The better-funded, more centrally organized campaign won the fight over Referendum C, despite having a more complicated message to sell to voters, experts said Tuesday night.
Less certain was the fate of the second part of the two-pronged budget proposal, Referendum D. Though Referendum C had clearly passed Tuesday night, with most precincts reporting, the vote on Referendum D was still very close.
But without the temporary suspension of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap of Referendum C, the bonding proposal offered by Referendum D would be impossible to implement. So even if Tuesday’s decision were split, the win clearly went to the proponent campaign, observers said.
“The big one that everyone was fighting over was really C,” political consultant Sean Tonner said. “D was the stepbrother that a lot of people didn’t pay attention to. D is irrelevant without C.”
Voters may have preferred C over D because they were uncomfortable with the prospect of long-term borrowing, Colorado State University political science professor John Straayer said.
“There are some folks that are not comfortable with deficit financing for anything, quite frankly, including highways,” he said.
Other voters, he said, “may have been comfortable with one, but didn’t want to take that second step.”
From the start, political experts said the campaign against Referendums C and D would have the easier march to November. It’s always easier to get people to vote against something than it is to get them to vote for it, they said.
But the experts also agreed that the proponent campaign would kill the opponents when it came to fundraising, leading to another widely held truism – the side with more money usually wins.
And while proponents did raise more money, the opponents exceeded many observers’ expectations. They amassed a war chest of about $2 million – less than the $5.5 million-plus that proponents raised, but enough to be visible across the state.
“Both sides had plenty of money to get their message out,” Tonner said. “Resource-wise, both sides did a great job.”
What remains to be seen now is how Republicans, who were sharply divided over the referendums, will reorganize their party in the wake of a campaign that got more heated than most issue campaigns.
Tonner said he talked to Gov. Bill Owens on Tuesday night and believed that Owens, a supporter of C and D, would focus on connecting with his friends in the vote-no campaign.
“He’s feeling really good, and he’s excited about having this election over and getting the party back together and winning in 2006,” Tonner said. “He said that a couple times.”
Straayer wasn’t so sure.
“I do think there’s going to be a hangover from this in the Republican Party, at least for a little while,” Straayer said.
State GOP chairman Bob Martinez, who had scheduled a party- wide make-up session in Summit County on Friday, postponed the event Tuesday afternoon. Congressional Republicans were not going to be able to make it back from Washington, D.C., and they wanted to participate, spokesman Hans Gullickson said.
Some of the opponents, Straayer said, are known for opposing everything and will live again to fight another proposal.
But the next opposition campaign, Tonner predicted, will be more unified than the effort against C and D. With multiple committees each taking different parts of the opposition campaign, the vote-no message may have been muddled, he said.
“In future elections, they may want to better think out their strategy and have a more coordinated message,” he said.
Still, the message against this year’s referendums – say no to the tax hike – made pretty good headway this year, Straayer said.
“It’s easier to convey a short and extraordinarily simplistic message than a more complicated one,” Straayer said. “TABOR is so god-awful complicated.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes can be reached at 303-820-1244 or jhughes@denverpost.com.
