“I was just a foot soldier in Bill Owens’ army.”
So said Denver’s Democratic Mayor John Hickenlooper as he rode the elevator to the 38th floor of the Pinnacle Club on Tuesday night. Hickenlooper was on his way to celebrate the passage of a referendum that will fix a glitch in TABOR, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Hickenlooper didn’t just march in this battle. He jumped out of an airplane in a parachute, skydiving through a fear of heights on behalf of Referendum C. But Hizzoner was right. This night belonged to Owens.
The Republican governor took every cheap shot the extreme wing of his own party offered and survived with his reputation – and his political future – intact.
“It’s a vote for fiscal responsibility,” Owens told the crowd at the Pinnacle Club. “Once again, the voters of Colorado showed they’re in charge and voted for the future of the state of Colorado.
“It was a tough election for all,” Owens added. “Everyone cares for Colorado and I understand why others feel differently.”
The governor led the bipartisan coalition that convinced the majority of voters. In the end, Owens pushed through a measure that will help Colorado’s economy grow with the recovery from the state’s recession of 2001 to 2003.
Victory was vindication after months of name-calling by national anti-tax crusaders such as Grover Norquist and Dick Armey and state rabble-rousers like the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara and TABOR author Doug Bruce.
Opponents called Owens a RINO, Republican in name only. The accusation stung a man who has long prided himself on his conservative credentials.
Owens was right about two things he told me as he embarked on the effort to repair the so-called “ratchet effect” in TABOR and keep five years worth of revenue that would otherwise have to be returned under the act.
He believed all along that Coloradans were too sophisticated to be seduced by the attack-ad and bumper-sticker campaign waged by the opponents.
“No Refund For You” and “Vote No It’s Your Dough” made for catchy jingles. But they offered no solution to an estimated $365 million in cuts needed for next year’s state budget if C failed.
Second, Owens said, he expected a close election. The five-percentage-point margin of victory didn’t disappoint.
“I’ll take one more vote than the other side,” Owens told me months ago.
Whether the governor could have survived a loss on the TABOR initiatives is now a moot point. But Owens’ former communications chief, Sean Duffy, said Owens, a conservative Republican, did what he thought was right, not what he thought was politically expedient.
“When we talked about this,” Duffy said, “his political future never came up. He never said, ‘If I lose this, I’m done.”‘
The people who may be done, said Republican state Sen. Norma Anderson, are guys like Republican gubernatorial hopeful Marc Holtzman and House of Representatives Minority Leader Joe Stengel, who attacked the governor viciously.
“They made it personal,” Anderson said. “They attacked the system. They want to be part of the damn system. But they attacked it.”
Opponents even invoked the name of Ronald Reagan, asking, “What would Reagan do?”
Bruce Benson, a stalwart Republican fundraiser who recognized the need to fix TABOR, had an answer as he savored victory.
Reagan, Benson said, would have fixed what was broken, just like Owens did.
“He did the right thing,” Benson said of the governor. The Republican opposition “will have to get over it.”
“I think the score is Colorado 1, out-of-state extremists 0,” added Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic speaker of the House, who debated 50 times and gave 150 speeches on behalf of Referendums C and D.
Owens was just as tireless.
“They say statesmen only arise in difficult times,” said Republican Rep. Al White. “The governor proved that.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
