Drama unfolded on the Colorado House floor this week when a to try to force a vote on a gun bill and were chided for challenging the speaker.
Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst (CGA)
Rep. Justin Everett (CGA)
Republicans insisted they weren’t trying to challenge Democratic Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst of Boulder, and some were a little miffed that House Majority Leader Crisanta Duran of Denver scolded them.
Here’s a history lesson for Republicans: The GOP in 1993, when it was in power, insisted that appealing a procedural ruling is tantamount to a challenge of the speaker.
“It’s kind of like leveling charges against him,” then House Majority Leader Tim Foster, a Grand Junction Republican, said of Pueblo Democrat Bill Thiebaut’s challenge of a procedural ruling by then-Speaker Chuck Berry.
Here’s what happened this year:
A Democratic-controlled committee killed a bill that would have repealed a limit on ammunition magazines passed in 2013. Rep. Kim Ramson, R-Douglas County, asked that the journal be amended to reflect that the bill actually had a passed — a request that many consider the first of its kind. Hullinghorst ruled the motion was out of order, and Rep. Justin Everett, R-Littleton, moved to appeal her ruling. that infuriated Democrats and left some Republicans hanging.
Duran was clearly upset.
Political science professor John Straayer’s book on the Colorado legislature.
“What is so beautiful about the respect for this institution and the respect for this body is that we have a democracy, and through that democracy, leadership is elected,” she said.
“We have rules in place that we follow and I have never seen this happen (challenging the speaker) in all my time down here. It is unbelievable, it is disrespectful and I hope we can go forward and think about decorum and respect for this institution and respect for democracy moving forward.”
The 1993 incident was forwarded to me by John Straayer, political science professor at Colorado State University, who wrote about it in his book The Colorado General Assembly.
“Retribution in the form of death to some minority party bills followed,” Straayer wrote.
Hullinghorst, too, has flexed her power. When Everett and Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, went to the microphone to remind their colleagues about Bowtie Friday, she only called on Melton. Some Republicans said they didn’t blame her.
