Ray Rose is not a particularly touchy-feely guy.
The Republican state representative from Montrose doesn’t watch Oprah – he’s “more of a John Wayner,” he says.
Still, when Rose saw a bill that would make it easier for adopted children to track down their birth parents making headway on the House floor last week, he couldn’t help himself, he says. He went to the microphone and quietly told his colleagues about the boy he and his wife had adopted, and how their son’s heart was broken repeatedly by his no-account biological father.
“I really don’t show public emotion,” Rose said afterward. “This was very difficult. But I felt it was so important. Only those who are involved in a situation like that can even possibly feel what we felt.”
Such emotional pleas are not unusual at the state Capitol, but they were particularly evident in both the House and the Senate last week, as numerous lawmakers went to the well to talk about their personal connections to laws being considered.
Political analysts say the personal anecdotes work as rhetorical devices, but provide flimsy rationales for new law. Lawmakers are sent to the Capitol to legislate more than the personal concerns of the 100-member body, they say.
Luckily, says longtime Capitol observer and Colorado State University political scientist John Straayer, the numerous committee hearings and floor debates of the House and Senate preclude any one person’s plea from being weighed too much.
“It’s probably a useful and emotionally satisfying way to express your views and convictions,” Straayer said. “But the emotions expressed don’t necessarily provide the best foundation for law. … By the time legislation wends its way through the entire process, the broader perspective invariably overtakes the individual example.”
On the same day Rose told his son’s story, Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, told his colleagues in the Senate that he has a gay son. Also a fairly taciturn lawmaker, Tapia was propelled to the microphone by another lawmaker’s contention that homosexuality is an “abomination,” he said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Fran Coleman, D-Denver, arguing for her proposal to make the state’s seat-belt law a primary offense, described on the House floor how her father had died in a car accident.
And Rep. Rosemary Marshall, D-Denver, trying to make the case that Coleman’s bill would make it easier for police to conduct racial profiling, described being pulled over once herself by police – just because she was black, she said.
What they were doing, according to a psychiatrist, was entering into emotional transactions with their colleagues: By offering up intimate or personal anecdotes from their lives, they compel their colleagues to pay attention to arguments they might otherwise dismiss.
Because they know each other, lawmakers are more likely to take each other’s anecdotes to heart than the testimony of committee witnesses, University of Colorado psychiatry professor Dr. Michael Allen said.
Tapia agreed.
“When it’s someone you know, and particularly when it comes in a heartfelt way that really means something, I think it could have a lasting effect,” he said.
With revelations that are deeply personal, lawmakers win even more consideration from their colleagues, Allen said.
“You’re saying, ‘Look, I’m telling you this about myself, and I’m trusting that you won’t hurt me as a result of it – and that you will do the right thing,”‘ Allen said.
Coleman, one of a few House members who regularly draw on their life experiences in floor debate, said that those life lessons have served her well as a politician.
“I’m not schooled in poli-science,” said Coleman, whose revelations have included her father’s death, her own serious head injury in another car accident and the deprivations of her childhood as a migrant farmworker. “But I am schooled in poli-life.”
Although her political adversaries are always right there, Coleman believes the legislature is a safe environment for all this sharing, she said.
“I know that a little less than half of the House is Republican, but I have a lot of friends on that side,” she said. “What people don’t understand is that there are deep, deep friendships … and deep, deep respect, whether they vote with you or not.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
