Video: State Bill Colorado
By Don Knox, STATE BILL COLORADO
Republican and Loveland real-estate developer Don Marostica has parlayed his support for SB-228, a controversial rewriting of budgetary caps, into a much higher-paying job as Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter’s economic-development chief.
The Denver Post and the lobbying firm Capitol Success separately reported just before noon that Marostica was offered and accepted the job. Marostica confirmed the news to the Loveland Reporter-Herald shortly after noon. The governor plans a 2 p.m. press conference.
Marostica’s move to the executive branch means that his safely Republican House district in northern Colorado will be filled by a Republican vacancy committee.
For the GOP, it’s an opportunity to get a more partisan team player on the roster. Marostica, a moderate, irritated his side of the aisle by crossing over to support high-profile fiscal issues with the controlling Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Terrance Carroll and House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann.
In 2008, Marostica had no primary in his House District 51 and won his re-election campaign vs. Democrat Kenneth Bennett, taking about 58 percent of the vote.
Two years before that, he did have a primary opponent, Kevan McNaught, whom Marostica edged out by 250 votes, or 5 percent of the total.
In the general election, Marostica defeated Democrat Jodi Radke in the general election with 56% of the vote, according to a profile of him on the encyclopedia website Wikipedia.
McNaught, who could not immediately be reached, ran against Marostica on a platform of fiscal conservatism. He was supported by the Colorado Club for Growth, among others.
Marostica is a member of the General Assembly’s powerful Joint Budget Committee. Besides working as a developer for Loveland Commercial LLC, he was a captain in the U.S. Army from 1975 to 1979. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Colorado State University and a master’s degree in 1975 from the University of Northern Colorado.
He is 61 years old, is married, and has one child.
The economic-development chief position opened up recently when Ritter appointed former Time Warner and Kroenke Sports executive Don Elliman to a new chief operating officer post.
