Centennial – Finished with Congress until after the election, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez started his October campaign sprint Monday with an assist from Gov. Bill Owens.
Owens told the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce that his fellow Republican is the candidate best suited to improve the business-friendly climate Owens helped create.
If Democrats take control of the Governor’s Mansion and keep the legislature, a slew of anti-business policies could result, Owens said.
“We’ve known Democratic governors who weren’t alien to the business community, and we know a Democratic speaker who isn’t an alien to the business community, but if you ever combine the two … I think you’re going to see the potential to change the business climate significantly,” Owens said.
After more than half a dozen appearances with Beauprez this year, Owens will amp up his campaigning with at least five more days scheduled this month to stump with the GOP contender. In addition to Monday’s breakfast stop, the governor was scheduled to attend an evening fundraiser.
In Monday’s session with business leaders, Owens talked about how Democrats have controlled the legislature for the past two years and said he issued more than 90 vetoes in that time. Owens recalled several bills he killed that he believed were bad for business, including one that would have banned employers from forcing workers to attend meetings about politics or religion.
Owens said he thought Beauprez’s Democratic rival, Bill Ritter, would sign such a bill, but Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the Democrat would probably have vetoed it.
Beauprez said Ritter’s links to trial lawyers and labor unions will mean a rollback of Owens-era tort and workers’ compensation reform.
Dreyer said maybe Coloradans should be worried that former Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s support of Beauprez means “we’re going to get that kind of Washington-style politics here.”
Beauprez said Colorado needs affordable, private health care, not “some nutty idea of” socialized medicine, which is how he characterized Ritter’s health- care plan.
Dreyer said Ritter will bring businesses, consumers and providers together to construct a statewide solution.
The congressman also pounded Ritter for “bad judgment” after revelations that, as Denver district attorney, he approved 152 plea bargains that saved immigrant drug and assault offenders from deportation.
“People who have committed a crime that requires … automatic deportation, I don’t want them put right back on the street,” Beauprez said.
Dreyer said the plea “was a tool that prosecutors used to obtain a felony conviction against someone primarily in a drug-use case that had evidentiary problems.”
Cyd Szymanski, owner of an organic egg company, is a registered Democrat with a Ritter yard sign. But after listening to Beauprez, she said she is rethinking her support.
“He wasn’t as extreme as I was led to believe,” she said. “He does have valuable experience in business, in government.”
Staff writer Chris Frates can be reached at cfrates@denverpost.com or 303-954- 1633.
