CENTENNIAL, Colo.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, the lightning-rod Colorado conservative, made headlines clashing with Democrats and his fellow Republicans.
Tancredo, a lifelong Coloradan and native of Denver, represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional district. Now he’s retiring from the House of Representatives, maybe to run for Colorado governor in two years, maybe to join a right-leaning think tank, perhaps one like a suburban Denver organization he ran in the 1990s, the Independence Institute, before being elected to Congress in 1998.
A graduate of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Tacredo taught for several years at Drake Junior High before serving in the Colorado Legislature and in the Department of Education.
In politics, even his allies could not always figure him out.
The grandson of Italian immigrants, Tancredo founded the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus and achieved national recognition with aggressive, biting rhetoric against what he called out-of-control immigration and against bilingual education.
He grew up Catholic, but converted to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and blasted Pope Benedict XVI for defending immigrants during a papal visit to Washington.
