Sixty Years Ago This Week: At a Forum of the Denver Democratic Club meeting at the Farmers Union building, Herrick Roth, president of the Colorado Labor Council AFL-CIO, derided the “unholy alliance” between southern Democrats and northern Republicans.

The alliance, Roth alleged, was designed to defeat aid-to-education, Medicare and President John F. Kennedy’s planned Department of Urban Affairs.

“Someone with a lack of economic sense is giving President Kennedy advice on keeping wages down,” Roth said. “We must tackle the overall problem of unemployment. What we need is a $10 to $15 billion program like those of the Roosevelt New Deal.”

Roth also chastised Farmers Union members for being “less than enthusiastic” about metropolitan improvement, even though much of its support came from metropolitan legislators.

“We have yet to find a Republican in the legislature who is willing to go even halfway on the bill to increase workingmen’s injury compensation,” Roth said of the bill sponsored by Rep. Betty Kirk West, D-Pueblo.

Roth told the audience that while labor is a non-partisan, “membership in a labor union is meaningless unless union members become active in politics.” It was the early days of active, physical opposition to unionization that brought members closer together to achieve a clear objective.

“When these fights were going on, labor knew what the purposes of a union were … Too many union members are merely neutral today,” Roth said.

One answer, Roth postulated, was the establishment of a liberal-labor party in the United States comparable to the United Kingdom’s Labor Party.

“But I make no prediction as to when this will come about,” Roth said.

Twenty Five Years Ago: Gov. Roy Romer told assembled members of the press that his new post as general chairman of the Democratic National Committee would make a 1998 candidacy for U.S. Senate “less likely.”

“It would be impossible to wear three hats” – governor, DNC general chair, and U.S. Senate candidate, but “I have not yet reached a final decision about whether or not to run.

“President Bill Clinton telephoned me the day before the legislative session began and asked me to resign the governorship,” Romer said, because Clinton wanted him to become the full-time DNC manager.

The DNC was under severe public pressure because of allegations that it may have accepted improper financial contributions from Indonesian businessmen during the previous election cycle. Romer said that he was hesitant to turn Clinton down peremptorily.

“When the president of the United States asked you to do something even if it’s not something you want to do, you take that seriously,” Romer said. “I finally decided that I do not want to resign the governorship.”

Romer travelled to Washington D.C. to meet with Democratic leaders to determine what could be done, and said he resisted considerable pressure from Vice President Al Gore to change his mind.

While Romer was in Washington, El Paso County Republican Party Chairman Bob Gardner said he had stumbled upon a group of operatives within the county party central committee whom he believed were “on a mission to seize control of the county and state organizations.”

Gardner, who had been the target of numerous character assassinations over the previous year, “crashed an invitation only” meeting of nearly 100 precinct leaders who defined themselves as “true conservatives.”

Carrie Gordon, public policy researcher for Focus on the Family, said she had hosted a private meeting in El Paso County to “educate and motivate grassroots people.”

But Gardner said that old-line Republicans were calling the new breed of conservatives the, “3 R’s for radical religious right.”

“Mr. Gardner should be ecstatic that almost 100 people left their homes on an icy night to get politically involved,” Gordon said. “Mr. Gardner’s reaction was paranoid … I’m accused of overthrowing the party – it’s ridiculous.

Gordon clarified that the meeting was not associated with the Republican Party and, according to the agenda provided to The Colorado Statesman, the purpose of the meeting was ” … to briefly explain the upcoming El Paso County Republican Central Committee meeting …” and to elect a slate of candidates as bonus members of the State Central Committee.

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.