Station:   KLZ, 560 AM

Show:      Wake Up with Randy Corporon

Guests:    Tancredo

Link:        http://www.560thesource.com/

Date:       January 13, 2014

Topics:     President Ronald Reagan, Department of Education, “Lone Survivor” Movie, Danny Deitz, Amendment 66, Douglas Country, Teachers’ union, Oil & Gas Industry , Veto, Colorado Democracy Alliance (CODA) , ”The Blueprint”, Hickenlooper, Leadership, Bloomberg, Hispanics, VIVAtancredo.com, Illegal Immigration, Wage Depression, Poverty, Ethnicity, Daniel Garcia, Lynn Bartels, Vouchers, School Choice, Pubic Education

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FORMER COLORADO STATE LEGISLATOR, DEPARTMENT OF EDCUATION REGIONAL APOINTEE, U.S REPRESENTATIVE, AND COLORADO GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE TOM TANCREDO:   [Describing his work history, and political career]  I was elected to the state legislature in 1976, re-elected two more times.  I was appointed by Ronald Reagan to run the U.S. Department of Education’s regional office here, in Colorado – six state region.  I did that for him and Bush I [one].  Our purpose was to try and implode the whole thing, and — because we wanted to get it– federal government out of education, as much as possible.  We couldn’t even get a Congressman to introduce the bill to abolish it, so we tried to do it administratively, and, um–.

HOST RANDY CORPORON:   Starve the beast.

TANCREDO:  Starve the beast.

CORPORON:   Cut back the budget.

TANCREDO:  Exactly.  So, I found out that that’s what you had to do.  That’s the only way you could actually get rid of people that were extraneous – let’s put it that way.  [chuckles]  I had 22o people employed at the U.S. Department of Education, in the regional office.  Two hundred and twenty-two.  Now, I emphasize the word ‘employed’.  Some of those people were working there, [but] not many.  And, um, it took me four years – and as I say, I had to go back to Washington every year and ask for a budget cut in order to actually work through the process of reducing the staff.  And I — and there were other reasons why we ended up moving downward, but we got to the point that we had sixty people left, when I left, out of 222.  And I always used to ask people, “You know, there’s only 60 people left. We went –80 percent of our staff is gone.  Has anybody been able to tell the difference?”  Never in my life has anybody gone, “Oh, yeah!  The service from that regional office went [inaudible].”

CORPORON:   Right, it’s – that’s remarkable!  And the idea that you have to go to Congress to ask for less money in order to justify getting rid of extraneous

TANCREDO:  –Incidentals–.

CORPORON:   And, you know, ‘extraneous – you’ll get flak from the left talking about extraneous.  “Why, those are people with jobs and families!”  Well, of course they are!  And if the government isn’t sucking that money out of the economy, that money will go elsewhere.  Those people will find productive jobs.

TANCREDO:  That’s right.

CORPORON:   So, reducing the size of government is very, very important.  We’ve got less than a minute in this segment.

TANCREDO:  Oh, my gosh!  That was wild!

CORPORON:   And uh, I know that education is part of the forefront of your agenda as you get into this race for running for governor.

TANCREDO:  It is.

CORPORON:   But when we come back, I know that there’s a story that you have – because I’ve heard you tell it before, about how you decided to run for office in the first place, that I think our listeners would like.

TANCREDO:  Oh, sure.  Okay.

CORPORON:   So, more from Tom Tancredo – he’s with us for the entire hour.  [To audience] So glad you’re here, too. It’s the brand new morning show, “Wake up with Randy Corporon” here on KLZ 560.

[commercial break]

CORPORON:   “Wake up with Randy Corporon”.  We’re joined in studio for the entire hour and – by Tom Tancredo, former Congressman running for governor.  And we’ve got a lot of time, we’re going to want to talk about the campaign and your plans ahead for the state of Colorado.

TANCREDO:  You bet.

CORPORON:   But you’ve told a great story before about why you ran for office.  You didn’t wake up, you weren’t born, you didn’t grow up saying, “Hey, I want to be a politician.  I want to run for office.”  You – it came at you in kind of an odd way, didn’t it?

TANCREDO:  It did, most certainly.  And, I’ve always been political.  I mean, in college I was chairman of the College Republicans, and even at Holy Family High School, I used to debate Mrs. Merkle all the time.  She was one of the few lay teachers there, at the time.  She taught Social Studies.  She was liberal, I was conservative.  I don’t know why, I have always been – you know, my parents, as I’ve told you, they were not terribly political, but I have always been conservative and philosophically, I enjoyed the theoretical part of politics far more than the practical part.  And so I never really thought about transferring that very much.  I just loved to debate.  And so, anyway, I’m trying to teach my ninth graders about civics, and they’re not terribly interested, and I can’t imagine that.  I mean, but, uh, I’m thinking, “What can I do to get these kids interested?” And I kept saying, “Well, you know, this is a — we’ve got an election coming up,” I thought.  So, I went in to them one day and I said – with this idea, that I thought was fool-proof, and I said, “Tell you what, if every single one of you,” – and at the time there were 32 in that class.  I said, “If every single one of you will get involved on somebody’s campaign that’s coming up, here” – 1976, and – ’75, really.  And I said, “If you’ll do that, and if you will – it can be a campaign or it can be an issue, like, you know, somebody—we had so many initiatives on the ballot.  And I said, “But you have to prove to me that you know something – a little bit about it.  You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to work for Fred.’”  And I says, “You can stamp envelopes, you can wave, you know, signs.  You can go door to door.  You can do all kinds of things, even as ninth graders, and you’ll see how the process works.”  And blah, blah, blah.  All extra credit stuff.  And so, this kid says to me – he says, uh, “What are you doing, Mr. Tancredo?” [laughs]

CORPORON:   Uh oh.  Out of the mouths of babes.

TANCREDO:  But I said,–

CORPORON:   [inaudible] conviction.

TANCREDO:  “I’ll have to get back to you on that one!”  [hearty laughter]  And so, I – next day, I came back and I said, “Okay, we’re going to do this, and I’ll tell you, if every one of you will do it,”—thinking, again, I’ll never get all of them—thirty-two is imp—you know.  “But if every one of you will do it, I’ll run for office!  And then I’ll show you how it all works.  We can all see how this thing goes right from the beginning.”  Well, two weeks—it took two weeks, but—and I think they would all meet together and challenge whoever hadn’t done it so far, you know, because they wanted –.  So, they come back, and I remember the last kid – David Abeyta, I remember.  Oh, gosh!  That was fifty years ago, or forty-some years ago.  Anyway, he says—he was the last one to come in with his plan.  So I was stuck, you know.  So, we listed on the board all the things for which I could run.  [laughs]  And we put City Council, and I’d explain a little bit. And, youknow, mayor. And State Legislature.  U.S. – you know, everything I could – the County Commissioner. And then we took a vote.  And they voted that I should run for the state legislature.  And I think, when– as a result of the way I described it, they thought that that was going to take me away longer than anything else, probably.  [laughing] Maybe that’s why they all voted for it.  And so, that’s what I did.  And, uh, so I went down to Jefferson County headquarters and I said, “You know, I’ve done this crazy thing, here.  I told my students—“ blah, blah, blah.  Well, we had just gotten wiped out in ’74 by – by the– because of Watergate.  So, the guy says to me –.  And I say, “I know I haven’t got a chance, but I’ve got to do this.”  And I told him, “I’ll be in the pri—I’ll get in, be in the primary, and whatever.”  And he, you know, he takes one look at me and he thinks, “This guy can fog a mirror, you know, so he’s great!”   [laughs]
CORPORON:   Exactly! “He’s breathing.  We need a candidate, so get in there!”

TANCREDO:  “He’s breathing!  He’ll be fine!” [laughing] And I – ‘cause we had just lost that House seat – District 27.  And so, I – and so I ran.  And my parents became involved, and that’s another story, but it was a lot of fun.  And I won!  [laughing] Amazingly, but I did.

CORPORON:   That’s amazing!