November 11, 2014 12:19 PM UTC

Meet "Raging" Bill Cadman, Your Next Colorado Senate President

• 22 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: The goodwill over Ellen Roberts' win is short-lived: Kevin Lundberg is the new Senate Assistant Majority Leader, Vicki Marble the new GOP caucus chair. That's two of the GOP caucus' craziest members in leadership roles. Mark Scheffel will be the new Majority Leader.

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UPDATE #2: A welcome surprise–moderate GOP Sen. Ellen Roberts elected Senate President pro tempore.

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UPDATE: Bill Cadman unanimously elected President of the Colorado Senate as expected. 

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The new one-seat Republican majority in the Colorado Senate is meeting today to elect leadership for the upcoming legislative session. We haven't heard all the details about who is running for leadership positions, but the marquee race is already a foregone conclusion–Sen. Bill Cadman of Colorado Springs is widely expected to become the next President of the Colorado Senate.

For those who haven't had the "pleasure" of getting to know Bill Cadman, Dave Perry of the Aurora Sentinel offers a very useful primer. We should note that Cadman isn't very popular in Aurora these days, and there's a good reason:

And the new boss of the Colorado Senate, GOP state Sen. Bill Cadman of Colorado Springs? He’s ushering in a new era of non-partisan leadership under the gold dome, intent on putting Colorado back on the right track, if you know what I mean.

Cadman. Hmmmmm. Cadman? Sound familiar? It might if you’re from Aurora and still aching over the Aurora theater massacre. It might sound familiar if you’re part of the Focus on the Family fiasco, or if you’re an observer of politicians who stick their feet in their own mouths about putting their fists inside the dorsal orifices of other politicians…

Cadman hated gun control, said that Democrats wouldn’t bend to the GOP will, and implied the crazy northeast Colorado secession stunt was justified. If this is sounding like Cadman’s leading the state Senate bodes ill for Aurora don’t worry, it gets worse.

During the 2013 legislative session, as the state was still struggling with the aftermath of the Aurora theater shooting, Cadman and others appeared at a Denver Post forum focusing on the shooting and the Legislature’s response. Cadman clearly bristled when Tom Sullivan started asking questions about some lawmakers’ objection to gun and ammo restrictions. Sullivan’s son was killed during the shootings. He’s been a force for the government to do something ever since. Just after the forum, Sullivan approached Cadman to give him a collage of photos of his dead son, an effort — ill-advised or not —to put a face with the tragedy.

“I know what he looks like,” Sullivan said Cadman snapped at the ploy. The interchange made national headlines.

We also took note of the ugly exchange between Cadman and Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the Aurora shootings. But that was just one recent example of Cadman's sometimes erratic, often belligerent leadership style. Another came early this year, when Cadman blew his stack over the handling of a Republican bill, publicly threatening Democrats with recalls before belatedly realizing that he was the one in the wrong.

Dave Perry reminds us of still another:

During a state House session in 2005, then state Rep. Cadman and another lawmaker got into it on the floor over a bill allowing families of soldiers killed in action to don special license plates. When the bill’s sponsor offered amendments, Cadman called them “garbage.” So the lawmaker called Cadman garbage. So Cadman said, “If you try that again, I’ll ram my fist up your ass.”

…First Cadman tried to deny the incident, even though practically the entire House pretty much heard him. Then he refused to back off his curious threat. That only made the situation worse. Cadman’s critics sent him advice and products associated with his fist-shaking tirade. Then newspapers got into the fracas.

“What is shocking is not only Cadman’s reluctance to express regret but the fact that he wasn’t absolutely mortified by what he’d stooped to say,” the conservative Op-Ed page of the Rocky Mountain News said. “It would never occur to most people to use such an expression even in private, no matter how incensed they were over an affront, let alone utter such words in public before other elected officials.”

We've never really understood Cadman's leadership role in the Republican Senate caucus, other than perhaps to grade him on the curve. Compared to such regular embarrassments in the Colorado Senate GOP as Vicki Marble, we suppose Cadman doesn't look that bad. For whatever reason, the rare true moderate Republicans in the Colorado Senate, like Ellen Roberts, never seem to get a leadership nod–possibly because of the frequency with which moderate Republican Colorado Senators get knocked out in primaries.

Will Cadman turn over a new leaf as President of a one-seat Republican Senate majority, arguably the most visible Republican elected official in the state today? We have to think the next two years–not to mention 2016–will go better for Republicans if he can.