Dear Supporter,
Earlier this week, I withdrew from the District 6 race.
My plan was to get out of politics and catch up with my teaching and law
practice.
However, as Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, "Just
when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." A number of people have asked
me about the remaining candidates.
Today, I am happy to endorse Lois Court, whom I will
actively support in the campaign for the Democratic nomination. I urge everyone
who supported me to support and vote for Lois.
Lois Court knows
that the central problem that Colorado faces today is the constitutional and
fiscal mess of TABOR, Arveschoug-Bird, the Gallagher Amendment, and Amendment
23. She analyzes the problem with just the sort of wonkish depth that
I admire. District 6 sends leaders to the legislature, and Lois has the
knowledge and skills to help lead us out of the constitutional mess.
I
believe a desire to fix the TABOR-related mess is a basic qualification for any
candidate running for the Colorado legislature. It's a litmus test. The Bell
Policy Center has concluded that the 2007 fiscal situation in Colorado was
as good as it gets; today, we learned in the Denver Post that
the state budget will be
$700 million leaner than we thought. Any candidate (or
legislator) who is not focusing on the fiscal and constitutional mess of
TABOR-related constraints should, in my view, go into another line of
work.
Second,
Lois supports a single-payer solution to
the problem of healthcare in Colorado. Along with my good friends at
Healthcare for All
Colorado, I see the existing system of private-insurance-based healthcare as
fundamentally broken, and I think that a single-payer system should be our
goal. Lois agrees.
Third, I am greatly concerned about
consumers
and injured people. In my law practice, I represent injured people in
struggles with insurance companies. Colorado law has swung away from consumers
and toward big businesses especially insurance companies. I know that as a
legislator, Lois will support consumers.
Since I entered the race, I have
gotten to know Lois Court well. We've sparred and kidded with each other. I
have, of course, thought very carefully about Lois, her points of view, and the
positions of the other candidates. I am very glad to recommend her as an
excellent successor to Andrew Romanoff.
Best regards,
Tom Russell
21 March 2008
