QUID HAS HEARD the best political offense is — pretty much a dream. Take, for example, Aurora City Council Ward VI Candidate Brian Arnold, on the ballot and as hopeful as the rest running for city council. Arnold, a Montbello public school teacher, also coaches track at Cherokee Trail High School, near where he lives. Seems the council wannabe sent out a group tweet to student track team members last week saying, “Inspiration: Hey guys, check ur house, if there is a ballot ready 2 be filled out help me by voting for Coach Brian Arnold.”
The cold reality of this callous political world is best summed up by the response of one of Arnold’s players who messaged right back.
“No.”
AND QUID HAS HEARD that there’s no substitute for being the smartest man in the room when it’s time to lead the world. Seems hizzoner Steve Hogan was being oh-so-mayoral last week when he stopped into the Jubilee Roasting Co. at its soon-to-open digs on Kenton and Colfax in northwest Aurora. Hogan was visiting with former north Aurora Sen. Bob Hagedorn. The seriously liberal Hagedorn certainly relished and bathed in the tree-hugging espresso-ists at a coffee house that harkens back to Denver’s iconic Muddy Waters Under the Platte. (Everyone who felt a lump in their throat right then spread your toes in your Earth Shoes and Burks.) This is a coffee house that lives under the moniker, “Jubilee is born out of the idea that we are not the most important thing around us, in fact, it’s more like we are just some trees in a story about a forest. And that’s the best.” Pardon your faithful hack as a tear wriggles out of Quid’s jaded eye in honor of a generation of war protesters who never needed prescription medication. As at home as Hagedorn must have felt, the moderately Republican Hogan must have nearly had a bleeding heart attack. There were, apparently no stump speeches or advice on embracing one’s inner smaller government, just a mutual admiration of the most liberal dudes in the room and those were clearly the oldest ones. Had Quid known that hizzoner was going to trip the lava-lamp-light fantastic, your fish-wrapper filler would have sent along photos, kept dear, of a much younger Steve Hogan sporting the most amazing brown-and-blue plaid leisure suit complete with collar-over-collar collaboration. The old and new, the left and right, the tree-huggers and tree-city-hedonists, shared a moment Quid will soon forget.
AND THAT’S ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS.