The committee overseeing historic preservation at the Colorado Capitol is mulling whether to replace the presidential portraits hanging in the building’s third-floor rotunda with paintings of the state’s former governors.
The idea was floated at the panel’s gathering last month in response to the controversy earlier this year that followed President Donald Trump’s complaints about how he looked in his Colorado Capitol portrait. The painting was removed in response and there’s currently an awkward blank space in the rotunda above a placard marking Trump’s White House tenures.
Dawn DiPrince, president and CEO of History Colorado, told fellow members of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee that the controversy presents an opportunity as Colorado prepares to celebrate the sesquicentennial anniversary of its statehood, which is next year.
“Capitols for a state should really be a celebration of the state,” she said. “I feel like Colorado’s 150th birthday is a really wonderful time to do that. It does not make sense to me to take up such a significant amount of space in our state’s Capitol when we don’t even have space to hang all of our governors’ portraits.”
Right now, a limited number of gubernatorial portraits are displayed on rotation on the first floor of the Capitol.
Colorado and Texas are the only states that display portraits of every U.S. president in their state Capitols.
The conversation around replacing the presidential portraits with gubernatorial ones began before the Trump controversy, which became a worldwide news story. But the Trump drama kicked it into high gear.
“The fact that the White House asked that the current portrait of the current president be removed gave us an opportunity to think about all of this and how we want this space to be used,” said former state Sen. Lois Court, chair of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee. “It is, in fact, our state Capitol. It is our space.”
History Colorado has portraits of all but four of the state’s governors. The missing portraits include one of Gov. Jared Polis. But DiPrince said that could be addressed with photographs of those governors.
Another issue is that the gubernatorial portraits are not uniform in size. The presidential portraits are. Displaying the paintings of the former governor on the curved walls in the third floor of the rotunda would require some thinking.
Finally, Colorado’s former governors aren’t quite as well known as the nation’s former presidents. That presents a problem.
“Someone would have to develop the interpretation to go along with the governors’ portraits so that those things could be explained and made important to the children and other people who are looking at them,” said Georgi Contiguglia, former president and CEO of History Colorado, who also sits on the Capitol Building Advisory Committee.
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KNEE-JERK?
Not everyone on the Capitol Building Advisory Committee is keen on swapping out the governors for the presidents. Some called it a “knee-jerk reaction” to the Trump saga.
“That seems to be a very poor reason to open that discussion,” said Kurt Morrison, deputy Colorado attorney general.
State Rep. William Lindstedt, D-Broomfield, said the Trump situation is probably a one-off.
“I think this particular scenario is unlikely to occur again,” he said.
The committee is also considering whether to accept a donated portrait of Trump to replace the one the president didn’t like, which was paid for after Republicans launched a fundraising campaign. That offer has apparently been made to state leaders.
WHAT TO WATCH IN THE WEEK AHEAD
CAMPAIGN FINANCE
Colorado’s campaign finance, lobbying reporting systems are getting a $2.65 million overhaul
A $2.7 million project is underway to overhaul Colorado’s campaign finance and lobbyist reporting systems.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office has hired MapLight, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on improving government and democracy, to complete the project.
If you’ve ever used the state’s campaign finance system, Transparency in Contribution and Expenditure Reporting, known as TRACER, or its lobbying disclosure database, you know that fixes were needed.
But here’s an explanation from the Secretary of State’s Office about why they are undertaking the overhaul: “Because of the age of both TRACER and lobby, these systems rely on underlying architecture and coding language that is antiquated and are both lacking in modern user experience and functionality. Both existing systems were also designed and deployed prior to the ‘mobile device revolution’ and were not designed to anticipate that a majority of system users would access these systems from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.”
Phase 1 of the project, updating the campaign finance reporting system, is underway and is scheduled to be complete in February. After that, the lobbying system will be updated as part of phase 2 and advanced search features will be added in phase 3.
The timeline for phases 2 and 3 haven’t been decided yet.
Thanks to Colorado Sun correspondent emeritus Sandra Fish for hooking us up with the contracts for this project.
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THE POLITICAL TICKER
TRANSPORTATION
Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political nonprofit, is asking the Colorado Supreme Court to take up its challenge to the state’s transportation fees bill passed in 2021.
The lawsuit has already been rejected by the Denver District Court and Colorado Court of Appeals.
The petition, filed June 12 with the Colorado Supreme Court, argues that the law should be invalidated because the legislature did not seek voter approval for the new fees under a 2020 ballot measure requiring voter approval of any newly qualified or created state enterprise receiving more than $100 million in revenue. It also claims the law illegally raised the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights cap on government growth and spending and violates a rule requiring legislation to stick to a single subject.
The fees, including on gasoline purchases, rideshare trips and deliveries, have already generated tens of millions of dollars for transportation projects.
8TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
This week, the liberal news nonprofit More Perfect Union is putting up billboards in competitive congressional districts, including Colorado’s 8th District, criticizing the Republican-backed budget bill making its way through Congress.
The billboard shows how the GOP proposal will make the poor poorer and the rich richer, based on an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan scorekeeper closely watched on Capitol Hill. Other nonpartisan analyses have shown similar results of the bill’s tax cuts and spending cuts on anti-poverty programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
On one side of the billboard, a worker in a hard hat sits in a tired and frustrated position under the words, “Make under $51k? YOU PAY MORE.” On the other side, billionaire and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos is pictured wearing a cowboy hat and a space suit raising a bottle of bubbly champagne to the sky next to the words, “… while the top 0.1% get $390K/yr.”
U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican who represents the 8th District, voted for the bill. Delanie Bomar, a spokesperson for Evans, said via email last week that the tax cuts would benefit the people of Congressional District 8 and save the average family money.
ENDORSEMENTS
The Colorado Education Association and National Education Association have endorsed Amie Baca-Oehlert’s campaign in the 8th Congressional District.
The Democrat, a former teacher, served as president of the CEA from 2018 to 2024.
Meanwhile, the national political action group Our Revolution, launched by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid, is endorsing Towards Justice Executive Director David Seligman’s bid for Colorado attorney general.
“A movement lawyer and workers’ rights champion, David has spent his career fighting corporate abuse and standing up for working people,” the group’s announcement said.
Seligman, a Democrat, joined Sanders in Greeley for the senator’s “Fight Oligarchy” rally in March and spoke about his experience suing companies that exploit workers.
SECRETARY OF STATE’S OFFICE
Chris Beall left his role as deputy secretary of state April 10 after four years as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s top lieutenant. He’s now in the private sector, working as an attorney at Recht Kornfeld.
The Secretary of State’s Office said in a written statement that Beall “showed incredible commitment to the Department’s work for voters and business owners.”
Andrew Kline took over as deputy secretary of state after four years as senior counsel and co-chair at the law firm Perkins Coie.
READ MORE
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DO THE MATH
25 years
The last time Colorado’s unemployment rate was higher than the national rate for as many months
Elizabeth Ramey, principal economist for Legislative Council Staff, told the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee this week that she expects the unemployment rate to increase as economic uncertainty hinders businesses’ plans to expand or invest.
Colorado’s unemployment rate was 4.8% in April, compared with the national rate of 4.2% in May. (Colorado’s May unemployment rate hasn’t been released yet.)
THE BIGGER PICTURE
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