They just can’t seem to help themselves.
Maybe they grow restless as the four-month session drags on and they’re no longer able to easily shrug off the daily lobbying pressures and the underlying partisan politics.
Last week it all came to a head again, prompting a personal-privilege speech by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.
“Too often we get caught up in politics and our focus is taken away from the policy we are here to create,” he said to the House chamber Thursday, quoting an earlier statement from Republican Minority Leader Mike May.
“But there is too much at stake for our state and the people we serve to allow partisanship to stand in the way of us working together to build a brighter future.”
The speech came on the heels of complaints by three House members over aggressive lobbying on a construction-defects bill, the release by a conservative blog of a hostile e-mail the Democratic House education committee chairman – who is undergoing cancer treatment – wrote about charter school proponents, and the continuing partisan debate on an issue over which the legislature has no control: the Iraq war.
“This is not the first time – and it probably will not be the last – that outside interests have attempted to poison our proceedings. But whether they succeed is entirely up to us,” Romanoff said.
Indeed, the past few weeks have been reminiscent of the partisan bickering that dominated much of last year’s session when lawmakers were gearing up for a close November election.
It’s an atmosphere that longtime Capitol observers link to a culture change that is, in part, driven by term limits and the overall rise in “gotcha” politics.
In the old days, lobbyists and lawmakers followed strict unwritten protocols. Violators were called into a room and simply told to knock it off.
“I think there was a greater sense of defending the institution as an institution. And its image. And I don’t see that as much as I used to,” said John Straayer, a Colorado State University political science professor who has been hanging around the statehouse halls for some 30 years.
Some of the problems can be traced to term limits, he said. There are fewer senior members to counsel newer members on traditions and protocol. The new members, rather than focusing on settling in, are looking ahead to their next office.
“You have to jump when you can,” he said. “You have a lot more movement, and I think that affects your behavior, the bills you introduce, the votes you make, the pronouncements. The statements you make … more now than before, tend to be geared more toward the sense of where you want to go next.”
The institutional changes, he said, are also driven by technology such as robo-calls and e-mail – which some forget are public records – and an overall change in campaign tactics.
“That kind of gotcha politics – you didn’t see it 15, 20 years ago. I think that ties into this whole business of 527s, opposition research, negative campaigning, big-money political operatives who are out there basically building an industry on entrapment politics,” Straayer said.
All of that has changed the tone and structure of the statehouse.
“There are more surprises now than there used to be,” Straayer said. “I think both in terms of the behavior of the members and probably with the lobby core as well. It’s just a different place.”
Capitol Bureau chief Jeri Clausing writes each Sunday. She can be reached at 303-954-1555 or jclausing@denverpost.com.
