What do Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, Democratic state Sen. Matt Jones, and Republican state Rep. Dan Nordberg, among many others, all have in common?
They studied politics and learned to love political participation at the knee of John Straayer, the Colorado State University political science professor who is retiring later this year after a 50-year teaching career.
Meanwhile, Colorado state elected officials have not approved this year’s budget and are haggling over key legislative measures, such as a major highway bill, but they will be coming together in noteworthy bipartisanship on Thursday to formally salute Straayer.
His trademark legislative internship program has brought student interns from CSU to the state Capitol in Denver for the last 37 years.
Straayer has not only supplied more than 1,000 interns who have worked at the state legislature. He personally drove himself and the students in one of the university’s vans from Fort Collins to Denver every Tuesday and Thursday every spring semester when the legislature was in session.
That’s 64 miles each way, two days a week, for four months or so — about 140,000 miles over 37 years.
His interns have put in seven- to eight-hour days assisting legislators in all facets of their jobs. The students have worked at constituency service, policy research, and attending public hearings.
Straayer arranged all these internships, monitored them, and graded the reports of their experiences. Dozens of Straayer’s interns have later risen to high electoral office or become key legislative lobbyists. And not just in Colorado. One of his former students is a city alderman in Chicago.
State Rep. Jeni James Arndt praises Straayer for “nurturing two generations of young people in the most important forms of civic engagement.” Prominent lobbyist Ed Bowditch says Straayer’s “dedication to his students, his state, and representative government is unmatched.”
Straayer is also a widely cited writer on both Colorado and American politics. His book “The Colorado General Assembly” is a must-read for legislators any anyone else who deals with the legislature. He has become one of the staunchest advocates of a strong, independent and sovereign legislative branch.
He believes term limits and a number of other citizen initiatives, such as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, have seriously eroded legislative governance in Colorado; and he unapologetically yearns for the way the legislature operated in the 1980s when it exercised more authority and was less handicapped by various constitutional amendments on raising taxes.
He notes that various “reform” efforts, such as Amendment 41, under the guise of ethics improvements, have had the unanticipated consequence of greatly diminishing collegiality among the legislators.
He is not optimistic that these so-called reforms will be repealed.
Straayer has earned “tenure” in the Capitol’s basement coffee shop and has become part of the community at the Capitol. He not only is one of the state’s experts on how the General Assembly operates, he also is a fountain of inside gossip on what goes on under the Capitol dome.
“People should not blame the legislature for failing to solve all our transportation and higher education problems,” says Straayer. “They are doing the best that can be expected with all the taxing restraints we put on them through the citizen initiative process.”
Straayer has nothing but high praise for those who serve in the legislature, yet he emphasizes that mindless eight-year term limits foolishly “kick out the seniors and bring in the freshmen.” To him, it is now a legislature of “rookies and novices.”
Hooray for John Straayer and his invaluable work as a civic educator, scholar and tenacious champion of representative government. And hooray for his being honored this Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. under the Capitol’s gold dome.
Thomas E. Cronin and Robert D. Loevy are political scientists at Colorado College.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.
