When the 66th Colorado General Assembly convenes for the first time Wednesday, all will be sweetness and light.
Democrats captured the governorship and both chambers of the legislature last fall. As a result, disciplined Democratic majorities will approve their new governor’s program by acclamation and it will then be fully funded by the compliant Joint Budget Committee.
Gov. Bill Ritter will sign the resulting flood of legislation – ushering in a golden age in which every child will score above average on the CSAP test, all snowfall will melt within 24 hours and the Arbitron ratings will prove the only person listening to Jon Caldara’s talk show is John Andrews, and vice versa.
Just kidding, though that talk show thing might actually be the case.
As to the rest, Colorado history suggests the institutional rivalries between the executive and legislative branches endure even during periods of one-party rule – and may even intensify. I’ve seen three periods of one-party rule. I followed the first, under Democratic Gov. Steve McNichols, as an avid reader of The Denver Post at Holyoke High School. After joining The Post in 1972, I covered the administrations of Republicans John Love and John Vanderhoof and finally Bill Owens.
When I first started covering the capital, a sage lobbyist, Owen Murphy, told me, “In Colorado, the differences within political parties are more important than the differences between them.”
This version of Murphy’s Law summarized McNichols’ plight in 1961 and 1962. Democrats had just a 33-32 edge in the House and often lost key bills because two conservative Democrats, Lela Gilbert and Bert Gallegos, would vote with Republicans.
Republican John Love won the first of three terms in 1962, bringing control of both the House and Senate with him. For the next 12 years, Republicans would enjoy a near monopoly over statehouse power, broken only by the Democratic capture of the House, but not the Senate, in the 1964 Goldwater debacle.
Yet Love quickly learned, as McNichols had before him, that having your party control the legislature is very different than having the governor control it. Governors like to talk about their mandates. But every one of the 100 legislators has his or her own mandate – and they aren’t bashful about asserting them.
Above all, the legislature holds power over the purse and tends to view the governor’s budget recommendations with contempt. In Love’s era, the Joint Budget Committee was dominated by powerful lawmakers like Sen. Joe Shoemaker of Denver, and Reps. Sandy Arnold of Boulder and Don Friedman of Denver. They often shredded his budget requests.
In 1972, Love resigned to serve a short and unhappy stint as Richard Nixon’s “energy czar.” Lt. Gov. John Vanderhoof, a former speaker of the House, moved up to the governor’s office. Johnny Van was a master masseur of legislative egos and won passage of land-use legislation (the still-active HB 1041 among them) that Love had long sought before losing to Democrat Dick Lamm in 1974 in the Watergate landslide.
Owens had four years of Republican monopoly, 1999-2000 and 2003-04. He actually fared better during the years when Democrats controlled the Senate, 2001-02, or both chambers, 2005-06. The need for political realism in periods of power sharing allowed Owens to adopt common-sense policies, like Referendum C, that were strangled by the Republican right when the GOP ruled alone.
So what does this history suggest for Bill Ritter?
Like Love, Ritter never served in the legislature and thus won’t have Vanderhoof’s knowledge of its peculiarities. But unlike Love or Owens, Ritter will enjoy battle-tested legislative captains. Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald and House Speaker Andrew Romanoff are the first lawmakers to serve consecutive terms in their powerful posts since term limits began decimating the ranks of legislative leadership in 1998.
The critical majority leader posts also fall to hardy veterans – Boulder’s Rep. Alice Madden and Denver Sen. Ken Gordon. Grand Junction Rep. Bernie Buescher, a master of money issues, returns to co-chair the Joint Budget Committee along with veteran Sen. Abel Tapia of Pueblo.
Best of all for Ritter, Democratic majorities (19-16 in the Senate and 39-26 in the House) are enough to ensure that his proposals won’t be killed by a single defecting back bencher, as happened so often to McNichols.
It’s important for Ritter to tap the experience and insights of these legislative chieftains. He’ll succeed to the degree that he seeks their advice and lets them run interference for a program they had a key hand in shaping.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
