Big-name Colorado Republicans are split on a key ballot issue whose resolution is crucial to the future of our state government.
Sound familiar?
The issue is in the form of a so-called “term-limits” initiative crafted by longtime court basher John Andrews, formerly the Republican president of the state Senate. If approved Nov. 7 by voters, Andrews’ measure would sack five of the seven Supreme Court justices by Jan. 13, 2009, and seven of the 16 Court of Appeals judges as well. More than half of judges in lower courts would also be forced off the bench.
This past week, Attorney General John Suthers stepped forward to fight the judicial purge that will appear on the Nov. 7 ballot.
The measure alarms Suthers, a Republican who was U.S. Attorney for Colorado before Owens named him state attorney general after Ken Salazar was elected to the U.S. Senate. He spoke up as bipartisan opponents of the purge plan organized under the banner Citizens to Protect Colorado Courts. Besides Suthers, the group fighting to preserve the independence of Colorado’s judiciary also includes Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce president Joe Blake; Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and business and community leaders including the League of Women Voters, the Colorado Judicial Institute and Common Cause. Denver lawyer John Moye chairs the group.
Andrews – who led the opposition to Referendum C last year, butting heads with Republican Gov. Bill Owens – submitted 108,000 signatures to the secretary of state on Wednesday to put his proposal on the ballot. The signatories may not have realized what they were endorsing. This is a grudge match for Andrews, who has been seething since the Colorado Supreme Court struck down his illegal “midnight gerrymander” in 2003.
“This is a misguided measure that will be devastating to Colorado courts,” Suthers said Thursday. “Because it is retroactive, a majority of Colorado’s justices and judges will be kicked off the bench. This will be bad for Colorado citizens and the judiciary. Colorado courts already are accountable to the law and the Constitution. They shouldn’t be held accountable to politicians and campaigns. We need to defeat political attempts that want courts to deliver special-interest results, not justice.”
As I recounted in this space last week, Andrews was president of the state Senate in 2003 when he rammed through a scheme to assure a permanent 5-2 Republican majority in the state’s Congressional districts. Unfortunately for Andrews, his gerrymander was a year late and a 69-year-old Supreme Court ruling short of meeting constitutional standards. A 1934 decision found the state constitution only permits congressional districts to be drawn in the two-year window between the U.S. Census and the next statewide election.
Andrews didn’t try his gerrymander in 2002 because Democrats controlled the Senate. When Republicans regained full control of the legislature in 2003, Andrews pushed his scheme through – only to see it struck down in the courts.
The purge plan is Andrews’ way of getting even, and it dovetails with his fanciful attacks on judicial activism. But the great irony behind his assault on judicial independence is that Andrews would have never been president of the Senate had it not been for a 2002 decision by the very Colorado Supreme Court he so despises.
A 1974 constitutional amendment gave the power to reapportion the legislature’s own seats to an independent commission that had a one-vote Democratic edge in 2002. Democrats seized the chance to buttress their then 18-17 control of the state Senate with a gerrymander of their own.
Rural eastern Colorado has a Republican tilt and enough people to justify two Senate seats. The Democratic gerrymander sliced the plains into three parts and attached each of them to Democratic-leaning urban districts. Republicans sued, claiming the gerrymander violated standards set out in the reapportionment law.
Then as now, the Colorado Supreme Court had five Democrats and two Republicans. But two Democratic justices, Gregory Hobbs and Nancy Rice, joined Republicans Rebecca Love Kourlis and Nathan Coats to strike down the Democrats’ Senate gerrymander, 4-3. A chastened commission then submitted a fairer plan consolidating eastern Colorado into two districts. That fall, Republicans Ken Kester and Mark Hillman captured both seats – giving the GOP an 18-17 majority and setting the stage for Andrews’ presidency.
The justices’ evenhandedness may help explain why true conservatives support judicial independence against political attacks. If the courts bow down to the will of politicians, all our rights are at risk.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
