Thirty-Five Years Ago This Week: There was a Republican buzz happening in Denver. Making national news from Colorado’s Republican Assembly, Gloria Gonzales Roemer had just been nominated as the GOP’s candidate for the 1st Congressional District in an effort to unseat longtime Democratic Party Rep. Pat Schroeder.

Adding to the electric evening was keynote speaker Julian Martinez, special assistant for Hispanic Affairs to Republican National Committee chair Lee Atwater.

“Denver County has seldom drawn this kind of national attention,’ said Kathie Finger, chairman of the Denver County Republican Party, to the delegates assembled at Hill Middle School. “People should be excited about this support. We cannot listen to the naysayers who say Republicans can’t win in Denver!”

First Congressional District Chair Jerry Wheeler said, “The fact that the RNC is sending a representative to Denver shows both the high regard in which they hold Mrs. Roemer and the importance of the first congressional district in the 1990 elections.

In her speech, Martinez said that misconceptions about the Hispanic community in the Republican Party needed to be reversed.

“Gloria is an example of new dynamic leadership in the party,” Martinez said. “Lee Atwater has taken personal involvement in this campaign.”

In her acceptance speech Roemer said, “I intend to be the U.S. Representative for Denver. We already have one from Denver. I’ll be more in touch than Schroeder who is best known for her flip remarks and juvenile stunts. Denver doesn’t need Schroeder, Schroeder needs Denver.”

Roemer was running on a platform of tax, welfare and education reform because “Republicans are worried sick about what liberal Democrats are doing to this country.”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: “I am formally requesting that you grant me the authority to veto HB 00-1229,” Joe Rogers, Lieutenant Governor of Colorado wrote in an open letter to Gov. Bill Owens, published in The Colorado Statesman. “Such authority has classically been given to Lt. Governors in circumstances where the governor has a real or perceived conflict of interest.”

HB 00-1229 would, Rogers wrote, “take away from the people of our state the most fundamental of rights which has existed for over 124 years — the right to elect the person who should become governor should the governor be unable to fulfill his or her term.”

Owens had expressed to legislators that he would take no position on HB 00-1229, thereby allowing the bill to become law without his signature.

Rogers was the United States’s only African American lt. governor and the first African American Republican elected to that position in the country’s history.

“This bill,” Rogers wrote, “reinforces a deep seeded belief among African Americans and others that our party is not a big tent party and has no interest in the concerns of Black people and African American participation within its ranks. The popular view is simply this ‘once we win playing by the rules, the rules are changed to assure we can’t win again.”

Rogers wrote that he and Owens both intended, at the start of their respective terms, to maintain the existing law that allowed Colorado to have an elected lt. governor.

“I have always emphasized … that I believe it is important that the lt. governor be elected by the people rather than appointed,” Rogers wrote. “I also believe a governor should be able to serve with a person of his liking to maintain a smooth flowing administration.”

To that end, Rogers wrote that if Owens had no interest in having him serve in the administration, “I will not so serve.”

Rachael Wright is the author of several novels including The Twins of Strathnaver, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette.