She’s an old-fashioned Republican with a sharp tongue, impeccable taste and a stubborn independent streak.
In a lot of ways, that explains it all.
Norma Anderson retired Tuesday after 19 years in the Colorado legislature, saying only, “It’s the right thing for me at this time.”
She’s not sick, the vibrant 73-year-old said. She’s not angry or frustrated or bored. She’s simply finished.
The fact that a successor to her Senate seat will be appointed under a Republican governor and will have the edge of incumbency in the next election surely must have crossed her mind, though, as well as the inescapable reality that with the Republicans in the minority again this session, she wouldn’t be wielding any gavels in the last months of her term-limited legislative career.
Still, she exited gracefully with a subtle nod to partisan interests, a private party for her supporters and a firm commitment to personal priorities.
No news conferences with TV cameras trained on her face. No razzmatazz.
It was pure Norma, her ego in check.
Many times over the years, she has been on the short lists to run for the U.S. Congress, for governor or for other statewide offices. She never caught the fever.
“At one time I was thinking about secretary of state. I sat down with Donetta Davidson. We talked a little bit, and I just said, ‘You do it, Donetta.”‘
Being a state legislator was enough, she said. “I never had any desire to do anything else.”
Not that it’s been all bill-signing galas and warm accolades.
Anderson is known for her ability to irritate her fellow lawmakers, maybe especially those in her own party.
In the 1990s, when Colorado Republicans started leaning decidedly far to the right, Anderson remained a moderate – and a sometimes exasperating one at that.
In one memorable stand against the party juggernaut, she voted against a bill to outlaw same-sex marriage. In another, she opposed a bill to require students to say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools.
She wasn’t being obstinate, she said, she just didn’t believe the government should be messing around in people’s personal lives or requiring people to repeat pledges. She’d done her homework, she said, and it didn’t seem right.
She accepts credit for marshaling support for dozens of bills over the years, for establishing the state departments of transportation and human services, and for breaking untold barriers that kept women out of legislative leadership positions for decades.
There are a few episodes she doesn’t recall fondly, however, and one of them was the infamous midnight gerrymander.
Anderson played a crucial role in slamming through the Republican redistricting scheme in the last three days of the 2003 legislative session, though she was clearly ambivalent about it.
Sure, her expertise with Senate rules and circumventing them was critical to passage of the last-minute bills, and she presided over most of the chaotic sessions. But she was not happy about it.
In the midst of the nasty political uproar, she even declined to return a call from Bush adviser Karl Rove, who was either the mastermind of the ham-handed strategy or simply an interested observer, depending on whose spin you believe.
That may have been her proudest moment in the whole mess.
“It was pretty common knowledge that I had concerns,” Anderson told me back then, “but I was elected to lead my caucus, and that’s what I did.”
Months later, when the state Supreme Court threw out the redistricting plan and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Republicans’ appeal, she didn’t join the party bigs in fulminating about judicial overreach and legislating from the bench. She kept quiet.
She respected the process. She believed in the democratic system. And if some folks think that’s being stubbornly independent, she’s OK with that.
In a lot of ways, that explains it all.
Diane Carman’s column usually appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
