As Bill Ritter’s run as Colorado governor nears an end, the post-analysis begins.
With the clear vision provided by hindsight, one can see more than a few similarities in the tenures of the outgoing governor and the former president from Plains, Jimmy Carter.
In addition to being one-termers, both had an optimistic start buttressed by lots of moral language, a middling midpoint characterized by poor communications and political missteps, and a final stage overshadowed by greater, unexpected forces, including historic economic low points.
For Carter, his term coincided with international stagflation and ended in a revolt of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing and the Iranian hostage crisis. For Ritter, the confluence of a collapsing economy and stumbling Obama administration made for a weaker than hoped finish.
Like Carter, who entered office as a breath of fresh air for the country, Ritter, with his 17-point victory in 2006, promised a new tone and direction for the state as the Democrats ascended to near complete power in Colorado. For the first time in 40 years, they held the governorship and both houses of the legislature, the beginning of a rising tide that took the White House and secured large majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress two years later.
Ritter began with an aggressive Colorado Promise, but his agenda was quickly diverted by his penchant for study task forces and by difficult fights with the state’s powerful economic interests.
He launched a bruising battle over land use with the oil and gas industry, which he won, but paid for dearly later. Smarting, the oil and gas interests helped sabotage a severance tax referendum the governor wanted to finance higher education and they heavily funded legislative races that cost Democrats control of the Colorado House.
Ritter’s relationship with business and labor was mercurial. He initially indicated he was not a “labor Democrat” by vetoing a pro-labor organizing bill. Then, 10 months later, in an after-hours Friday announcement, he rewarded labor by strengthening state employees’ organizing abilities. In the end, Ritter angered elements of both business and labor with a series of anti-labor vetoes and perceived anti-business tax revisions.
Again like Carter, Ritter leaves office with a low approval rating, a mixed record and many critics, but he can argue there were a number of successes.
As president, Carter established two new Cabinet-level offices, that of Education and Energy, set in place a new national energy policy, and scored well in the diplomatic arena, with the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.
As governor, Ritter launched his new energy economy with aggressive regulatory actions through the Public Utilities Commission, requiring increased renewable energy sources from the state’s main utility, Xcel.
Democratic governors are always looking for more state revenue, and Ritter found his in a legislature-imposed TABOR override to help fund local schools, a fee on hospitals for the uninsured and a license plate fee increase for transportation.
But overall, the effect of the poor economy on state tax revenue left Ritter and the Democrats with the inevitable and unenviable job of stripping money out of an already TABOR-constrained state budget. The midterm election’s anti-Democratic and anti-Washington wave of voter angst was not a complete loss for Ritter. His successor will be a Democrat, if not a friend — John Hickenlooper. And his pick for U.S. Senate, Michael Bennet, eked out an 18,000-vote victory (the closest in the country), while Colorado Democrats lost the State House, many local races, three state constitutional offices, and two congressional seats.
Democrats are glad 2010 is over, and the state in general is ready to move on from the Ritter era.
Ritter, like Carter, will be seen as a moral man, but short on the deep political skills needed to inspire voters or motivate the political and business classes, especially in a down economy.
Floyd Ciruli, founder of Ciruli Associates, is a Denver-based pollster and political analyst. Visit his website at ciruli.com or e-mail him at fciruli@aol.com.
