What do Jim Bunning, Bill Bradley, Steve Largent and Kathy Colley have in common?

All four made the decision to enter the political realm after etching their names in athletic competition.

Bunning, a Kentucky senator, is a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher. Bradley, a Rhodes scholar, played for the New York Knicks of the NBA and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

He was a U.S. senator from New Jersey and r was a presidential candidate eight years ago.

Largent was one of the NFL’s top receivers when he played for the Seattle Seahawks, later was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and also parlayed name recognition into a post as Congressman in his native Oklahoma.

Colley, albeit not nationally known, gained notoriety on the Chamisa Hills Country Club links, where she is the reigning women’s club champion and won seven of the last eight championships.

She is also a regular in the championship flight for the Albuquerque city women’s championship annually.

She is the city’s best female golfer, as long as Rosie Jones isn’t visiting her hometown.

Colley is Rio Rancho’s new District 6 councilor, after winning last Tuesday’s run-off election.

In fact, after breakfast with The Observer at a local restaurant Thursday morning, the only people that recognized their new councilor-elect n she’ll be sworn-in on Monday and attend her first city council meeting Wednesday n were those who knew her from CHCC.

Colley, 53, has lived with her husband George in River’s Edge since 1994, but only recently thought about becoming involved in politics. It was her first real foray into the field.

“I remember stuffing envelopes for Richard Nixon, some grade-school thing my parents talked me into,” she recalled.

Her parents often volunteered during political campaigns she said and after moving to Rio Rancho from Ohio, her father, the late Ken Halladay, served on the city’s planning and zoning board in the late 1990s.

George Colley at first dissuaded his wife from running, she said, but with the arrival of fall, she tinkered with the idea again, this timegetting the go-ahead from her husband.

“It grew exponentially from there,” she said, adding she had become aggravated with the city because she thought it’s not living up to its potential.

As she visited people’s homes, neighborhood associations meetings and country club gatherings, she said she learned there is a “common thread that they don’t trust the government.”

Most of that mistrust, she said, was due to a lack of information, thus one of her first priorities is trying to get information out to the residents, from what’s going on with zoning to what’s happening down the block.

“We do need to make it a lot easier,” she said.

What could be easier than winning the run-off by 624 votes?

Colley said that margin of victory surprised her, but said, “Somebody’s got to win and somebody’s got to lose, whether it’s golf or anything else.”

Colley doesn’t have all the answers, of course, and she made sure not to make any promises while she was out campaigning.

“The prevailing theme was ‘Be yourself, Kathy,’” she said. “I’ve often said I can BS with the best of them, (but) I’ll be as forthright as I can.”

A veteran of 20 years in the banking business and the current president of the New Mexico Women’s State Golf Association, Colley said campaigning took its toll on her golf game.

“I’ve played 14 rounds of golf this year,” she said, chuckling. “I used to play that much in three weeks.”

Worse, she says, “My handicap is up to a 9.”