Resigned to await the will of Colorado voters, the author and the field general both were somewhat at rest Tuesday after months of campaigning against Referendums C and D.
The ballot questions asked voters to consider two requests from the state: for a five-year suspension of tax refunds mandated by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and to borrow money for infrastructure investments.
Douglas Bruce, who wrote the 1992 constitutional amendment known as TABOR, was relaxed enough to treat himself to lunch at a Chinese restaurant in his Colorado Springs neighborhood after calling in as a guest for a talk-radio show, voting at a local church, calling in to another radio show and planting 50 yard signs.
“I treat myself occasionally, when I need some kind of soothing,” Bruce said. “Today I had lemon chicken. It’s a very nice place.”
After lunch, Bruce went to Wal-Mart to buy a prop for the victory celebration he hoped to join Tuesday night.
“I believe in television, so it’s not just going to be a talking- head situation,” he said. “That’s assuming we’ll have a victory statement to make. I obviously will not be seeking the camera if the taxpayers lose.”
To his north, Jon Caldara, the most visible leader of the opposition to the referendums and the president of the Independence Institute, sat in his office in Golden, leaning back in his chair and trading quips with reporters and donors through the afternoon.
“Oh my God – I forgot to vote,” he told one radio host. “No, not only did I vote, I voted at least 12 times already!”
He believed the defeat of C and D would be a huge political upset, he said.
“I’ve been in an underdog role here,” he said. “Let’s be realistic.”
But he was also optimistic, Caldara said.
Bruce said he also believed the referendums would fail, but that he was prepared for their passage, too.
If so, “my view is that people had 13 years of freedom and then chose to vote themselves back into slavery,” he said.
Both key players in the smaller-government side of the fight said they hoped for more excitement Tuesday night at the gathering Caldara had planned at the Jackson’s Hole bar in LoDo.
“Win or lose tonight, there will be some heavy drinking involved,” Caldara said. “If we win, it will be a beer well-earned. If we lose, I will be crying in it.”
Though Bruce said the bar “wasn’t my choice – I don’t like noisy, smoky places with a lot of people drinking more than they should” – both he and Caldara liked the fact that they were meeting at street level, in a bar, while the proponent campaign was meeting at the lofty Pinnacle Club downtown.
Central to their vote-no campaign has been the assertion that C and D were an attempt by the elite to rob the average worker.
“They can be there and they can look down on the rest of us, as they did during the campaign and as they have through their whole careers,” Bruce said. “That is definitely symbolic of the differences between the masters and the peons.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
