Colorado’s Gov. Lamm Won’t Run in ’86

Gov. Richard D. Lamm, once Colorado’s progressive “Lion of the Rockies” but now known to some as “Governor Gloom,” has announced that he will not run for any office in 1986, signaling the possible end to his 18-year career as a political maverick.

The announcement, made extemporaneously at the end of his annual State of the State address Thursday, ended months of speculation that Lamm would run for a fourth term in 1986, or seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate if Gary Hart retires to run again for President.

“I shall seek no political office in 1986,” he said. “I aspire to no other office than the highest of offices--that of Colorado citizen.”

In a news conference after the announcement, Lamm said he considers “six years in Washington not to be a term, but to be a sentence.”

Lamm, 49, also said that any campaign in 1986 would monopolize his time during the last year that both his teen-age son and daughter will be at home. And he said he was not ready to launch a multimillion-dollar campaign.

The independent-minded Lamm, nicknamed “Governor Gloom” because of his exhortations to change medical and social programs and policies, also said he was not ready to stop crusading for America to become fiscally responsible, and he expressed fear that another political campaign would take precedence.

“I came into this office with my intellectual virtue intact,” Lamm said. “I hope to leave with it.”

Lamm said he was not ruling out ever seeking political office again, and he acknowledged that leaving public life might break “the chain of opportunity.”

But he said: “America doesn’t need many more politicians. I do think they need more people saying the kind of stuff I’m saying.”

Lamm attracted national attention last year when he said 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.”