Denver & The West.
Question worries both parties; candidacy would trigger a flood of cash and controversy
Kent Thiry’s candidacy for Colorado governor would trigger a flood of cash and controversy.
One of the most feared names in Colorado’s early race for governor is a celebrity CEO with a cheerleader’s disposition and a love of “The Three Musketeers.”
But the well-documented quirks of Kent Thiry, who leads the Denver-based dialysis giant DaVita Inc., belie the tools the 61year-old multimillionaire from Englewood has at his disposal if he chooses to join the crowded field as a Republican candidate.
The most powerful of them: a small fortune and a cache of valuable voter data he helped collect last year during a successful push to pass two Colorado ballot initiatives.
The prospect has worried strategists in both parties, because rich candidates have a big advantage in Colorado races, where they can give unlimited money to their own campaigns to overcome strict donation limits for others.
The downsides of a potential Thiry campaign are real, too. His flirtations with public office have brought more attention to DaVita, a major Colorado company that has run into recent legal trouble; this spring Thiry and his business were lampooned by comedian John Oliver on his show “Last Week Tonight.”
A gubernatorial bid would only intensify the spotlight.
In a recent interview, Thiry made no commitments but acknowledged that he is seriously considering a campaign to replace Gov. John Hickenlooper, a termlimited Democrat.
“People have been asking me to run for office for probably 20 years now, maybe 25, and someday I may well do it,” Thiry said.
He fueled speculation about his political future in March when he switched his party registration from independent to Republican, a move seen as a precursor to a possible governor’s run.
In addition, several websites that would suggest a Thiry campaign were registered on the same day in February through a domain-hosting site. Among them: ThiryforGovernor, ThiryforColorado and KentforColorado; a political consulting firm working for Thiry, however, said they did not book the addresses.
If he runs, Thiry said he is open to spending his own cash. “My wife and I have been blessed with a lot of good luck and then therefore we do have resources that could be targeted for an initiative or anything else I do,” he said.
Thiry offered no timeline for his decision. Unlike many of his potential opponents — who had to jump into the race early to start fundraising — Thiry’s ability to underwrite his own campaign gives him the option to stay on the sidelines longer.
Plus, he’s already done important leg-
work for a campaign.
Thiry and his company spent $2.5 million last year bankrolling two ballot initiatives that opened the door for Colorado independents to cast a ballot in Democratic or Republican primaries.
Not only could this change help the centrist Thiry win a GOP primary, but the cost of getting independent voters to the polls gives an edge to well-funded campaigns.
He has another ace up his sleeve.
In helping to pass those ballot initiatives, Propositions 107 and 108, Thiry has access to voter files that include information about what motivates unaffiliated voters — the ones he would need to tip the scale in a GOP primary.
The combination of factors has worried a Republican field that includes George Brauchler, prosecutor of the Aurora theater shooter; Victor Mitchell, a former state legislator and businessman; and former investment banker Doug Robinson, who is Mitt Romney’s nephew.
State Treasurer Walker Stapleton also is widely expected to mount a campaign.
But Ryan Call, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, warned Thiry still would have to win over a portion of the party’s faithful if he wants to emerge from the crowded field.
“I’ve never seen Kent Thiry attend a single Republican function,” Call said. “If he’s seeking to carry the party’s banner, I think he should start showing up at Republican events.”
A reputation honed in health care
If Thiry decides to run, there’s little doubt his work at DaVita would be a major part of the conversation — for good and ill.
DaVita is one of Colorado’s best-known companies, and it employs about 3,400 residents statewide. The company posted an annual profit of about $789 million in 2016, and that year he earned a salary of about $12.3 million.
Thiry has been there since 1999, and he helped guide the company from the edge of bankruptcy to become one of the nation’s largest providers of dialysis services for patients with kidney failure, with nearly 2,400 U.S. cen- ters, including more than 40 in Colorado.
Thiry’s unique managerial style has been credited as a factor in the turnaround.
He emphasizes a team approach — an “all for one and one for all” mentality taken from “The Three Musketeers” — and he leads company meetings with a showmanlike gusto, riding into conferences on a horse or bicycle, and often wearing a swashbuckling outfit that might be found more readily at a renaissance fair.
The company recently had one of its annual meetings, called Villagewide, in downtown Denver, and the company trumpeted the affair with ads on the 16th Street Mall. It was another sign of DaVita’s growing footprint in Colorado — a profile aided with help from state taxpayers.
The company is preparing a significant expansion in Denver after Colorado offered the company $12.7 million in incentives from state coffers. DaVita is eligible to collect the money if it creates 800 jobs in eight years, starting Jan. 1, 2018 — just as the campaign for governor takes shape.
In 2009, DaVita received $5.3 million in state economic incentives when it announced its move to Colorado from California. The city of Denver contributed another $850,000 to help lure the company and ponied up another $400,000 in taxpayer money for the current expansion efforts, only $300,000 of which has been claimed to date.
DaVita’s growing profile hasn’t come without criticism or court battles, however.
The HBO program “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” highlighted Thiry and DaVita during a lengthy, and often devastating, take on the multibillion-dollar U.S. dialysis industry.
Featured prominently on the show were DaVita’s recent legal battles — a sendup that offered a glimpse of potential attack ads by future political opponents.
DaVita spent nearly $1 billion from 2012 to 2015 to settle a federal investigation into an kickback scheme and two whistleblower claims that the company defrauded the government of millions of dollars.
The largest settlement, for $495 million, came in 2015. A doctor and nurse who worked for DaVita claimed that the company was throwing out excess doses of medicine but billing Medicare and Medicaid for the full amount.
The claims stretched from 2003 to 2010, but the company admitted no wrongdoing. DaVita pledged to spend $25 million on compliance efforts after the payout, but the troubles for the company only continued.
A federal lawsuit filed earlier this year accused the company of misleading investors during a 14-month period that involved steering low-income patients on government insurance toward private insurance for much higher dialysis-treatment payouts. The company is challenging the claim.
Asked about these cases, Thiry said that legal battles — and settlements — had become an unfortunate side effect of working in the U.S. health care business.
“If, in a trial, you are found to be wrong on even a small part of the case, it could mean that you are excluded from Medicare, which typically would mean bankruptcy for your company,” Thiry said. “So you are essentially forced to settle.”
Would DaVita’s troubles hurt Thiry’s campaign?
Thiry’s baggage is not unique for a business executive seeking high office.
In 2010, Republican Rick Scott won the top job in Florida despite facing criticism that a hospital company he formerly ran, Columbia/HCA, was fined $1.7 billion for fraud involving Medicare and other federal health programs.
His victory was aided by his personal wealth and a Republican wave that year. All told, the candidate’s family spent at least $73 million to win — a flood of money that smashed state records.
In Colorado, however, a big bank account doesn’t always ensure success. An analysis of Colorado political races by KUNC found that few self-funders have won since 2002. One notable exception was Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who just launched his own campaign for governor.
In 2004, Republican beer magnate Pete Coors loaned his campaign more than $1.4 million in a failed attempt to defeat Democrat Ken Salazar for a U.S. Senate seat, according to federal election records. Further back, GOP oilman Bruce Benson also came up short in trying to unseat Democratic Gov. Roy Romer in 1994.
“The record of successful businessmen running for office in Colorado is not very good,” said former Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams.
He ran an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in 2016 for Jack Graham, one of two millionaires in the party’s primary race who were defeated by a poorly funded upstart.
But Wadhams said Colorado voters might be more willing to consider the idea, given the continued skepticism of career politicians.
“It’s a different atmosphere,” he added. “I think the public is more jaded about people having been in elected politics for a long time.”
Thiry considering a change to redistricting
One option for Thiry is to stay involved politically by funding ballot initiatives similar to the primarychanging measures he championed last year.
“In the near term, the most likely form of my civic engagement will be working on another high-impact initiative,” he said.
That includes the issues of redistricting and reapportionment, the once-adecade process in which Colorado redraws the boundaries for congressional and legislative districts.
Thiry said he’s met with a number of activists looking to change the procedure, notably former state legislators Rob Witwer, a Republican, and Mark Ferrandino, a Democrat. The general idea would be to create a new commission to make the new maps.
This wouldn’t be a first for Thiry, who supported a similar redistricting effort in California with a $35,000 donation — just one of many political donations that he, his company or his wife have made over the years.
Most of DaVita’s contributions came at the federal level, where the company has spent $2 million since 2004 on Democratic and Republican congressional candidates. At the state level, DaVita donated $100,000 to the failed Amendment 66 push in 2013 to increase taxes to boost education spending — an initiative that the Democratic candidates for governor supported but Republicans opposed.
Like Thiry, his wife, Denise O’Leary, has contributed to both parties — among them, she donated to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the state Democratic Party, as well as the effort to reject a so-called personhood anti-abortion effort on the state ballot in 2014.
The family and DaVita’s donations make Thiry a power player in Washington, where the federal government holds considerable sway over the regulation of his company. What seems to draw Thiry’s personal interest in politics in Colorado are changes to broaden the system.
“If your objective is … to make democracy work better and government more effective, then working on things like open primaries and redistricting — the architecture of the system — needs as much attention as any individual issue,” Thiry said.