Marc Holtzman won the uncoveted Golden Flip-Flop Award Friday after a hectic day in which he first announced he was suspending his campaign for governor to rant full-time against the Colorado Economic Recovery Act – then later said he had used a “poor choice of words” and would keep on campaigning for governor.
The award, a lifetime supply of shower clogs, was presented to Holtzman late yesterday by Sen. John Kerry.
The original reports that Holtzman was suspending his campaign for governor surprised many Coloradans – primarily because most of them had no idea that Holtzman was running for governor. The frontrunner for the GOP nod next year is obviously U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez. But if Beauprez can be fairly described as the 800-pound gorilla of Colorado Republican politics, Holtzman barely weighs in at the gerbil division.
Beauprez, a former state party chairman, has won strong support from grassroots Republicans based on his record. Holtzman, with no record in public office of his own, has made increasingly strident demands for massive cuts in public school budgets as an alternative to Referendums C and D. As a result, Holtzman is coming across to those Coloradans who do recognize his name as another Douglas Bruce – without the charm.
Holtzman Friday asked Beauprez to suspend his own campaign, “setting aside our gubernatorial ambitions, so that together we can present a united front to oppose C and D.”
Given their relative standings, Holtzman’s call to Beauprez to join him in suspending the campaign sounded a lot like Napoleon, retreating from Moscow, writing to Czar Alexander I seeking a non-violent resolution of their differences.
Beauprez spokesman John Marshall chortled that Holtzman’s letter was a smokescreen for a faltering campaign. “I certainly understand why Marc wants to get out of this race. I think this is step one,” Marshall said.
As the horselaughs at Holtzman’s expense grew, he issued another statement Friday saying he would continue campaigning fulltime for governor. That being the case, Holtzman should come out with full details about how he would cover Colorado’s budget shortfall if he does succeed in defeating Referendums C and D.
A letter by Bill Skewes, deputy director of the state Office of Budget and Planning, outlines just how severe that shortfall would be.
“If Referendum C does not pass, the budget for fiscal year 2006-07 [which begins next July 1] must decline from the 2005-06 appropriation by 3.4 percent, or $208 million. This means that the expected growth in K-12 education and Medicaid (approximately $200 million) will have to be funded from an outside source or through cuts to other programs. … This will require cuts of approximately $400 million to the non K-12 and Medicaid portions of the budget. With respect to Referendum D, because of rising fuel prices and improving fuel efficiency, we project that gas tax revenues will fall 2.8 percent in the current 2004-05 fiscal year. Thus, without additional resources, the ability of the Highway Users Tax Fund to support growing transportation needs is limited.”
Owens and a bipartisan coalition that includes 72 percent of the legislature wants to plug that gap by retaining surplus revenues already collected by the state. Holtzman is demanding that surplus, $498 million, become a permanent tax cut – in addition to the $500 million a year in permanent tax cuts already passed by the legislature and signed by Owens.
But Holtzman has made no suggestion of his own as to how to replace the lost revenue other than his repeated calls to repeal Amendment 23, passed by Colorado voters in 2000 to increase public school funding. Even if Holtzman could convince voters to slash school funding, he’d have to cut $400 million a year from schools just to maintain other state programs – and still wouldn’t have anything left over to build the better highways urged by Owens.
No wonder Holtzman may be getting ready to exit the governor’s race. If he succeeds in killing Referendums C and D, and then becomes governor, he’d be trapped in a hell of his own making.
Bob Ewegen is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
