Approval of the five-year “timeout” for the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights was not a big voter mandate. The narrow margin of victory for Referendum C (52 percent) was less than the margin by which its target, TABOR, passed in 1992 (53.7 percent).
And the turnout for Tuesday’s election was, proportionately, about half what it was 13 years ago when TABOR passed (40 percent vs. 80 percent of registered voters in a presidental election year).
But despite the less-than-overwhelming numbers, a vote is a vote. So what are the consequences for the major players in this nasty debate?
Gov. Bill Owens finally had a victory after some major political defeats. He promoted Referendum A on water projects in 2003, and it lost. He was against the FasTracks transit proposal in 2004, and it passed. This time he went against the kneecap-the-government wing of his party, and won.
It took guts. It also gives him standing to demand reciprocal changes next year in Amendment 23, which mandates annual increases in public school financing (and which passed, by the way, with a 52.5 percent majority in 2000 – not such a mandate, either).
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, along with the other Democrats newly in charge of the legislature, put together a coalition to address a problem that Republicans for years had been hoping to avoid. But now he and his party, to be fair, are obliged to consider fixing the school-funding Amendment 23. That includes other leaders like Ken Gordon and Joan Fitz-Gerald, who were active supporters of Referendum C.
Sen. Norma Anderson and other centrist Republicans, including Steve Johnson and Nancy Spence, restored credibility for the old-fashioned moderate wing of the Republican Party. For years, “moderate” has been a dirty word in some GOP circles, but they proved that occasional negotiation works better than constant confrontation.
Hank Brown and Jumpin’ John Hickenlooper were the stars of a pro-C and D ad campaign when it finally turned away from the dark side. Hickenlooper seems to be able to do no wrong, and he has banked a lot of political capital for when he finally decides maybe he is a politician, after all. Brown has nothing to gain but more good will.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, leads the losers. He and his supporters, most notably former Senate President John Andrews, overestimated the cynicism of Colorado voters. The voters weren’t convinced by the simplistic argument that politicians are nothing but evil money-grabbers. It seems a majority of voters still believe that government is the creature of the electorate, not its enemy.
Douglas Bruce came to the anti-C “victory” party with some prop that he never had an opportunity to unveil. He and his supporters claim to speak for all taxpayers. But apparently some taxpayers take that label seriously, and actually think they have a responsibility to … well … pay taxes.
Another loser – Referendum C’s companion, Referendum D – is good news, in a way, for supporters of representative government. It gives the state legislature more flexibility in how to use the money voters are allowing it to keep. The outcome also suggests Colorado voters are smart enough to distinguish between existing revenue collections (C) and new debt (D).
Marc Holtzman, who pinned his hopes for winning the governorship on defeat of Referendum C, was marginalized by the election. Certainly, some of the more fervent conservatives who populate the Republican nominating process will admire his hard-line stance, but his comparatively prudent GOP opponent, Bob Beauprez, was smart to avoid falling for Holtzman’s goading.
The big loser? The “Glitch,” as both sides called it, has been vanquished. But, let’s face it, it wasn’t really a glitch. It was the heart of TABOR. The 1992 amendment was sold to voters as a way to ensure that no tax increase ever would be approved without their approval. But its real intent was to shrink government, and the hard-to-explain “ratchet” (aka “glitch”) was doing a fine job of it until voters messed things up.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
