Audio By Carbonatix
“If you have an ugly girlfriend and she changes her name, she is still ugly.” Yes, Sean Ford, mayor of Commerce City, said that while arguing against a proposed name change for his town — and he stands by the comment. “Changing the name doesn’t change anything,” he says.
Not that he’s saying Commerce City is ugly — he just has no interest in gussying it up with some fancy new name. After all, it is a city of commerce — and now that he’s about to leave office after eight years (four as a councilmember, four as mayor), business is really revving up. “I’m going out in three weeks,” he says. “And after four years, at the last second, the name change and NASCAR come up.”
He doesn’t know if the NASCAR deal will happen, but he’s sure the name-change proposal will fall way short when Commerce City voters go to the polls on April 3.
And the fact that PETA has sent him a letter suggesting that he support changing the name to the loony option of “KentuckyFriedCruelty.com” doesn’t sway him. “I didn’t think we were going to get one quite that good,” he says, and laughs.
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The ugly truth is he loves Commerce City, and he doesn’t care who knows it. “If you’re going to go out,” he says, “you might as well go out with a little style.” — Patricia Calhoun
