Q&A

Mark Udall: ‘Boulder Liberal’ or ‘Conservadem’?

By David Frey, 4-24-09

	Sen. Mark Udall. David Frey photo.

When Mark Udall was running for Colorado’s open Senate seat last November, his opponent blasted him as a “Boulder liberal.” So he caught a lot of attention recently when the Senator joined a group of centrist Democrats, the Moderate Dems Working Group, that critics saw as anti-Obama. Popular MSNBC host Rachel Maddow labeled them “conservadems.”

We caught up with Udall on a tour through western Colorado and asked him about his decision to join the group, and the political and economic changes that have taken place since Udall moved from the House to the Senate.

New West: It’s sort of a different world now.

Mark Udall: It is, although the changes that emerged in the last weeks of the campaign are front and center. Who would have thought 18 months ago that we wouldn’t be talking at all about the Iraq war, that we wouldn’t be talking at all about the Bush administration’s policies at Guantanamo Bay? Instead we’d be talking about the world’s greatest economy on its back and how do we help it stand upright again? But the president said you don’t get to pick your challenges.

At the same time, it’s exciting. If you’re in public office and you want to lead, wouldn’t you want a series of challenges to bring out the best in you and the best in your country? I’m an optimist. I always have been. I think the American spirit and psyche are still strong. I hear it everywhere I go in Colorado and I’ve heard it for the last couple of days here.

People are worried. People are concerned. People want to know why we’re in the situation we’re in. But there’s not a “we’re gonna sit around and wring our hands.” It’s “OK, let’s get back to work. Let’s grab some opportunities.” Here, western Colorado, it’s about energy. It’s about tourism. It’s about taking care of our public lands in a responsible way. It’s been an uplifting trip here so far.

NW: Can you tell me more about the Moderate Dems Working Group. I thought you were a “Boulder liberal.” How did you become a “moderate Dem?”

MU: As I said in the campaign, I’ve never been much for labels, but if everyone else is going to label me, I get my own shot. I label myself as a pragmatic Western Democrat. By that I mean, I’ve always looked for solutions. In the West, ideology has always had to play second fiddle to handling as best you can Mother Nature. If you didn’t work together, I don’t care what your political party was, you weren’t going to have an irrigation system that helped you grow your crops so you could feed your family. You weren’t going to have a schoolhouse with a roof on it to help feed your children. And you certainly weren’t going to have a road system for wagons or your horses to get to the local health clinic if one of your children was sick.

That moderate group I would characterize a little differently, but it’s a group of pragmatic Senate Democrats from all over the country who want to get things done. I like to tell the story of a woman in [Colorado’s San Luis Valley] who said, “Just go get something done.” That’s the whole purpose of the group. It will have different alliances depending on the issue, depending on the concerns of the moment, but the genesis was the recovery package. We needed three Republicans to pass it. We needed to reach out to Republicans. A lot of us in that group did that. We felt this worked well. Let’s create the forum to sit together and find solutions.

NW: How important do you see that going forward? The Democrats have a pretty good majority in the Senate.

MU: We do, but you still need, because of the way the Senate is constructed, 60 votes. That’s just what the Senate is. Those who have an immediate passion don’t want that 60-vote threshold to be in place. Yet if you look, I think it’s served the country well. The way the Senate is designed is to cool the hot coffee that runs out of the coffee cup, as I think George Washington put it way back 200 and some years ago. Given that reality, you have to go find different Senators who have the passion or willingness to solve the problem.

What I have learned about the Senate is, there are very few ideologues in the Senate. There are more ideologues in the House. I say that respectfully because you represent the state and you have a broader, more diverse constituency. You have an affiliation to your political party and you are strongly about that and your principles. There are ways to hold to those principles and move legislation. The fact is, the country’s never done anything great, in my opinion, that didn’t have 60, 65, 70 percent of the people behind it anyway, so in a sense, the Senate reflects that dynamic. So if you can find a way to create a climate and energy bill for the 21st century and you get 60 votes in the Senate, you’re going to have a lot of support in the country for it. Representative democracies are at their best when they have that support.

NW: I would guess you’re a little bit more liberal than some in the group.

MU: You look at energy policy, I’m going to push the group to embrace cap and trade. I’m going to push the group to support renewable electricity standards. It’s also another way for me to make my pitch in a more distinct group in the Senate. There are only 100 of us, but that’s still a pretty big group. But in that group, people are still willing to give each other a chance to state their points of view. People have different positions on the political spectrum based on the issue and the region from which they hail.

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