – it’s federal land,” San Juan County Republican Chairman Terrence Kerwin told the Colorado Statesman, referring to limitations on any sprawl. “We don’t really have a growth problem, and yet that depends on who you talk to.”

Since the closure of the last gold mine in 1986, the once roaring mining town of Silverton had seen a marked drop in population. San Juan County Democratic Party Chair Beverly Rich said that half of the population had left, including most of the families with children. With them they took a large piece of the economy.

“What’s needed is a stable economic base,” Rich said.

Eighty-six percent of San Juan County was owned by the federal government and according to Kerwin, the only place to build was within the less than one square mile making up the town of Silverton.

“The payment they give us in lieu of taxes is less than one percent of what a normal person would pay on the same land, and that cuts into our tax base very rapidly,” Kerwin said. “We would get a huge amount of money if the land was privately owned. So we’re paying seven or eight times the amount of taxes as everybody else. It’s the price you pay for living here.”

While a bumper crop of new summer homes had been built in the last few years, they weren’t contributing to the viability of the town.

“They’re not registered to vote,” Kerwin said, “they’re just passing through. What we need are people who live here year round who volunteer for the fire department and ambulance and get on the school board. Our problems are very different from Denver.”

One upside of all the issues plaguing San Juan County, Kerwin said, was that the typical Republican/Democrat divide didn’t matter nearly as much.

“In the past we’ve always been outside the realm of state politics,” Kerwin said. “We are more rural than Democrat or Republican.”

Kerwin argued that Silverton was also cut off from state politics because of the nature of the town’s economy. No one from San Juan County had made it to the state Republican Party convention since 1986 because they simply couldn’t afford to go.

“We’re a tourist economy and we don’t have three days to give up,” Kerwin said. “They always have it in May. If they had it in January it would be different. We can get upset with the way things are but that’s the way they are.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.