More Goodtimes in Colorado

By Mike Feinstein
Green Party of California

Green County Commissioner Art Goodtimes

Photo Credit: Geoff Tischbein

In mostly rural, 800-square-mile San Miguel County in southwestern Colorado, Green incumbent County Commissioner Art Goodtimes was re-elected to his third term on November 2.

A 25-year resident, parent, husband, small landowner and heirloom seed potato grower, Goodtimes became the county's first commissioner in thirty years to win a third term. Finishing with 50.7 percent of the vote in a three-way partisan race, he defeated both a well-financed Democrat who employed negative campaigning, and an independent realtor/attorney who touted herself as the conservative, 'common sense' candidate.

Goodtimes, 59, ran on a platform of balancing the ecology and the economy of the county, which includes the liberal-minded, mining-turned-resort town of Telluride and the conservative ranching community of Norwood.
He emphasized his accomplishments over the past eight years, including the good financial shape of the county, his creation of a county environmental health department, development of a new green building code and the adoption of innovative high country protective zoning to limit development on the scenic mountains above Telluride. With a slogan of "More Goodtimes," he also pointed to his record as a peacekeeper and cross-partisan coalition builder in the county.
A hemp basket weaver, poet laureate of the Telluride Mushroom Festival and Rainbow Family follower, Goodtimes was outspent 3 to 1, yet was endorsed by both Telluride newspapers and won every precinct in the county but one.

Following the election, the Denver Post ran a high profile feature story on Goodtimes in their statewide election coverage called "Paleohippie weaves third term." In that piece, the longhaired, copiously bearded Goodtimes said, "I am not a one-size-fits-all kind of candidate. I look like a Haight-Ashbury hippie. I like to call myself a paleohippie. I am who I am, and I don't try to hide it or pretend it doesn't exist."

First elected County Commissioner in 1996 as a Democrat, Goodtimes switched to the Greens in September 1998 following a change in state law giving ballot status to Green Party and other minor parties in the state. Founder of the San Miguel local chapter of the Greens and active in helping start several others, Goodtimes also attended the 2000 national Green convention in Denver as a Colorado delegate, has been active in the national Green Officeholders Network and co-founded and served as first facilitator of the Colorado Greens' state online cyber council.

Proud of his political popularity outside the county, Goodtimes has been embraced by conservatives and liberals alike, and serves on several bodies including the National Association of Counties' Public Lands Steering Committee, the Federal Bureau of Lands Management Southwestern Colorado Resource Advisory Council (appointed once by Democratic Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and then a second time by Republican Interior Secretary Gale Norton), the Colorado Rural Development Council, the Public Land Partnership (one of 13 Ford Foundation Community-based Forestry Demonstration Projects), Mountain Studies Institute, the Burn Canyon Monitoring Task Force (which he chairs), Western Colorado Congress (representing the Sheep Mountain Alliance, of which he is a co-founder), the Forest Service's Healthy Forest Partnership, Western Colorado's Club 20 and the Telluride Institute (serving as its president).

A month before the election, Utah writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams had this to say during her keynote address at the Western Colorado Congress annual meeting: "If there's hope in the American West, it's that Art Goodtimes is one of our county commissioners."

For his third term, Goodtimes' goals include promoting more regional collaboration both inside and outside the county, and establishing a Sustainability Commission in the Telluride region.