This was no year for mavericks.
Not just for John McCain, the most mavericky of mavericks, and Sarah Palin, the governor from Neiman’s.
But also for the lone zealots and opportunists who sidestepped Colorado’s statehouse and packed our ballot with initiatives that voters nixed.
Take beer scion and union-buster Jonathan Coors, who had help from furniture magnate Jake Jabs in funding his jihad. Together, the duo raised $4.7 million to promote a “right to work” measure to ban mandatory union dues.
Labor amassed $19.1 million against the initiative, persuading voters to reject it.
Coors and Jabs made history only by suffering the first right-to-work defeat in 30 years. They also managed what seemed impossible, especially in Bill Ritter’s Colorado: uniting labor unions and businesses.
Turns out the $23.8 million raised for and against Coors’ crusade could have covered health care for 5,045 Coloradans.
Here’s to you, maverick. You go.
Then there was Ward Connerly, the California carpetbagger who pays himself dearly to end race and gender preferences in state hiring and education.
Connerly aimed to exploit Colorado’s open ballot by passing a measure that won in California, Washington and Michigan. But Colorado seems to have handed him his first statewide defeat.
This year’s moxiest maverick was Kristi Burton, the chirpy Christian activist who, without big backing from the national anti-choice lobby, sponsored a “personhood amendment” to define life at conception.
Although she charmed even her opponents, Burton mistook voters for morons by insisting her measure wouldn’t directly threaten abortion rights. She got slammed by a 3-to-1 ratio.
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff would tell you that a sweeping coalition worked to weaken the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and keep more money for education. Yet from the start, the effort was known as “Andrew’s amendment.”
Romanoff raised $2.5 million — a fraction of the $8 million that a truly broad coalition of businesses, think tanks and bipartisan leaders raised for referendums C and D, two measures to weaken TABOR in 2005.
He failed to convince voters of what he failed to convince his fellow lawmakers — that further reform is needed. And now, 16 years after Doug Bruce hoodwinked Coloradans into TABOR, voters are so sick of Romanoff’s rap about why the system remains flawed that serious changes will be tougher.
Which leaves us, finally, with the trouncing of Amendment 58, a measure that Gov. Ritter floated after bypassing a legislature led by fellow Democrats who nevertheless would have rebuffed it.
The initiative sought to end a tax credit for oil and gas drillers and use the money to fund college scholarships.
Ritter was vastly outspent by oil and gas companies. He failed to make the case that energy giants threatening to leave Colorado — the very ones reporting the biggest profits in human history — can in fact afford to pay to pock up our land.
In the end, Ritter staked his claim and came up dry. So much for one man’s good idea.
Coloradans love our ballot initiatives and relish lording power over patronizing politicians, grandstanding trust-funders and fanatics of all kinds.
Though it may be relatively easy to make our ballot, it’s tough to pull one over on our voters. After all, it is they — not the policy pushers — who are the real mavericks. For Colorado is a state of skeptics who are tired of being carpet- bagged, underestimated and begged more than once.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
