Why Ritter didn't pick Romanoff for Senate

Steve Balboni at Steam Powered Opinions offers some further explanation of the tensions between Gov. Ritter and former Speaker Andrew Romanoff:

Romanoff was very anxious to get some movement on education reform at the start of the 2007 session and the governor dragged his feet for months and months. When he did jump on board with the Speaker's agenda he took it over and slowed the process down by creating another commission (the P-20 Council) that took many more weeks to create. The governor essentially sunk Romanoff's legacy project. I can't imagine that there's not lingering tension in that relationship.

It's really not unusual to have interbranch tensions like this, even among politicians of the same party. Governors and state legislators have different constituencies, different time tables, different career paths to consider, etc. Ritter and Romanoff are both terribly well mannered in public, but that shouldn't blind us to some real conflicts.