Forty Years Ago This Week: Denver developer and Democratic activist Kenneth Good announced that he was supporting Republican Phil Winn’s gubernatorial campaign, a major switch that he said he hadn’t arrived at lightly.

Good had been a former backer of Gov. Dick Lamm and a past member of the Lamm’s Front Range Project. But Good said he had also known Winn for years and was a former client of his consulting firm before Winn had taken a position at the Housing and Urban Development office in Washington D.C.

Good said he’d already spoken to Jim Monaghan, the Colorado Democratic political whiz who’d masterminded Lamm’s 1974 gubernatorial campaign. 

“I told Jim about two months ago,” Good told The Colorado Statesman, but declined to say how the influential Democratic powerbroker took the news.

“Dick’s had eight years,” Good said of Lamm. “And he’s had lots of good ideas. I think he’s brilliant, but he hasn’t been able to implement ideas, which is absolutely essential. Lamm will be difficult [to beat] … and it may not be best if you like to ride a winning horse.”

Good said that he hadn’t had the chance to talk to Winn in the past four or five months but had already donated to the campaign. 

Winn pleaded ignorance and said that he’d only learned of Good’s support when he picked up a copy of the Rocky Mountain News while getting a shoeshine at Stapleton Airport after his flight landed back in Denver.

“I haven’t, nor will I, look at the list of financial contributors to my campaign,” Winn said. “I don’t want to know who has given to me at this point.”

Twenty Years Ago: Gubernatorial candidate and state Senate President Stan Matsunaka, D-Loveland, spoke at a meeting of the Estes Park League of Women Voters, voicing his discontent with welfare reform. 

Matsunaka proposed major government changes to health care and the possibility of adding a sales tax on gasoline to pay for major road improvements. Matsunaka went on to call Gov. Bill Owen’s plan to re-direct $250 million a year into a roads fund a “joke.” The $250 million, he said, wasn’t enough to address the serious transportation needs around the state.

Highlighting issues with previous health care reforms that had created “a larger class of working poor” and had left many Coloradans unable to bear the costs, Matsunaka suggested that the state government establish price controls for health insurance.

A seemingly baffled Jim Cleary, a political consultant working in both Colorado and Nebraska, was in attendance at the meeting and told The Colorado Statesman that Matsunaka “certainly didn’t hesitate to put his liberal agenda on the table.” 

As a Democrat running in a Republican state, Cleary said, “Many members of both parties would tend to hide their true leanings when approaching a major election.” 

“The senator must not have been paying attention when the Clinton proposals for massive government involvement in health care gave the Republicans control of Congress,” Cleary said. “It’s always easy to appeal to voters by lamenting the ‘high costs’ of … America life.”

Cleary argued that someone, likely taxpayers, would have to pay for more health care or health care services would have to be reduced. 

“Nothing in his proposal would do anything to increase the quality of care or actually make it less expensive,” Cleary said.

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.