Alice Madden must have know that this was coming, and today it arrived, courtesy of Megan Verlee.
Maybe she just wants an elected office – any elected office. According to the latest Wikileaks data dump, a mere 67 days before Alice Madden filed to run for CU Regent, she was pitching her credentials to John Podesta, looking for his help to get her appointed to the then-vacant lieutenant governor position in Colorado.
And she had everything planned out: there is a good chance that Hickenlooper would take a role in the Hillary Clinton Administration, and, in that case, the lieutenant governor would have to be prepared to serve as governor, and they had to make sure that the nominee would not be someone rumored to want a shot at the governor’s office in the 2018 election – because that would tick Ken Salazar off. Is he still running for governor?
Just “get me on the short list. And I can do the rest!!” declared the enthusiastic Madden.
Madden went on to list her left-wing bona fides, just in case Podesta forgot how great she actually was: “architect of the 2004 state legislative takeover” (what would the Gang of Four say?), House majority leader, climate advisor to Governor Ritter (which wasn’t actually scandal free), Chair of Sustainable Development at CU, among other things.
This episode raises big questions about how serious Madden is about the CU Regent position. Disappointed that she didn’t get the job she really wanted – lieutenant governor, and then, eventually, the governorship – all without having to run for either position, she just took the next best thing she could find – a totally unrelated elected role as CU Regent.