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• Author: Schwab, Robert

"I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT DEMOCRATS, DESPITE Republicans' perception of them, work better with business and for business than a no-tax, limited-government approach to governing. We'll see if that's the case."

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I'm quoting myself there, from a response to a question we posted on what we call "The Pub" on ColoradoBiz Today, our website at cobizmag.com. Our question in The Pub, an interactive conversation with our Web readers was: The Ritter Election: What now?

I voted for Bob Beauprez, primarily because I thought he was the more qualified candidate.

I voted for him for that same reason in meetings of the ColoradoBiz Editorial Board, and then wrote our magazine's endorsement of Beauprez based on that belief. One of our regular readers, Cynthia Kemper, later wrote me (Readers Respond, page 10) to say she read my writing three times and still didn't have the faintest idea why our editorial board picked the Republican candidate over Ritter, who won by a large margin on Nov. 7.

Yet within the curtains of my old-fashioned voting machine--the push-button kind that scores your votes electronically enough, and got me in and out of my voting precinct in 15 minutes--I decided, despite my personal liberal and Democratic leanings that I told you about as readers of ColoradoBiz when I wrote my first column here more than six years ago, that I should be true to my editorial-board vote on my secret ballot as well.

I don't like hypocrisy (which I've just recently learned how to spell), and I still believe Bob Beauprez was the better qualified candidate for governor. His experience, business and policy-making, was larger and broader than was Ritter's.

At the same time, I'm happy that Democrat Bill Ritter won the election, and, ironically, that I was on the losing side of the vote. I'm happy about that because, as I wrote as "editorman" on our magazine website, I still think Democrats work better with business and for business when in elected office than Republicans who hold a limited-government philosophy. Republicans like Beauprez, John Andrews and incumbent Gov. Bill Owens.

So tortured as it may be, that's my explanation for my vote, and largely for the endorsement of our magazine since our board split 4-3 in favor of Beauprez.

My explanation for disclosing that vote to...