Washington – Hit by turnover and the loss of several high- profile lawmakers, Colorado’s congressional delegation lacks the clout and cachet it had in previous decades.
Numerous yardsticks show the state’s power in Washington has diminished. Compared with delegations of the past 30 years, Colorado has fewer lawmakers who’ve been in Congress for long stretches and fewer who are seen as national leaders on key issues.
“Colorado, very frankly, as a delegation does not have much clout,” said former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican who retired in January 2005.
One reason is a lack of seniority. Republican Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado Springs, the delegation’s longest-serving member, is retiring in 2007 after 20 years in the House.
After that, Republican Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, will have the most seniority out of Colorado’s nine delegation members, with 10 years each.
complicated equation
Seniority isn’t the only factor. Personality and political fortunes also weigh heavily.
Longevity isn’t the only factor that shapes a delegation’s influence. Personality, how lawmakers maneuver the system, and the issues they take on also play roles, political observers say.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Colorado stood on the national stage with Sens. Tim Wirth, Hank Brown, Bill Armstrong and Gary Hart and Rep. Pat Schroeder.
Wirth helped break up AT&T’s phone monopoly. Brown negotiated compromises that banned development on millions of acres of federal wilderness in Colorado. Armstrong drove tax cuts. Hart, a former presidential candidate, took a lead on national defense and foreign-policy issues.
And Schroeder, who spent 24 years in the House, helped pass the law that gives workers the right to take time off to care for a new baby or ill family member.
“It was a stronger delegation than exists now, in part because you had people with national breadth and clout, in part because you had people who had some real deep intellectual qualities to them as well,” said Norman Ornstein, political analyst with American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
A 2005 ranking of delegation clout by Roll Call, a newspaper that covers federal politics, placed Colorado 41st out of the 50 states, down from 31st a decade earlier.
Roll Call looks at seniority of members, positions on important committees, dollars brought home to the state and other factors in determining its listings, compiled every other year since 1990.
A state’s delegation size, determined by its population, is another factor in the ranking. California, with the largest delegation, is No. 1 on Roll Call’s list. But Colorado’s delegation clout (41st) ranks well behind its population (22nd).
It’s not that Colorado’s delegation is without pull entirely. Allard sits on the Appropriations Committee and can work his way into a more senior position, controlling more money.
DeGette is deputy minority whip in the House, helping set Democratic strategy and working to persuade Democrats to vote the party’s position. Last year DeGette won passage of a bill to significantly increase funding for stem-cell research, despite a veto threat from President Bush. (It has not passed the Senate.)
And Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Littleton has gained national recognition for his hard-line position on immigration. Tancredo’s power within the GOP is limited, however, as he’s aligned with a splinter group of Republicans and is alienated from the White House.
Financial yardstick
Colorado now gets less cash back per tax dollar paid to the federal government.
Several financial measures indicate Colorado is losing stature. One shows that Colorado taxpayers over the past 15 years have recouped less and less money from the federal government, compared with what they pay out.
In 1989, the state received $1.21 back for every tax dollar Coloradans paid to the federal government, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization. By 2004, the latest year with data available, the state got back 79 cents for every dollar paid.
Colorado’s influence at the federal level is slipping as neighboring states are gaining power. Senators such as Arizona’s John McCain, Utah’s Orrin Hatch and New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, all Republicans, are powerful congressional leaders.
Arizona in 2004 got back $1.30 from the federal government for every tax dollar it paid.
Not everyone agrees that a delegation should take blame for a state’s getting less money back than it pays the federal government. Much of the money that comes back to states is in large programs funded outside Congress’ control, such as Medicare and Social Security. And as workers make more money, they pay more taxes, said Bill Ahern of the Tax Foundation.
But there are other money measurements in which Colorado falls short. When money was allocated for highways and mass transit projects in a $286 billion bill in August, Colorado ranked 45th out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in dollars received per person.
Delegation members pointed out that Colorado’s was the biggest increase for any state compared with the previous highway bill.
“We’re catching up for lost ground, and that hasn’t happened in the past,” Allard said.
Although the allocation of money to states for “special projects” is controversial, it’s highly desired by members of Congress. In a ranking of how much special-project money each state received in 2005, Colorado placed 44th out of the states and the District of Columbia.
The money is totaled by Citizens Against Government Waste, which considers such spending “pork.” The largest amount of this kind of spending Colorado received in 2005 was $12.4 million for a construction project at Fort Carson, money Allard obtained.
Five years earlier, Colorado ranked 22nd out of 51 for the most special-project money. That was largely because Campbell, who was on the Appropriations Committee, obtained larger amounts of such funding.
“The double standard is if it goes to some other state it’s called pork,” said Campbell, who sat on Appropriations from 1996 until his retirement. “If it goes to my state, it’s called economic development.”
Allard, now on Appropriations, said he is trying to change how money is allocated. More should go based on the merit of state programs, he said, and less based on pet projects for members with more seniority.
While “Armstrong and Hart probably had higher national profiles, in terms of getting things done for Colorado, I don’t think there’s been any lessening,” said Dick Wadhams, who worked for former Sen. Armstrong from 1980 through 1989, then ran Allard’s 1996 and 2002 campaigns and served as his press secretary in 1997 and 2003.
Colorado’s elected representatives are less on the national stage, he said, perhaps because the issues they’re dealing with are “more Colorado-centric.” In the 1980s, he said, “it just seemed like the national debate had a higher prominence.”
“Sen. Allard has always been more of a work horse than a show horse,” Wadhams said.
Armstrong agreed that the period when he was in the Senate “was a time of tremendous change, … (but) it would be wrong to over-glamorize it. I don’t think it’s a case where the great days are behind us.”
News researcher Regina Avila contributed to this report.
