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| 1/8/2009 7:19:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Spearheading a Symposium for women. Swanee Hunt (left), former ambassador to Austria, welcomes Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Network, to open the program “Unconventional Women/Rocky Mountain Roundtable” on Aug. 25, 2008, at the Buell Theater in Denver. The Unconventional Women symposium united 3,000 women in advancing their political leadership and participation in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Photo by Brian Brainerd /The Denver Post File Photo) |
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Swanee Hunt eyes next step after Bennet gets Senate nod
Tom Locke
Flume Editor
She is one of the wealthiest women in the U.S., was ambassador to Austria under President Bill Clinton from 1993-1997, has written three books, has taught at Harvard, and has poured millions into charities in Colorado and throughout the world.
Plus, she has significant Park County ties.
Her name is Swanee Hunt, one of the children of Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, and her part-time residence is the Columbine Ranch at Kenosha Pass in northeast Park County.
She had recently been lobbying for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Ken Salazar, and on Dec. 29 had an interview with Gov. Bill Ritter, but on Jan. 3 Ritter announced that he had selected Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet for the seat.
Prior to the Bennet selection, in an interview on Dec. 31, Hunt told The Flume that if she was selected for the Senate seat she would make her voting address Jefferson, Colo., the Park County town that is nearest to her ranch. Now it's not clear whether she will change her voting address from Cambridge, Mass., where it's been during her tenure at Harvard.
Asked on Dec. 31 what she might do if she wasn't selected for the Senate seat, Hunt responded: "I don't know. I might go to the Obama administration."
At the time she declined to give odds on the possibility of her selection for the Senate seat, but noted that she had a "lovely time meeting with the governor."
The process
Even though Hunt wasn't selected, it's interesting to take a look at the process by which she threw her hat in the ring as an interested contender.
Prior to her face-to-face meeting with the governor, she had put in a call to him to let him know how important diversity was for the U.S. Senate, which she characterizes as being 80 percent white male.
It took him a day to return the call, and in the meantime she received a call from Ellen Malcolm, the founder and president of EMILY's List, a political network that supports pro-choice Democratic women.
Malcolm suggested that Hunt put her name forward for the Senate seat. Then Hunt talked with her husband, former Colorado Springs Symphony director Charles Ansbacher, who still works as a guest conductor all over the world. He offered his full support. And by the time the governor called, she had decided to put her name forward.
"Ninety percent of what I said to him was about diversity," she told The Flume. But toward the end of that initial phone conversation with the governor, she offered to put her name in the hat "if it's useful." Ritter told her to go ahead and send a "curriculum vitae," or resume, and that led to the face-to-face meeting on Dec. 29.
Meeting with the governor
At that meeting there were two major questions the governor wanted to cover, she said.
One was: What will you bring to the Senate?
"That went very well," she said.
She told The Flume that, among other things, she has a 14-person office in Washington, D.C., and she has experience working with Congress, the Pentagon, and others in Washington. She could simply step into the Senate position and "hit the ground running," she said.
The other question from the governor had to do with whether she would be prepared to handle an election campaign in 2010. She felt she would.
"I love the state. I love people. I love talking," she said. "I think I have the goods."
The governor's question about the 2010 election is particularly interesting in light of the selection of Bennet, who has never run for public office. Questions have been raised in the Denver press about whether he's prepared for the rigors of running a campaign.
His was not among the top names mentioned as likely selectees for the position, but then again, Hunt's name was also not typically listed among the likely choices.
$407 million
One advantage that Hunt would have had in any campaign was plenty of her own money. In a March 2006 article in Boston Magazine, Hunt was listed as the 36th wealthiest person in the Boston area, with a worth of $407 million.
Evergreen resident and political activist Judy Wahler (also interviewed on Dec. 31, prior to Bennet's selection) saw Hunt's money as an advantage for a 2010 campaign. "She will put her money where it counts," said Wahler. "She will run a great campaign in 2010."
And it's not only a matter of her own money. Wahler saw Hunt raising lots of money from others as well. "So many women in Colorado have been touched by her," she said.
Wahler also touted Hunt's intelligence and experience with national and international issues.
"I've never seen anybody with so much focus in my life," Wahler said. "She's brilliant. ... What better person could we have as a Senator?"
Wahler said she knew term-limited Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff, Colorado Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, all mentioned in the press as possible choices, and she loved them all but still favored Hunt for the position. "Swanee just has a little bit more. She just is above the norm," she said. "If you base it on what she's done in her lifetime, I think she has a great chance (to be selected)."
Ties to Colorado
Were her ties to Colorado strong enough to be selected? Apparently it wouldn't have mattered either way, because Ritter was quoted in the Jan. 4 Denver Post as saying, "This was about choosing Michael Bennet. It was not about not choosing anyone else."
Still it's helpful to look at Hunt's ties to Colorado and Park County as well as her experience elsewhere.
From 1993 to 1997 she served as ambassador to Austria, and from 1997 to 2008 she has worked as the founding director of the "Women and Public Policy Program" at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
She said Harvard called her about setting up that program, which incorporates an understanding of gender perspectives on public policy. She is still a lecturer in public policy there.
Still she has "kept very, very strong roots here" in Colorado during those years and still has 600 Colorado families on her Christmas card list, she said. While in Vienna she voted absentee from Colorado, and she has children and grandchildren who live in the state.
"Being a ranch owner, I certainly think she can have some sense for rural community people," said South Park High School social studies teacher Bud Jankiewicz, who worked as Columbine Ranch manager from 1998 to 2006.
"She understands issues like water rights," he said in a Dec. 31 interview.
In addition, she has had long ties to some of the top political people in the state. "I know that she had a personal and professional relationship with both [former governor] Dick Lamm and [former Denver mayor] Federico Pena," he said. "I know that she was very informed on state-level issues."
He felt taxpayers would get their money's worth if Hunt got the position. "She doesn't shy away from making decisions. That's one of the many things that I've admired about her," Jankiewicz said. "If it's a tough decision, she can make it."
And she goes for the permanent, high-quality solution rather than a Band-Aid fix, he said. Her attitude is: "Let's do it right."
Getting women to vote
More recently in Colorado, she organized a six-hour symposium with 3,000 women that coincided with the Democratic National Convention and helped spearhead a statewide initiative from September through November to get least-likely-to-vote women to the polls.
"We started with eight women. We got 10,000 women," said Wahler. It was through that process that she really got to know Hunt. "I've never worked with anybody like this in my life. She is so driven," Wahler said. "She's not a sitter. She has to see things happen or she's not happy. ... She's the most inspiring woman I've ever met."
Hunt is also well-known in Colorado for being president and founder of Hunt Alternatives Fund from 1981 to 1998. It has been headquartered in Cambridge since 1998. It has worked with more than 400 nonprofits across the Denver area and has been a main vehicle through which Hunt has given to charity.
But what about putting a person who has inherited that much money into a Senate seat?
Jankiewicz said on Dec. 31 that he had never worked for someone with that much money before, and previous doubts he had were erased.
"She's got a work ethic that will beat a lot of blue-collar ranch managers," he said. "She's not spoiled. She doesn't care whether it takes Saturdays or Sundays or holidays. She's a hard worker and she's generous to a fault."
In Park County, that generosity has included a donation to Animal Control for a horse trailer and the use of her ranch by University of Denver archeology students, he said.
Hunt said she doesn't know what her worth is now because it fluctuates so much with oil prices. "I certainly have much more money than I need," she said. Indeed, she has given away half her income for the last 27 years, she said.
The Boston Magazine article puts it this way: "An advocate for women and a former ambassador to Austria, she gives half her income to charity through her two foundations. That adds up to about $60 million so far."
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