State Republican Party chairman Bob Martinez has called Colorado’s GOP leaders to a peace summit at a ranch in Silverthorne next week, three days after Election Day.
Martinez said he thinks the Republicans who have been at each other’s throats over Referendums C and D may loosen their grips by then, making it a good time to start the healing process after a season of intense infighting.
With Republicans campaigning energetically on both sides of the proposal to suspend Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds for five years, there has been more Republican-on-Republican drama in this contest than some ranking GOP lawmakers have ever seen, they say.
Martinez said his message when Republicans gather at former J.D. Edwards chairman Ed McVaney’s mountain property Nov. 4 will be this: We’re all on the same team again. So let’s focus on taking back the statehouse in 2006 and electing a Republican president in 2008.
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Martinez said Tuesday. “We couldn’t start this dialogue with C and D going on, because it is contentious. This is the first opportunity we have to get people back as a group of elected leaders and say, ‘OK, the decision’s been made now. Let’s put that behind us.”‘
A staffer from the Republican National Committee also will be there to explain the party’s national strategy, he said.
Martinez has invited Gov. Bill Owens – a Republican architect of the referendums – all state and congressional lawmakers and the party’s two primary candidates for governor, former Owens cabinet member Marc Holtzman and U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, to the closed meeting, he said.
Holtzman, who has been vilified by many Republicans who support C and D after he appeared in Vote No television ads equating state lawmakers to pigs, said he will attend.
“Almost all of these people at one time or another have been friends of mine,” Holtzman said. “I’d like to think that in spite of our political differences, that we will remain friends.”
But some Republicans who have urged a yes vote on C and D aren’t so sure they’ll be ready for a GOP lovefest so soon after the election that saw some of them called by another acronym: RINOS – Republicans in name only.
Sen. Norma Anderson, a 19-year statehouse veteran from Lakewood who supports C and D, said she is unlikely to forgive one Republican campaign opponent in particular – Holtzman.
“Marc Holtzman went too far when he went for the jugular, saying that you can’t trust government, that we’re a bunch of pigs, so to speak,” she said. “It’s very insulting. I’m more than a little angry over it.”
Vote No Republicans have said for months that the Vote Yes campaign – led in part by Owens and influential GOP fundraiser Bruce Benson – had smeared them personally for their opposition.
The intensity of the family feud became clear last month when Vote Yes spokeswoman and seasoned Republican operative Katy Atkinson called out Holtzman after learning he was to appear in Vote No ads.
She issued a news release that called Holtzman “a childless, 50-something, never-before-married bachelor” who could not understand the typical Colorado family’s interest in a well-funded state government.
Holtzman said Tuesday that he did not take that personally.
House Republican Minority Leader Joe Stengel, a Vote No Republican and a Holtzman supporter, said he feels he has been personally attacked, but Atkinson’s words haven’t bothered him, he said.
“Her I dismiss, because she’s just a hired gun,” he said. “She’d trash a Democrat, she’d trash a Republican – she’d trash her own mother and father. So her I discount. She’d be a Democrat, for the right amount of money.”
Atkinson, who specializes in issue campaigns, responded, “That is getting a bit personal. You know what? There are some attacks that are best left unanswered. That doesn’t merit a response.”
Still, Atkinson said she expects the rancor to blow over.
Benson, himself a former state party chairman, predicted that most Republicans will make up and move on without too much effort after the Nov. 1 vote.
Owens could not be reached for comment. But his spokesman, Dan Hopkins, said he believes the governor would agree with Benson.
“It’s a complicated issue that’s vital to the future of Colorado, and emotions run high,” Hopkins said. “But after the election, it is likely that people are going to once again find the common ground that unites them.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
