University of Denver President Marc Holtzman will be leaving his stint at the end of the calendar year to think about going back into politics, with a possible plan to run for Colorado’s governor in 2006.
Holtzman has not announced his candidacy yet and if he does, will not do so until the early part of next year.
“I am testing the waters right now, but doing so in a very serious way,” Holtzman said in an interview last week.
“To effectively run a campaign, you have to enter an exploratory phase where you try to assess the support and exchange ideas with leaders, the party, various constituency groups and a fundraising committee.”
Holtzman said he has received positive and encouraging results from party leadership supporting his potential candidacy.
Even though he is leaving, Holtzman made clear of the respect and responsibility he holds for DU. “I’m really committed to this institution for life,” he said.
“I think this place is one of the most special environments to do incredible good for not only Colorado, but society at large. I suspect that I will be serving this university in one capacity or another as a volunteer for the rest of my life.”
Holtzman’s interest in public service and politics led him to consider running for governor on the Republican ticket.
“The governor has the opportunity to impact and make positive changes to people’s lives. Being in government, Holtzman said, is “about leadership, taking good ideas and executing them. I have proven with other spheres of life, that I can do it successfully.”
Even though Holtzman said it is too early to have a platform, he does have issues that he intends to develop further in time. He is focusing on four major issues: environment, economy, education and health care.
Holtzman said he intends to work with environmental issues even though most people in his party tend to be fundamentally uncomfortable with this issue. He plans to “work closely with the business community, developers and others to put forth a smart growth policy and plan that will help shape Colorado over the next 50 years that will deal with natural resources and water management.”
“The governor must act as the state salesman-in-chief,” Holtzman said about his plans to reenergize the state’s economy. In other states, he explained, people sell their attributes, retool and reposition themselves to compete for economic growth and job opportunity.
Holtzman’s major focus is education. Holtzman said that Gov. Bill Owens has made progress on education in the last six years, but more needs to be done. “There needs to be more to support teachers and provide resources for teachers to be effective,” he said.
Smaller classrooms and teacher testing are among his ideas. “It is unacceptable that 50 percent of students at DPS (Denver Public Schools) will not graduate,” Holtzman explained. “It is not acceptable that 80 percent of children of Spanish ethnicity will not graduate.”
Lastly, Holtzman intends to focus on making health care more affordable, noting that over half a million people in Colorado aren’t covered by any form of healthcare at all.
Holtzman became interested in a politics at a young age, even though his conservative views were not very popular. “I grew up in a household with two liberal democrats who supported Hubert Humphrey,” he said of his parents. “They wondered for some time what went wrong with me.”
Instead of inheriting his parents’ politics, Holtzman became inspired by President Ronald Reagan.
“To me, he inspired a vision of hope and growth,” he explained. “That vision, that hope, that spirit for America is what we needed.”
He worked as a staff aid during Reagan’s term at 20 and ran his campaign in Pennsylvania in 1980, becoming the youngest person in history to head a major statewide campaign.
“After the election, Reagan came up to me and said, ‘Marc, Nancy and I are really proud of the job you’ve done. We are so grateful and I just want you to know that you can come down here and do anything you want in this administration. But I have put the word out that no one is to hire you until you go back and finish college.'” Holtzman finished his last three years at Lehigh University in two years because he was so eager to go back into politics.
That excitement is just as strong as it was 25 years ago. Holtzman’s office wall showcases a picture of him and Reagan in the Oval Office in 1980. “I’m so proud of this,” he said. He also keeps a book of meaningful letters that Reagan wrote in his life – one of the letters to him.
“The only thing that will sadden me is, as governor if I win, I can’t serve both jobs.”
