Tim Leonard | Courtesy
Tim Leonard ’83 stands with Colorado state House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst on the day he was sworn in as a state representative.
Hillsdale College alumnus Tim Leonard ’83 was sworn into Colorado’s House of Representatives last week with a 76 percent majority vote following Republican incumbent John Keyser’s resignation to run for U.S. Senate.
Leonard, owner of Deepwater Point Company, has spent 30 years in commercial real estate, brokerage, and consulting. The sudden vacancy in the House three weeks ago gave Leonard an opportunity to run, which he had not done since his unsuccessful run for state senate six years ago. He will serve a two-year term while the representatives are in session for 120 days, from mid-January to mid-May.
“We’re making a difference; we’re making enemies and defending the Constitution,” Leonard said. “Our biggest framework is a constitutional, limited government.”
He said he and his wife got involved in politics to “shift the focus of the debate” to free-market principles and pro-life and pro-family issues.
Leonard’s eldest daughter, Alexandra Leonard, is a sophomore at Hillsdale. She said her father’s political career has always been family-focused.
“When he ran for state senate six years ago, my little brother was his campaign manager,” she said. “We’ve always been a family doing political stuff. It hasn’t been our focus, but we enjoy rallying around him as a family. We would all go and campaign in parades. We’d throw out candy.”
When Leonard lost the state senate election, he decided to take a break from politics to be closer to his family.
“I had no intention of getting back into politics until all the kids were grown and didn’t need my utmost attention,” Leonard said.
His vocation is raising his children and being a husband, which has a greater impact on society than his profession as a businessman, he said.
Before he made the decision, he held a conference call with his children, including Alexandra Leonard, to find out whether they thought his running would be good for their entire family.
“We were supportive of him,” Alexandra Leonard said. “Obviously it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park; it’d put pressure on our family, but it’d be a good thing for the state of Colorado.”
Leonard said his education, particularly in his Austrian economics class, equipped him to enter the political arena with a strong grasp of politics, even though he came to Hillsdale “kicking and screaming.”
His Hillsdale education motivated him to take a prominent role in the development of the only Hillsdale charter school in Colorado.
“He was particularly helpful in his instrumental role of overseeing the school’s facility project, ensuring the building was ready on time and under budget,” Director of the Barney Charter School Initiative Phil Kilgore said in an email. “That is no small feat, and it happened because of his leadership.”
Leonard’s Hillsdale education also inspired former Colorado state Sen. Ted Harvey, who served in the state senate for 13 years and met Leonard when he ran for governor under the American Constitution Party.
“Tim’s education from Hillsdale is going to serve him well in the legislature,” Harvey said. “The philosophical grounding that he got will be very important in helping him articulate the conservative values, free-market, libertarian values that I think are much needed in the state legislature. I think he will be one of the best leaders in the legislature.”
Leonard’s wife and four youngest children accompanied him to his swearing in at Colorado’s capitol.
Alexandra Leonard was unable to attend the ceremony. She said her father’s new position will be a good learning experience, and her family will have to rally together even more now.
“I am super proud of him,” she said. “He’s a great dad, and I know he’ll be great in the House of Representatives, and I know I speak for my brothers and sisters when I say that.”