January 08, 2010 11:01 PM UTC

Rep. Casso Gets Caucus Discipline Spanking

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports:

A Democratic lawmaker lost his committee vice chairmanship a day after he cheered Gov. Bill Ritter’s decision not to run for re-election and ripped the governor.

Rep. Edward Casso of Commerce City, who has tangled with the governor over union issues, will remain on the Business Affairs and Labor Committee but will no longer be the vice chair.

House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, refused to comment on whether Casso’s harsh criticism of a fellow Democrat prompted the move. He appointed Rep. Sara Gagliardi, D-Arvada as vice chairman of Business Affairs.

“I just used my discretion of speaker of the House to make changes,” Carroll said today.

But Casso said the speaker told him he was unhappy with his remarks.

“He said criticizing a sitting Democratic governor may not be the best course of action, and that we need to stay united going into the election,” Casso said.

As is well known, Rep. Ed Casso was the most vocally upset Democrat in the aftermath of Gov. Bill Ritter’s high-profile vetoes of worker-friendly bills during the last legislative session. The degree of relief (considerable) now felt by Democrats who won’t have to expend as much effort rallying labor back to the gubernatorial race notwithstanding, Speaker Carroll evidently felt the need to enforce some caucus discipline–which, being Speaker, he does get to do, and has sometimes been criticized for not managing vigorously enough.

As for Casso, he’s young and will learn from this, and might be surprised to discover he is far from the only one who feels the way he does–he’s just a little too brash about it.