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JOHNSON: For House speaker, job a way to help

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 7, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.

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Come to think of it now, no one sitting in the new House speaker's office - all three of them black - even muttered the name of Peter Groff, the Senate's president.

It was, I can attest, hardly a slight.

Yes, yes and of course, both men who now lead the two houses of the Colorado legislature are black. It is, to be sure, a historic and perhaps about-time thing. It is also, quite simply, a coincidence.

The story of Terrance Carroll's rise to speaker of the Colorado House alone is worth telling, the race of his counterpart in the Senate not withstanding.

Maybe, too, it was not brought up because there simply wasn't enough time.

Reporters were hounding the man, his phone was exploding and there were speaking engagements to be honored. And he had not, Terrance Carroll acknowledged, put the final touches on the speech he was to give after his swearing-in this morning.

"Am I nervous?" he repeated as we sat in his new office, the door now bearing his freshly painted name. "I always feel my stress right here," he said, tapping his left shoulder, "and right now, it's really tight here.

"You know, it's like when I ran track. I was always Nervous Nelly when I first stepped on the track. But when that gun sounded, it was all business. I suspect it will be that way until 10 a.m. tomorrow and the gavel comes down - then all business."

"Improbable" is a bad word to use here. But "unlikely" is a word that Terrance Carroll, 39, a Denver Democrat, used himself when describing his path to this morning.

"Happenstance," is how he first put it. "But as a preacher, maybe I shouldn't put it that way."

He was just a kid, fresh out of Morehouse College in Atlanta with a bachelor's degree in political science when the University of Colorado called.

He'd always presumed he would stay in Atlanta and work on his master's degree at Emory University like everyone else. But CU was offering full tuition. The only child of a single household domestic, well, he could not pass it up.

"All of my friends in Atlanta laughed at me, asking stuff like, 'Are there even black folks in Colorado?' And truthfully," he said, "the only thing I knew then of Boulder was that's where the house in Mork & Mindy was."

He would leave the master's program to become a university police officer, a job he would leave three years later to pursue a master's of divinity at the Iliff School of Theology.

"It's all the same thing," he said of the church and police work, "saving lost souls."

Next would come a law degree from the University of Denver and associate pastor stints at both New Hope and Macedonia Baptist churches.

"I still consider myself in ministry, even here," Terrance Carroll said, pointing to the House chamber. "We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give sight to the blind, care for widows and orphans. Yes, that's a big function of what we do here."

With the state facing budget deficits of as much as $600 million this year, I tell him, it looks like he will be doing an awful lot of that. He cringes.

"You shouldn't expect it to be easy, governing, even in the best of times," Terrance Carroll said. "As Dr. King always said, men and women will be measured by where and how they stand in times of challenge and controversy.

"To me, it's either go big or stay home. I believe that if you are not bold and decisive in leadership, you aren't doing anyone any favors."

What does that mean?

I tell him it sounds like there's going to be a lot of budget cutting and program slashing at a time when more and more people in Colorado are losing their jobs and likely will need a hand from government more than ever.

Prodded multiple times, he would offer no specifics.

"The main theme of my remarks," he said, "will be expanding the circle of opportunity in all of Colorado.

"This is really personal for me. When you grow up poor the way I did, your mother working all the time, you don't have a lot of people helping or pulling for you."

From there, he spoke mostly in metaphors, of how the state should step up to help those truly in need to care for themselves and those receiving help stepping up to help others.

"I'll put it this way," Terrance Carroll said. "My mother mopped floors for a living, but she still found a way. The budget shortfall, it will just force us to be more creative."

The process, he says, will start with a tip outgoing Speaker Andrew Romanoff gave him: "You gotta keep an open door."

He has since expanded it to keeping in good communication with the governor, the Senate and Republicans.

"In my four years on the Judiciary Committee, we managed to move more large things through in a bipartisan way than we ever imagined," he said. "It taught me that when you find common ground, a common purpose, it is easy to work out the details."

My time is up. An intern has arrived to whisk him to a television station for an interview. I ask of his mother, Corine, if they had spoken recently.

"The seventh anniversary of her death is coming Jan. 20," he says, rising from his chair and grabbing his jacket.

"She would be proud, though. Yes, she would be proud.

"And let me ask you something, does there ever come a time when you forget the date?"

Comments

  • January 7, 2009

    3:38 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    arby writes:

    It certainly seems Mr. Carrol has the right stuff. Let us all hope that his compatriots also do.