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Oct. 26, 2000 By Janelle Holden
The underdog Democratic contender for the 3rd Congressional District has a track record of winning uphill races. A three-time world-champion burro-racer, Curtis Imrie and his donkeys are traveling around a district larger than the size of Florida to drum up enough votes to send him to Washington. "I don’t happen to have a family, so I have the time, the flexibility, and the jackwhacker cantankerousness to deal with a long-shot, very uphill campaign," he explained. "I think stranger things have happened than Curtis Imrie upsetting Scooter ‘Term Limits’ McInnis." Imrie is a rancher, movie-maker, and burro-racer from Buena Vista who advocates a different, independent type of politics. Now a serious Democrat, Imrie admits he was raised in a politically active, moderate Republican family but caught onto a renaissance epitomized by Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck. "I think the Democratic Party still has a resonance for some people, that it still is the party of the people, that it still is about the guys in the Sears Roebuck work shoes instead of the Gucci’s and the Pucci’s," he said. Many of Imrie’s campaign materials and appearances also prominently feature his standard- to mammoth-size donkeys. If elected, Imrie plans to take a pair of them to Mount Vernon, where mammoth donkeys were first introduced. "They’re good Democrats; they just seem to have a better approach to life," he explained. "People love the horses and the horses are about the West and conquering, but when they look at those donkeys they just smile." After two failed bids to get on the ballot for the U.S. House, and an unsuccessful run for state representative, Imrie, 54, says he is just happy to have a forum for the "disenfranchised and dis-empowered." "I guess I’d be a strange creature in Congress— an actual citizen," he said. "Someone who happens to have his hand in ranching, in the arts, and who’s never made more than more than $27,000 (a year) in his life." As a rancher, one of Imrie’s top three issues also includes what he calls "CPR".: Conservation, Preservation and Restoration. The "CPR" component colors Imrie’s views of public land. "I’m not an environmentalist, per se — frankly they’ve just become another special-interest group — but that notion of stewardship that many, I’d say the bulk of private owners, practice, has to be extended into public lands," he explained. "The ‘multiple-use’ aspect of the public mandate has been exploited way beyond the ‘sustainable-yield’ part of that mandate." Imrie says there are definite distinctions between his candidacy and his rivals’, and seems almost personally offended that incumbent Scott McInnis is now running for his fifth term in office, after promising to step down after his third. "I would never pledge term limits and then turn around and wet the public’s legs when expediency took precedence over integrity," Imrie said. "McInnis ran hard, hard on term limits, and then has the audacity to say on public television that, ‘Hey, after serving five terms in the legislature, being a majority leader, I didn’t know the value of seniority.’ What total bull-patootie." He charges that his campaign is not about him, but about reforming a system that rewards the wealthy and steps on the poor. "There’s an impulse out there and I’m just a vessel that’s responding to the disgust and anger of big money and insiders dominating politics," he explained. "It’s not about any kind of samurai on a jackass, to me it’s just so obvious. When 1 percent of the country controls more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, something is going to give." But Imrie warns that none of the economic reforms can happen without campaign-finance reform. He claims that if everyone pitched in $3.50 apiece, the government could finance every election from county coroner to president. "You would have the best and brightest running, you wouldn’t have just the fund-raising experts," he explained. |
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