COLORADO: Chuck-Wagon Hot

No one in Colorado wears a bigger Stetson or higher heels on his cowboy boots than Governor Dan Thornton, a wealthy, Texas-born cattleman who became the Republicans’ last-minute candidate after the regular nominee died in mid-campaign. Even after he was safely ensconced in the state capitol in citified Denver, Thornton continued to wear the cowboy costume in which he successfully stumped the state. He often made photographers wait for pictures while he found an old brier pipe, which he never smokes but likes to wear clamped between his teeth.

By last week a lot of embarrassed Denverites were getting fed up with the cowboy corn. One of them, a former Republican state legislator and oldtime cowpoke named R. M. Hagerman, wrote to the Denver Post and said so in words as hot as chuckwagon coffee:

“I feel that what I have to say to you about that damn pipe, comic-opera boots and two-gallon hat will be of some political benefit . . . Honestly, Dan, do you think having your picture taken for public consumption with your feet up on a desk, with your hat on and that smudge pot in your mouth, adds any dignity to yourself or the important office of governor? . . . If you do, you should have stayed down in the sandhills of west Texas, where the boys come into town on a Saturday riding a mountain lion and using a live rattlesnake for a quirt.”