Sixty Years Ago This Week: In a surprise move, Denver City Councilman Joe Ciancio Jr. announced he was withdrawing from the Democratic primary for Secretary of State, leaving Deputy Secretary of State F.J. Serafini without a challenger in the lead up to the general election.

Ciancio told reporters he had withdrawn his candidacy “for the benefit of the Democratic Party, which will now have a candidate who doesn’t have to use his campaign funds in a primary. If things stay as they are, I will run for re-election to the city council.”

With $1,600 already expended in his pre-election campaigning, Ciancio said he expected that a primary would have cost him another $4,000.

Serafini told The Colorado Democrat that he deeply appreciated “Joe’s withdrawing in my favor.”

In other news, members of the Colorado General Assembly convened a meeting at the behest of David Dunklee, chairman of the Denver-area Metropolitan Cooperative Commission to discuss and bring attention to the metro area’s mounting woes.

Dunklee cited a report by the Congressional Government Operations Committee that made the searing conclusion that “the focal point … the clearing house for metro problems is your state government.”

To this effect, a new state department should be formed to handle urban affairs for Colorado, Dunklee argued, and to carry on research and act in an advisory capacity to the governor. But he clarified that such a department would not circumvent or preempt the functions of the state’s planning division or planning commissions and would have no authority to levy property tax.

“Adequate action in the field of metropolitan planning in Colorado would require revision of the constitutional concept of home rule,” Dunklee said. “We have to have metropolitan, not just municipal home rule to deal with problems common to the whole area without taking away the authority of municipalities to handle affairs in their own boundaries.”

But state Rep. Roy Romer, D-Denver, questioned the feasibility of such a department.

“Most of the discussion around metropolitan problems revolves around techniques,” Romer said. “Are we leaving the real power to conduct public affairs in the hands of non-partisan experts … who have no particular philosophy of government?”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: Republican Congressman Bob Shaffer, CD-4, told The Colorado Statesman that he was expecting “big labor bosses” to go hard after him in anticipation of federal legislation he was planning to introduce: the Paycheck Protection Act.

Shaffer’s bill would have prohibited anyone from deducting money from wages to use for political advocacy without specific written authorization from the wage-earners.

“Labor bosses usually deduct union dues directly from the paychecks of union shop workers, and part of those dues are used for lobbying, campaign contributions and the like,” Shaffer said. “The thing I’m trying to do is outlaw the very practice big labor has used for years to raise obscene amounts of cash to spend against pro-business, pro-family candidates like me.”

“This is an issue that has national appeal, for that matter, not just appeal for CD-4 or Colorado,” said Shaffer’s chief of staff Susan Wadhams. “In 1996, organized labor spent $35 million to defeat Republicans.”

Wadhams said that the bill had yet to be formally introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives because Shaffer was still gathering support and co-sponsors for the draft legislation, but it was planned “in the next several months.”

Shaffer added that his interest in writing the Paycheck Protection Act was piqued in the decades following the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that ruled unions could not use dues for political purposes without express permission.

“The Clinton administration has refused to enforce the decision and that triggered the congressman’s bill,” Wadhams said.

Meanwhile Shaffer was facing a potential general election challenger as former Fort Collins Mayor Susan Kirkpatrick had raised $5,000 in funds (triggering an FEC report), and though she hadn’t formally decided whether to launch a bid, had already billed herself as a more moderate candidate who was more in-tune with CD-4 voters than the “ultra-conservative” Shaffer.

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.