With control of the legislature and Governor’s Mansion up for grabs next year, Democrats and Republicans have already begun trying to position themselves as the best stewards of the billions in additional revenue approved by voters last week.
Leaders of both parties have said they will use the estimated $3.7 billion expected to roll in over the next five years as outlined by Referendum C. How they actually work within those broad guidelines during the legislative session next year will set the stage for what is expected to be the most costly and contested election season in years.
Democrats say they will continue to push cost-effective plans to rebuild state government.
Republicans, meanwhile, are gleeful at the prospect of being able to tag those ideas as new programs engineered by spendthrift liberals.
But before Republicans can effectively launch their attack, they acknowledge they must reunite as a party.
The campaign over Referendum C and its failed companion measure to borrow funds for certain projects, Referendum D, bitterly divided the GOP. Gov. Bill Owens supported the measures while the two men seeking the party nomination to replace him opposed them.
Reunification is something all involved have paid lip service to, but it has yet to materialize.
“It’s time for the opponents to sit down and shut up and figure out how to govern as opposed to name-call and backbite,” said Republican Rep. Al White of Winter Park, who supported the measures.
Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff for Owens, said it will be clear by Christmas whether the Republicans have reunited or Balkanized.
“It will be readily apparent that if they don’t follow a cohesive, focused course going forward, they’ll just wander off into the woods,” he said.
The split has helped Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman, said his campaign manager, Dick Leggitt.
Holtzman tied his ambitions to the campaign of C and D opponents, and he increased his name identification from 10 percent to 70 percent and boosted his favorable ratings to just below those of rival U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez among Republican primary voters, Leggitt said.
Others polls have shown a negligible increase in Holtzman’s visibility. And some have said Holtzman’s close ties to the losing side will hurt his campaign.
The GOP needs to heal the long-simmering fissures between moderate and conservative Republicans that were ripped open by the campaign, White said. Legislative candidates who fit their districts shouldn’t have to face primary opposition from more conservative contenders, he said.
Owens, who generally doesn’t take sides in primaries, said he will protect Republicans who supported Referendums C and D.
“If you want to make C and D the issue, I’ll be there to protect the people who did what was right for Colorado,” he said.
In fact, Owens said he helped the Republican legislators who opposed the measures because they would have been blamed for the deep cuts that may have resulted if both measures failed.
“I believe I protected them from themselves,” Owens said.
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic legislative leaders are working to keep the reins of power they grabbed last year after four decades in the political hinterlands. House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, said the party’s message of health care, education and the economy hasn’t changed with Referendum C’s passage.
The only difference, she said, is that the increased revenues will allow for long-term rebuilding of programs decimated in recent years by $1 billion in cuts. That includes creating programs to make health care more affordable, such as cutting the cost of insurance premiums to small businesses.
“We can rebuild the government and spend in smart ways, and you don’t throw good money after bad,” Madden said.
Republicans like White said government should be investing in programs that make the state money rather than creating entitlements.
The best way for Republicans to win next November, White said, “is we prove to the voters we’re being responsible guardians of the tax dollars they’ve given us.”
But some Democrats insist the GOP doesn’t have a monopoly on fiscal conservatism.
“What I have heard on the campaign trail is that’s not so much about parties as it is about the person,” said Bill Ritter, the only announced Democratic candidate for governor.
Staff writer Chris Frates can be reached at 303-820-1633 or cfrates@denverpost.com.
