Mar 20, 2009 1:20 pm US/Mountain
Carroll: From Humble Beginnings To House Speaker
Written by Brooke Wagner
DENVER (CBS4) ―
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Carroll talks to CBS4's Brooke Wagner.
CBS
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Breakfast With Brooke is a weekly interview series with CBS4 Morning News anchor Brooke Wagner that airs on Friday mornings on CBS4. Read about or watch more reports in the Breakfast With Brooke section.
Less than a decade ago, Ku Klux Klan members were a force in Colorado politics. This year, our state made national history as the first to have African American leaders of both legislative chambers. Sen. Peter Groff is President of the Senate and Rep. Terrance Carroll is the Speaker of the House.
"This has been a crazy year, a year I never would have imagined in my lifetime," said Carroll, a Democrat. "Between the election of President Obama and little old me being elected Speaker of the House, it really caught me off guard."
His path has been more of an odyssey. Carroll, 40, was born to a single mother, a sharecropper's daughter, and was Corine Carroll's only child. He grew up in some of the roughest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.
"I'm this kid who grew up in the ghetto in Washington, D.C. It's not like you wake up in Southeast D.C. and think, 'I'm going to go to Colorado and be speaker of the House,'" said Carroll.
"I could ride my bicycle to the Library of Congress, lock my bike up and open up a whole new world to me, which was crucial to me finding a way to get out of the neighborhood."
Over time, that's exactly what he did, and largely because of his mother's influence. Corine Carroll, who was 51 when her son was born, dedicated herself to providing opportunities for her son.
"She worked on her hands and knees her entire life, and her sole purpose was to make sure that I would be okay," Carroll said.
Carroll played sports, was a Boy Scout (he is now an Eagle Scout), and even took ballet lessons for years.
Before he graduated high school, Carroll won a scholarship for a year of study in Italy. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, then came to Colorado to study poltical science.
He ended up becoming an ordained minister, a police officer, and an attorney, before running for the state legislature in 2003. All of his skills seem to culminate in his job as Speaker of the House.
"You're a little bit of a law enforcement officer. You do a little bit of pastoring, a little advocating like a litigator would do, a little policy, a whole lot of poltics. All of those skills have come together right here," Carroll said.
"You don't want to be known as just the first African American to do something. It's about creating an enviroment where it becomes common place for the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate to be a woman, an African American, a white person, an Hispanic...we're not shocked anymore."
One of Carroll's chief charges is to guide talks about solving the state's budget crisis.
"I think we will be okay in Colorado. We're starting to see some silver linings. For instance Colorado is starting to see bank lending was up 10% in Colorado," said Carroll.
He said the bond markets are also starting to open up, and that he's excited about the "Faster" law Governor Ritter just signed. Democrats intend for it to create eight to ten thousand jobs in Colorado, through construction and increasing vehicle registration fees.
Carroll called those "building block" jobs that will impact the rest of the economy. Republicans argued this is not the time to be increasing Coloradoan's fees. There are more proposals coming down the pike.
"(In one plan), the state works with banks to help back loans up to a half-million dollars each to help businesses get credit to buy equipment to hire people, to get new merchandise." Carroll said. "We all believe that we're doing the right thing and that we're getting the ship turned and headed in the right direciton, so we feel very hopeful."
Carroll said we've learned from past lessons, like the oil and gas bust of the 1980s, and that's why Colorado is doing better than other states in beating the recession.
"We're in a much more diverse economy, and everyone should take heart in that. We're a leader in biosciences, a leader in the new energy economy, the oil and gas industry. What we've done is spread the risk around, just like an insurance pool," Carroll said.
Still, there's one thing missing from Speaker Carroll's success. His beloved mother passed away seven years ago.
"She's looking down and I think she's pretty happy with her baby boy," said Carroll.
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