Press
Groff Calls Senate to Order
January 10, 2008
Former Mayor Webb, Wife talk of passing torch to new generation
Chris Barge and Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News
Regis Groff gazed out across the Senate chamber Wednesday and took in a sight he thought he’d never see.
Black men, women and children filled nearly every row in the balcony and the entire east bench on the Senate floor. Democratic lawmakers outnumbered Republicans. And his son, Sen. Peter Groff, stood behind the podium, gavel in hand.
“The thought of ever having a Democratic majority never occurred to me,” Regis Groff said. “And to have a black as Senate president – and to have that person be my son – is something I could not have imagined.”
With one swift strike, Groff gaveled the Senate to order as the legislature convened for a 120-day session. The 44-year-old from Denver was immediately elected its first black president.
He replaced Joan Fitz-Gerald, who was the first woman to hold the job but resigned to run for Congress.
“I understand that it is not just my hand that takes the gavel today,” Groff said in his opening speech. “I understand that it is the hands of my relatives who toiled under the overseer’s whip on the red clay of Georgia that take this gavel today on the red carpet of the Colorado Senate.”
He challenged his colleagues to “climb above the forest of partisan politics and to ascend above the timberline, to the summit, to a place from which we can see the long view and the pathway to a greater Colorado.”
He honed in on the Democratic agenda of tackling health care, education and economic development this session.
