Art Goodtimes easily won re-election as a county  commissioner  in southwestern Colorado, garnering 69%  of the vote in rural San Miguel County. The first elected Green county commissioner in Colorado history!

Goodtimes and Fischer Win Convincingly

Goodtimes Is One of
Nation's Highest Ranking
Green Elected Officials

   It wasn't a squeaker in San Miguel County.
   Incumbent County Commissioner Art  Goodtimes swept to victory in his re-election  bid this week, capturing nearly 70 percent of  the votes cast, and winning all six precincts in  the county. And Former Telluride Mayor Elaine  Fischer won comfortably over her opponent,  Stu Fraser, in her bid for a commissioner's  seat.
   In keeping with the county's recent history,  local voters supported Al Gore over George W.  Bush by a vote of 1598 to 1043. Green Party  presidential candidate Ralph Nader took 17  percent of the county vote, with 560 votes.
Goodtimes became one of only 16 Green Party  candidates to win election on Tuesday — most  to city councils in California — and is one of  the party's highest ranking elected officials in  the nation. Fischer's victory returns one of the  region's longest serving elected officials to  public office for another four years. Fischer  served a total of 12 years on the     Telluride  Town Council, including nearly six years as  mayor, through last November.
   Goodtimes' and Fischer's election victories  could be interpreted as a triumph of  Telluride's left-leaning political establishment.  It will leave Republican Commissioner Vern  Ebert, midway through a four-year term, in the  ideological minority on the board of county  commissioners, as Fischer replaces outgoing  two-term Democratic Commissioner Anna  Zivian.
   Goodtimes, following Tuesday's result, can  plausibly claim a mandate. His election is  notable not only for its size over former  County Commissioner Leslie Sherlock, a  Democrat, but also in that he is the only  commissioner candidate in memory to win  every precinct. Goodtimes did not carry his  own district in his first run for office four years  ago. This time, he won Wright's Mesa, where  he lives, by a vote of 263-197, and he won  the far West End precinct around Egnar by a  vote of 41-15.
   In his first term of office, Goodtimes has  often talked about the importance to him of  serving his rural constituents, who often feel  outvoted and misunderstood by the county's  far more populous, prosperous and liberal east  end.
"I'm happiest that I was able to win in my own district," Goodtimes said Wednesday. "The biggest surprise to me was winning Mountain Village."
   Goodtimes won Precinct 6, consisting of  Mountain Village, by a vote of 119-52.  Countywide, he captured 2169 votes to  Sherlock's 975.
   Of winning Mountain Village, Goodtimes said,  "I hope it means that the county and the  towns of Telluride and Mountain Village can  begin to work together in a cohesive way. We  are not enemies and do not need to be  enemies. If 70 percent of the county can unite  around a candidate, it means we can have a  coordinated effort to solve countywide  problems like housing and transportation."
   Goodtimes said he it was a "huge  disappointment" that Green Party presidential  candidate Ralph Nader captured only three  percent of the vote nationwide, but proudly  noted that Nader got 17 percent in the county.
   Nader's weak showing nationally "underscores  the power of the political duopoly to turn  progressives and feminist voters against their  own interests."
   "The Green Party has to be built at the grass  roots," he said. "We need to put as much  energy into the grass roots as was put in at  the national level with Nader."

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Elected to the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners  from the western Third District of  San Miguel County in  1996 as a Democrat, Goodtimes switched to the Green  Party in September 1998, following a change in state  laws giving ballot status to minor parties in Colorado. He  has been active in forming a Green chapter in Telluride,  has participated in state and national Green committees,  as well as attending the Association of State Green  Parties convention in Denver as a Colorado delegate.
 

In addition to local political office, Goodtimes is currently serving as:
president, Telluride Institute, a local non-profit foundation
Latin teacher, Telluride Mountain School
owner/grower, Cloud Acre Spuds, an heirloom seed potato business
board member, Club 20, regional business lobbying group
vice-president, Western District, Colorado Counties, Inc., state lobbying group
board member, Public Lands Steering Committee, CCI
board member, Public Lands Steering Committee, National Association of Counties
board member, Indoor Air Advisory Committee, NACo
board member, Delta-Montrose Public Lands Partnership
board member, Grant Review Committee, Colorado State Historical Fund
board member, Policy Center for Western Public Lands, University of Idaho
board member, San Miguel Basin Weed Advisory Board
board member, Unaweep Tabeguache Scenic Byway Council
alternate board member, Colorado Rural Development Council
member and co-founder, Sheep Mountain Alliance, local enviro group
member and co-founder, San Miguel Greens, local Green Party chapter
member, Colorado Environmental Coalition
member, Colorado Native Plant Society

To contact Goodtimes, email him or write him at Cloud  Acre, Box 160, Norwood CO 81423, or contact his office  at 970-728-3844.

A Goodtimes essay appears in the new anthology, Living in the Runaway West: Partisan Views from Writers on the Range (High Country News, Colorado, 2000).

Check Western State College's Headwaters Reader for  the Goodtimes essay "Telluride's Mining Past, Resort  Present, & Possible Green Future"   and his poetry

For more information about Goodtimes, see his county  page  and an article that  appeared in The Zephyr of Moab, Utah, written by High  Country News writer Michelle Nijhuis.