ColoradoBiz speaks: ColoradoBiz speaks reflects the opinions of the Editorial Board of our magazine.

ColoradoBiz endorses Bob Beauprez for governor.

Intellectually, Bob Beauprez likes to ramble, like a small boy from a farm who likes to ramble through an adjoining wood, finding what he finds and only occasionally stumbling into a hornet's nest or a bramble bush.

But the State of Colorado can't afford a four-year term for a governor who likes to intellectually ramble among the pressing issues facing our state.

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Colorado needs someone who is focused on solving its problems as quickly and practically as possible, and Bob Beauprez's predilection to ramble almost cost him this magazine's endorsement. Still, we endorsed the Republican Beauprez over his major rival, Democratic candidate Bill Ritter, on a split 4-3 vote.

The magazine's Editorial Board decided it can forgive a candidate's mistakes as long as the candidate subscribes to taking action that will make up for them.

In separate interviews with both men, although we found former Denver district attorney Ritter much more focused and precise in his answers to questions about state problems, we also found Beauprez to have a wider knowledge and grasp of the complex issues that face us and their possible solutions: from education, to transportation, to business development, to immigration, to water problems, to energy development, to business development.

Beauprez's opposition to Referendums C&D last year, which the magazine strongly endorsed and urged voters to approve, was a big strike against the Republican candidate. Some editorial board members said Beauprez should be held accountable for that position even a year later because the business community solidly supported passage of the referenda, and a vote against the two measures was in actuality a vote against business in Colorado.

Other board members decried Beauprez's recent bumbling citation during a public radio interview of an absurdly high percentage of African-American women who Beauprez said had received abortions. Days later, Beauprez apologized for the remark in newspaper stories that also showed how very wrong he had been in repeating his misinformation.

The abortion statistic was not a hornet's nest that Beauprez kicked up in his interview with ColoradoBiz, but it is one that can come from uninformed intellectual rambling over ground that shouldn't really be able to trip up a man with the wherewithal to run a state of more than 4.5 million people, including more than 200,000 black people.

Yet people learn from their mistakes, and it seemed Beauprez was the kind of man who will.

Ritter on the other hand, although impressive, seemed somewhat rigid in his presentation of well-thought-out, pre-rehearsed positions; and he seemed unwilling to commit politically to a change of mind without first establishing a commission or a committee to give him...