CPR News
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer speaks with Ryan Warner in Colorado Matters' Denver studio. July 20, 2026.
It is perhaps instructive about who Roy Romer is that a recent documentary on his life begins, not with any of the consequential decisions that he made as Colorado’s last three-term Governor, like going to the Supreme Court to help strike down Amendment 2, which barred local governments from specifically protecting gay and lesbian people.
Rather, there’s Romer, chuckling along as he relates a story from the 1997 G-8 Summit, which featured government leaders from around the world. The tale begins with Romer admonishing President Bill Clinton to not scuff up the carpeting in the Governor’s Mansion, which had been rented for the occasion. It ended with Soviet President Boris Yeltsin reminding each of the attendees to be mindful of the flooring.
“This was a tense time,” Romer said. “You had Boris Yeltsin going around your living room saying to everybody, ‘Don't get the rugs dirty.’ It took the pressure off of all that and everybody had a great laugh over it.
“Humor is very important and you’ve got to use it when you can.”
Romer, 97, spoke with Colorado Matters to discuss donating his career papers to Metropolitan State University of Denver. The school is also collaborating with Romer’s Institute of Evidence-Based Policy, a nonprofit that provides policy research to state and local executive decision-makers.
“Evidence has been very important to me all my life,” he said. “And here is an institute where we're available to governmental entities, cities, and states to research something without bias. Don't go in with a point of view, go in with an inquiry as to where the truth lies here.”
Romer also revisited his role in abolishing Amendment 2, a statute that roiled the entire United States, not just Colorado. Romer said his interest in the controversy began with a “learning experience.”
“I was 60 years of age before I really got the truth about homosexuality,” he said. “I was a guy who just didn't understand it. At age 60, I saw a family in my church that had such love. I went to them as an individual and said, ‘Teach me what you are doing.’
“So I learned at age 60 how wrong I had been. But a lot of my life has been finding out truths that had escaped me or learning about people who've been lying to me and now I know the facts. And so the gay issue for me was not only it got me closer to the truth, but it taught me how stupid we can be by collective misinformation.”
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer speaks with Ryan Warner in Colorado Matters' Denver studio. July 20, 2026.
Highlights from the conversation
On being instrumental in opening Metro State, an institution that serves a diverse population
“This all comes from my living in Holly, Colorado town of 800. There were people I went to school with that had equal talent to me, maybe even superior. They didn't get to go to college. And I always thought about them all my life about the opportunity they missed. So I wanted to have an institution of higher education that would allow you to work and come to school for six months and then go back to work and come back to school for six months. And I fought hard for that concept. The University of Colorado opposed this and we had a very tough fight. And I finally won that issue by giving the idea to a Republican who passed it. Palmer Birch, senior Republican guy, highly respected. And I gave it away because I knew it would help get it done.”
On growing up during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s
“I was born in 1928, so I lived through the Depression and the Dust Bowl. We put sheets up on the windows and we farmed. I had to quit farming because it got so bad I couldn't see the roads. I worked in a small elevator and at six o'clock I'd go down and milk my cattle. It got dark at two in the afternoon. I went down and milked it, then I came back. Everybody was laughing at me and I thought my fly was open or something. And I said, ‘What are you laughing about?’ And they said, ‘You know what time it is?’ I said, ‘No, it's dark.’ They said, ‘No, it's two o'clock.’ And I milked the cow in the middle of the day because it had gotten dark.”
On Colorado and the United States today
“Colorado is blessed among most states by virtue of the population it has. I'm worried we have failed in education for a hundred years. It's the most important public policy of all: education, and we don't put enough attention into it. We don't demand quality in it.
“And Congress is just the greatest disappointment of my life. I don't understand why people are sitting there gutless and not confronting the issues that they need to confront. We are really perilously close to a totalitarian state. We're incrementally leaning that way. And the attack on the election process is fundamental. It's strategic. I worry about it. I think we'll come out of it, but the cost is severe.”