The televised sniping over Referendums C and D has irritated and annoyed some voters and has failed to boost a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has linked himself to the anti-C crusade, according to a poll commissioned by The Denver Post.
Several poll respondents objected to the negative tone of the campaign.
Opponents toting a Trojan horse or costumed in a pink pig outfit have dogged the backers of the ballot measures, which ask voters to let the state keep more tax money over the next five years. Meanwhile, proponents of C and D have gone to court to find out the financial backers of ads run by the Independence Institute think tank, whose president, Jon Caldara, is an opposition leader.
“Everything is so strident,” said Greg Dreese, a 53-year-old independent voter who lives in Arvada. “It’s just such a pain … for people who try to think about the issues.”
Dreese, who said he leans Republican and probably will vote against the ballot measures, said he would prefer a campaign that avoided the vitriol.
Anne Kennedy-Rackham, a 57-year-old Democrat in Colorado Springs who supports the referendums, said she was disturbed by the amount of “out- of-state” money that was bankrolling the campaign against the ballot measures.
The “If C Wins, You Lose” campaign committee has received $240,000 of its $324,000 in donations from two out-of- state interests – an anti-tax group from Virginia and a Pennsylvania company connected to the father of Marc Holtzman, a Republican candidate for governor.
“If C Wins” has used some of that money to bankroll television ads featuring Holtzman as a leader of the anti-C effort.
So far, that ad has yielded scant results, according to the Denver Post poll.
Only 7 percent of the poll’s 625 respondents identified Holtzman as a candidate who is opposing the ballot measures. Another 3 percent named both Holtzman and U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, his rival for the Republican nomination.
Most respondents said they weren’t paying attention to candidates running for an election that is more than a year away.
If that election were held today, the sole Democratic candidate, former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, would defeat either Holtzman or Beauprez, but many voters remain undecided, the poll says.
In a head-to-head contest, Ritter leads Beauprez 42 percent to 36 percent. Twenty-two percent of the voters said they were undecided.
Against Holtzman, Ritter leads 41 percent to 30 percent, with 29 percent undecided.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
