Station:     KNUS, 710 AM

Show:        Backbone Radio

Guests:     Brophy

Link:               http://www.710knus.com/podcastlineup.aspx

Date:         July 21, 2013

Topics:            Eastern Colorado, Primary Election, Gubernatorial Campaign, Angela Brophy, David Brophy, Gun Control, Renewable Energy Mandates, SB 252, Small Business Owners, Trial Lawyers, Conservative Libertarian, Former Governors, Bill Ritter, John Hickenlooper, Bill Owens, Roy Romer, Limited Government, Blue Ribbon Panels, To Be Determined (TBD), Education Funding, Transportation, Public Safety, Growing Economy, Entrepreneurs, Creating Jobs, “Metrosexuals”, Family Photo, Social Media, Facebook, Twitter, ColoradoPols, Rural Colorado, Avid Biker, Straight Talk, Small Town Values, Economic Growth, Firearms, Partnership of the Media & the Left, Mainstream Media Reporters, Repealing Laws, Republican Legislature, Voter Fraud Bill, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Entitlement Reform, ‘No Drama’ Government, Tina Brown, The Daily Beast, Extreme Gun Control Legislation, Teachers’ Union, Douglas County School Board, Federalist Republic, Socialist society, Obamacare

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HOST KRISTA KAFER:  Welcome back to Backbone Radio.  And I just got on the line, Senator Greg Brophy.  He is from eastern Colorado.  His is a farmer, farms corn, beans, watermelon, and wheat. [He has] got a beautiful family.  He’s a gunowner.  He’s a great guy, and we’ve got him here on the line.  Welcome to the show.

COLORADO STATE SENATOR & REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR GREG BROPHY:  Well, thanks for having me on, Krista

KAFER:  Yeah!  When I saw that you had announced for governor, I thought, “You know what?  We’ve got to have him on the show!”  And I did say earlier that we’re not playing favoritism.  We’re not picking anybody in the primary, but we’re going to have all of our friends on at some point.  Great slate.  I’m excited.  Great to go into a primary with great people to chose from.  You’ve been on our show before.  I’m a big fan of yours.  Why throw in your hat?

BROPHY:  Last December, Angela and I, my wife, decided.  We were of the same mind – we were decided.  Well, she was there before me, but I decided, Okay, it’s time to get out of politics.  I’ve —  you know, done ten years at this point and there are other things to do.  I like my farm I like my weekends, I like my family, I like chasing David around the baseball diamond and having fun. But really, what happened then, by the end of February, the middle of March it was obvious that Governor Hickenlooper wasn’t what he said he was.  He clearly isn’t a moderate Democrat, but instead a very liberal Democrat.

KAFER:  Amen.

BROPHY:  And I’m fighting the battles.  I mean, we’re fighting the gun battles.  We’re fighting on renewable energy stuff, small business versus trial lawyers.  And, you know, no one is scoring better hits than me on him.  I’ve been taking him to task – I was taking him to task before it was cool for everybody else to do it.  And –

KAFER:  [laughs]

BROPHY:  –And you know, and necessarily so.  And then praising him when he deserved it.  I mean, if you do something right, I’m willing to tell you that you did a good job.  And it became obvious that I needed to run for governor because the state deserved to have a governor who has the same values that they have, who listens to the people of Colorado, and a governor that they can trust – someone – even if you don’t agree with me or you governor, and I propose to be your governor.  If you don’t agree with me on every issue, at least you can trust me.  I’m not going to tell you today that I’m one way, and after the election do something completely different.  That’s not the way I work.  I’m easy to understand.  I’m a little bit of a conservative libertarian, and I’ve been this way for ten, eleven years now in the legislature. I’ve got a record that you can look at.  And then, ultimately, at the end of the day, too, you know Colorado really – especially with facing the challenges that we face right now — when you have a governor that is actually ready to lead on day one.  We’re beyond the period where on-the-job-training is okay.  You need to have somebody to come in and ready to go, right off the bat.  And when you look at the governors of the past – you look at Hickenlooper, you look at Ritter, you look at Owens, and Romer.  The first two that I mentioned came in with no clue what they wanted to do, no vision for Colorado, no experience understanding how to get things done.  And I believe in a limited government, so I want to do a few things, and I want to do them well.  Bill Ritter commissioned so many blue ribbon panels to study problems that we ran out of blue ribbons.

KAFER:  [laughs]

BROPHY:  So, that left John Hickenlooper, where you know, he had to do a different thing and so his vision is “TBD”—to be determined.  So, he sends people all around Colorado to listen to folks and ask them what they think they’re government ought to be doing.  And I think most people of Colorado just want the government to take care of funding education, good transportation network, certainly see to public safety, and then really just concentrate on creating an environment where the economy is growing so that the  entrepreneurs are creating jobs.  And for the most part, just leave me the heck alone!  Stop coming after my guns.  Stop telling me what I can eat and what I can’t eat.  And let me live my life the way I want to live my life.  So, I decided that I need to run.  And by the first of April, Mrs. Brophy said, “Okay, you can run.”  So we decided to get in and you know, I was hoping to wait a little bit longer but it also became obvious by the middle of May that I needed to announce in July here and hit the road, because you know I’m the underdog here, running against guys that other people know better than me.  I have to go out to the corners of Colorado and talk to people and listen to a lot of people and earn their support, and that’s exactly what I intend to do, and then hopefully I can build that 51% coalition that’s been elusive for Republican candidates.  And I think I can.  The Republicans in the state know that they can trust me.  In the middle of the state, we’ll look at my record of working on all kinds of issues and my range of interests and say, “Okay, this guys really not that much different than a regular Coloradoan.  We’ll give him a shot.”  And I think I can do that and build a 51% coalition and actually have a Republican governor in Colorado.

KAFER:  Well, I like what you say on your campaign website:  “Straight Talk and Small Town Values — A Smart, Outspoken Conservative.”  And it’s got you on a bike, with a mountain backdrop.

BROPHY:  Yeah.

KAFER:  I just think it’s a unique blend of qualities.  You’ve got rural Colorado, avid biker, you know,  Libertarian, also Republican – you know, it’s just an interesting mix.

BROPHY:  Yeah, and I just wanted to be me.  And the website is gregforgovernor.com, so if somebody wants to go and look at it, they can do that.  And, you know, before I announced, some of my Republican buddies said, “Greg, we’ve got to go in and scrub your social media.  You know, get it all cleaned up so you’re presentable.”  And I said no.  I’m running as myself – a guy that you can trust, –whether you agree with me or not on every issue, I want you to know that you can trust me.  So, my social media is what it is.  And then those goofs – you know, those lefty goofs over at ColoradoPols pitched a fit oh, sometime this past week, over a family photo that we have from back in 2011, where every member of the [sneezes] – excuse me, out in the country, — every member of the family is holding [whispers] a scary black gun, a scary black gun.  And it’s a beautiful photo, and we had a great time.  We shot hundreds of photos that day, right after Christmas when we had the whole family together for the first time in ages.  And they had to make a big deal out of it, you know.  And, you know, my guys, [inaudible] wanted to clean some of that up, and I said, “No.  You know what?  Firearms are part of the culture of rural Colorado. It’s a part of the culture of my family, and if you follow me on Twitter, which is @SenatorBrophy, or on Facebook – Greg Brophy.  You know, we’re out at the farm right now today.  My brother happened to come down for a family reunion, and guess what we’re doing.

KAFER:  Shootin’ guns.

BROPHY:  Yeah, of course we are.  That’s what you do.  If it’s nice weather outside, you’re probably going to go out and shoot some guns.  And if it’s yucky weather you’re probably going to play some cards at the table, here.  And so, we were out shooting guns today.  And I — It’s just part of the culture of Eastern Colorado.  It’s part of the culture of my family, and I’m proud of it.

KAFER:  Well, I remember one of my dad’s really good friends growing up was in Hudson, Colorado.  […] And we used to go out and shoot guns on his property, because there’s no one around.  And you set up some cans.  You get out your guns.  During bird season, go out there and hunt pheasant.  I mean, it truly is a rural tradition.  And I looked at that photo, and my first thought was, “It’s kind of like a family ‘Charlie’s Angels’, you know?”  Because you have all the guns at different levels, or different kind of pointing – no gun is pointing at a human being, but they’re all pointing in different directions.  And then I had this vision of these Metro-sexuals liberals in Denver  looking at that photo and being horrified.  And being like, “Oh no!  He’s got guns!”  Meanwhile –

BROPHY:  They could have made a lot of the comment on [Colorado]Pols.

KAFER:  [laughing] I bet!  I mean, these guys have never handled a gun.  They’ve probably never been to rural Colorado.  And so, for them, they look at that photo and see horror.  Whereas ordinary Coloradoans look at that photo and think, “Oh!  How fun!  What a fun family!”

BROPHY:  And we have a lot of fun doing it.  I’ve got[ten] a lot of response.  You know – oh, okay.   I’m just going to punch back, because – you know, I am what I am, and I’m proud of who I am and I’m proud of where I come from.  And so I actually re-shared that photo on Facebook again yesterday and it just exploded!  I mean, people were just sharing it all over the place and commenting about it all over the place.  And, you know, it’s—the hard core Left can want to take away everybody’s guns and think that guns are demonic.  Most of Colorado understands that they’re a nice tool that is part of the American culture.  Those of us who really love guns see them as a work of art.  And yeah, I mean, that was actually a pretty well-staged photo.  And we had a great photographer from Wray, here,– just a young lady starting out her business.  And the two in the back, which were me and my wife – our guns were pointed up, and the kids all have their guns pointed at the ground, and everything was safe.  I tell you, though, Krista, there was a reporter who gets fed questions – you know, a lot of mainstream media reporters get fed questions by the activist left –

KAFER:  Oh, yeah.

BROPHY:  –rather than think up questions on their own, because they don’t want to do the work, they get fed questions from the Left.

KAFER:  Well, it’s a partnership. I mean, face it.  The Left and the media, it’s a partnership.

BROPHY:  It’s a partnership.  And because then they are so sympathetic to the cause of the Left, they’re like, “Oh yeah!  We’ll ask that question.”  So, some goofball has to ask me, “So, there’s concern that those guns might have been loaded in that photo.”  And I, I actually – the question was sent by text message.  And I composed a text message, but I restrain myself occasionally.  And originally I said, “that’s a stupid f-dash-i-n-g question!”  I won’t write that word out, either.  I’m not opposed to saying it, if it’s appropriate, but I just won’t write it out because it looks bad.  Everybody – you know, you know you treat guns like they’re loaded all the time.  And then I sat on it for a little bit.  I thought about it.  And I thought, “Okay, I won’t do that.”  So, I just sent him back the answer that “Proper safety rules dictate that you handle every weapon as if it were loaded.”  And then I pushed send.  And he wasn’t real happy with that particular question.  But it is what it is.  You know, and again, if you’re afraid of guns or if you want to demonize guns, you can make of it what you want.  But the reality is, is that those of us who have grown up handling firearms – you know you treat them all like they’re loaded, whether they are or they aren’t.

KAFER:  Yeah, always keep – and I remember that so grilled into my head from my dad, that I can’t even point a fake gun at a fake person on a video game without feeling vaguely ill.  We’re going to take a break, and when we get back, I want to hear more about what issues fire up Senator Greg Brophy.  Back in a jiff!

[commercial break]

KAFER:  […] What other issues fire you up?

BROPHY:  Well, you know, I’m a conservative Libertarian guy, which means I basically want the government out of your life.  Now, if the Brophy administration exists and we are blessed with a Republican legislature, what that’ll mean is that it’s a very clear signal from the people of Colorado that the Democrats went way too far and that we get it.  We have an obligation, I believe, to roll back the gun control bills.  We have an obligation to roll back the renewable energy bill that they passed this past session, the voter fraud bill, the bills that favor the trial lawyers over small business.  So, that – again, if we’re blessed with a Republican legislature, that will be, you know, right out at the beginning.  We will just do that, because that is what the people of Colorado have asked for.  If I don’t get a Republican legislature, I’ll still work really hard on those issues, trying to make the case that they went too far and we need to roll those things back and we need to run a more sensible state government.  And we’ll concentrate on the kitchen table issues.  You know, I believe that small business is where jobs and economic growth are created.  So, we’ll run a government that crates an environment where small business owners are confident in what’s going on here in Colorado.  It’s stable.  They know what they’ve got.  Then they will start hiring people again and we’ll start growing our economy, concentrate on those things.  We will make sure that we have the appropriate amount of funding for education.  To do that, we absolutely have to do some entitlement reform.  And it’s really easy.  We just follow the model that we saw from Washington D.C., when Washington D.C. actually still worked, back in the late 90s when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton, whether you like either one of them or not, they got together and they reformed welfare.  And if we do that here in Colorado,  I believe that we can save hundreds of millions of dollars and make sure that money is available for education, maybe a little bit of it for transportation.  Again, concentrate on the kitchen table issues, being no drama state government.  And show people what the difference is between people who believe in a limited government, and people who believe in an ever-expanding government.  Because you get to choose.  The reality is you get to choose.  Do you want limited government, or do you want limited freedom?  Because if you continue to grow the government, you are going to end up eroding people’s individual liberty.  And I just don’t think people in Colorado like that.  I think people in Colorado are fiercely independent, kind of like this state.  This state is so unique in that it has almost everything you could want in a state, with the mountains and the plains and a great urban area.  It really can stand on its own.  And most of the people who live in this state, can stand on their own, and really don’t want the government meddling in their lives.  That’s what I see as a state government, kind of a ‘No Drama’  state government that gets the things that people want to get done and then stays out of their lives the rest of the time.

KAFER:  I like that – a ‘No Drama’ government.  And I totally agree.  The more the government does, the less the people will do.  It erodes our spirit, our sense of liberty and our equality.  When you accept a paternalistic government to take care of you and tell you what to do, you are accepting a certain kind of servitude.  It’s just wrong.

BROPHY:  Oh, Krista, when you think about this, I mean, this state is really the center of the debate for what becomes of the United States of America.  I mean, the Democrats in the state legislature have enacted the most extreme gun control legislation ever seen in the Rocky Mountain West.  You know, Tina Brown writing in whatever rag of a magazine she writes for – I think The Daily Beast, said that they were the most aggressive gun control bills in America. And I agree with her on one thing.  And it’s that.  And then, on the other hand, you have Douglas County, Colorado, here, where the school board is bravely experimenting with vouchers for education and an opportunity for a school system in a big, important school district that exists for the benefit of the students and the parents, instead of the teachers’ union, to flourish.  And they’re doing great work there.  Well, this fall —

KAFER:  And they’re taking a lot of flak for it.

BROPHY:  Oh, yeah!  And this fall, you know, the forces of the Left, the teachers’ union, they’re going to descend on Colorado and try an undo all that great reform work that Douglas County schools have done.

KAFER:  They despise it!  I mean, Lefties despise them!

BROPHY:  I want my side to win that.  I want the side that favors the students and the parents over the teachers’ union to win that battle.  And so, the spotlight is on those guys.  And then, a year after that, in the fall of ’14, the spotlight will be on my race and the race for control of the Colorado legislature.  And the exact same question will be put before the people, this time, instead of only in Douglas County, across the whole state of Colorado:  do you want a No Drama state government that’s limited in it’s nature that works on the things that people talk about at the kitchen table, or do you want a government that meddles in your life indefinitely, you know, with arbitrary capacity limits on magazines.  And then, how long until we have arbitrary capacity limits on sugary soda drinks?  I mean, for crying out loud, they’ve banned the sale of chocolate cake at school with the ban of trans-fats.  Well, I don’t know where it ends.  And I’m telling you, the spotlight of the entire nation is on Colorado.  And we’re going to find out which direction this country goes.  I think it all started here, too, back in ’04.

KAFER:  Well, when you say you don’t know where it ends, it’s because it doesn’t end.  When you’re the kind of person that believes in unlimited government, government can do anything it wants to you.  And it’s perfectly justified.

BROPHY:  The really smart guys in government can figure out better for you how to live your life than you can.  Well, we’re going to find out which direction to go, here.  And again, I think this tide, taking this country down this path, started here in Colorado back in 2004 and it culminated in the ’08 election, and led to the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.  And that’s Barak Obama’s line.  And he was right.  He is trying to fundamentally transform this country, from a Federalist Republic into a big government Socialist society, a la Europe.  And we’re going broke because of it.  And we’ve lost a lot of liberty.

KAFER:  Seventeen trillion dollars!  We actually crossed the seventeen trillion dollar mark.

BROPHY:  It’s hard to understand where the money comes from.

KAFER:  They have printing presses, I believe.

BROPHY:  [inaudible] I mean, they’re expanding Obamacare.  They started expanding it even before him on the installment plan, and then aggressively expanding it to implement Obamacare here in Colorado, spending hundreds of millions of dollars additionally each and every year on medical entitlements and taking that money out of our education system.

KAFER:  Somebody’s got to get into power and say no.  I firmly believe that.  Now, how can folks find out more about your race?

BROPHY:  Well, you can always go to GregForGovernor.com.  You can follow me on Twitter.  I mean, it’s the real me at @SenatorBrophy.  Check us out on Facebook.  You know, our “Greg Brophy for Governor” Facebook page is well over 3,000 likes in a week.  We’re raising money.  You know, [I’ll] break a little bit of news, here. I have—

KAFER:  You’ve got about fifteen seconds.

BROPHY:  — I have out-raised the other guys in a week!

KAFER:  Holy cow!

BROPHY:  They have been in the race for a long time and well, people are excited about this, and ready to win for a change.  They want to try something new, somebody with a vision for Colorado and a vision for limited government and I think I’m going to be the guy to fill that role.

KAFER:  Well, thanks for coming on.  How about this?  “Brophy for Governor.  Hickenlooper for brewer.”

BROPHY:  There you go!

KAFER:  It works.  Hey, thanks for coming on the show!  We’ll have you back again soon!

BROPHY:  Thanks, Krista.

KAFER:  All right.  Back in a jiff!