For years, Sean Paige has fired rhetorical rockets at Colorado Springs’ city government.

Now he’s on the receiving end.

Paige, a libertarian activist and former opinion page editor of The Gazette, was picked Wednesday to fill a vacant seat on the City Council.

He will serve until the next city election in April 2011. He replaces Jerry Heimlicher, who resigned last month.In a fourth round of voting, council members voted 5-3 for Paige over the other finalist, Phil Lane, a local businessman. In the third round, Paige and Lane were deadlocked at 4-4.

The vote was secret, but Councilmen Darryl Glenn, Tom Gallagher, Scott Hente and Randy Purvis spoke from the dais in favor of Paige. Mayor Lionel Rivera spoke up for Lane. Vice Mayor Larry Small supported Paul Johnson, executive director of Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity, then switched his vote to Lane when Johnson was eliminated in the second round.

Of the 19 candidates who sought the appointment, the only other to get a vote was Janet Suthers, a member of the city planning commission and wife of the state attorney general, John Suthers. She was eliminated in the first round.

“I think it’s a tribute to the city officials that they had the courage to bring in somebody like myself, who’s been a pretty well-known critic of Council,” Paige said after the vote. “There’ll be friction occasionally. There’s going to be differences of opinion. But I really, truly believe in that process better outcomes will result for the city.”

Paige opposes Issue 2C, a proposed $27 million city tax increase, as well as Issue 300, which is intended to end the collection of fees by city enterprises. Critics say the fee system is an end-run around provisions mandating voter approval of tax increases.

He has denounced the $42 million in incentives the city provided to the United States Olympic Committee to keep it from leaving town, and he has heaped scorn on an ethics commission’s conclusion that Rivera’s role in the USOC deal was free of conflict of interest.

Paige is a fan of outsourcing functions now performed by city employees, including road repair, snow removal and park maintenance, and of merging overlapping city and El Paso County operations. He wants to explore privatizing the Colorado Springs Airport and Memorial Hospital.

If he can muster a majority in council, Colorado Springs could become a test tube for libertarian government.

“It’s one thing to talk about the ideas,” Paige said. “This is an opportunity to put things into practice. And what I would really like to see is whether we can have a great city with a limited government.”

Before the vote, Paige was still insisting that he had no chance to win, and when he threw his hat into the ring last month he described his campaign as a “faux candidacy.” But he said something had clicked.

“I got a surprising amount of positive feedback, people saying, ‘You shouldn’t make this a joke,’” he said. “Even in a faux candidacy you start to think through, OK, what do I believe? What positions would I take? What innovations would I support? Through that process, then you really begin to really think seriously.”

Glenn said his early concerns about Paige’s seriousness had been allayed.

“If you look at the application and look at the platform that he put forward, he has put a lot of thought into this,” Glenn said. “We have major budget issues. This is not a time where we need to bring somebody up to speed. This person has to be ready to go with ideas tomorrow.”

Rivera said Paige had a steep learning curve ahead of him. “He certainly understands the politics of Colorado Springs,” the mayor said, but added that his challenge will be quickly mastering the details of city operations.

“Friday, he’s going to get dumped a huge stack of papers called the city budget that he will have to focus on quickly,” Rivera said. “If 2C doesn’t pass, we’re facing $25 million in cuts from services, and he’s going to have to help us prioritize those.”

Paige said he was ready for the transition from polemics to politics.

“I’m hoping to compromise, and I understand that’s part of the political world,” he said. “I think I’ll be able to strike a balance between bridge-building and — well, maybe not bombs. Firecrackers.”

—Contact the writer at 476-1654

SEAN PAIGE BIOColorado Springs positions:2007 –: Executive director, Limited Government Forum and Local Liberty Action2002-2007: Opinion page editor, The Gazette

Washington, D.C., positions:2000-2002: Editorial director and fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute1997-2000: Staff writer and columnist, Insight Magazine, The Washington Times1994-1997: Communications director, Citizens Against Government Waste1993-1994: Press secretary, Alan Keyes for U.S. Senate1991-1993: Media analyst/writer, Media Research Center1989-1990: Aide, the White House (George H.W. Bush)1988-1989: Aide, U.S. Rep. Robert Logomarsino, R-Calif.Education:B.A. in English, Arizona State University

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