Lamm Won’t Run Again in Colorado

Gov. Richard Lamm, insisting he doesn’t want to curb his outspoken nature to win an election, says he will seek no office when his term expires in 1986.

“I came into this office with my intellectual virtue intact. I hope to leave with it,” Lamm said Thursday, after announcing his decision at the end of his annual State of the State address.

Lamm, a Democrat who earlier said he might consider running for the U.S. Senate in 1986, said his family’s lack of enthusiasm for Washington life played a part in his decision.

“I consider six years in Washington not to be a term, but to be a sentence,” said Lamm, who also rejected the possibility of running for President in 1988 or accepting a Cabinet post.

Lamm is popular enough in Colorado that most observers think he could win a fourth term with little difficulty. But he said Thursday that 1986 will be the last year his son and daughter both will be at home, and he did not want to miss that time with them because of a campaign.

Lamm has earned the nickname “Governor Gloom” with his blunt assessments of American society, including his statement last year that the terminally ill have a “duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that, and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.”