Colorado Governor To Lead Democrats

Roy Romer, the 68-year-old governor of Colorado, is President Clinton’s choice to be the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a senior White House official and Romer’s office said Monday night.

Because Romer, now in his third term, plans to continue serving as governor, Clinton intends to name Steve Grossman, a Massachusetts businessman and Democratic fund-raiser, to run the committee’s day-to-day operations, the official said. Both men have been offered and accepted the jobs, the official said.

The two men will take the reins as the party is beset by questions about its financing practices during last year’s campaign. Beginning in the summer of 1995, the Democrats raised tens of millions of dollars in so-called soft-money donations to finance an extraordinary advertising campaign promoting Clinton.

Already, they have had to return $1.5 million found to have come from questionable sources.