Ed Perlmutter’s platform is “I’m bringing home the pork.” At least, that was his key point in yesterday’s Arvada debate with Joe Coors.

Nearly every Perlmutter answer included pork barrel spending and special interest tax breaks.

• On the economy, he mentioned the Orion vehicle with its $1.5 billion in government spending.
• On energy, he talked about NREL with its ballooning budget (and didn’t mention his support for government spending on Colorado’s bankrupt Abound Solar and its investor Pat Stryker, a major Perlmutter donor).
• On infrastructure, he wanted to tell about a government hospital in Aurora.

This is an amazing campaign style for the Twenty-First Century. It was, after all, back in 1919 that pork barrel got its first scholarly review. Ed’s running a campaign well-suited for a century ago.

Perlmutter seems to believe that pork barrel spending trumps restoring fiscal sanity when voters are deciding who to back in this race.

In fairness, Ed did mention his plan for lowering the deficit across the next decade. But he carefully avoided mentioning that, according to one review, Perlmutter’s deficit plan includes nearly $2 trillion in tax hikes. And not a peep about this plan attacking tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and pension plans.

Instead of curbing special interest spending, he champions it.

Instead of cutting spending … period … Perlmutter talked about the need to raise taxes. He was squishy about who’d get taxed. For sure, millionaires and maybe folks who earned less.

Perlmutter crowed about his support for laws mandating new levels of regulation across our economy.

Joe Coors reaction was priceless. He suggested that Ed couldn’t run a “lemonade stand” without government subsidies and a government program.

The Arvada Forum debate between Ed Perlmutter and Joe Coors was one of the best debates I’ve ever seen. Kudos to the organizers from the Jefferson County business community and moderator Rob Osborn for his question style that prevented the usual politician waffling.