Diary of a Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry

Initiatives a Bright Spot for Colorado GOP

By Jessica Peck Corry, 7-31-08

While the decline of Republican dominance in Colorado has been the topic of endless media speculation, the GOP has one bright spot heading toward November: The initiative process.

A report carried in this week’s LA Times falsely suggested otherwise. Titled “GOP suffering from a lack of (ballot) initiative,” reporters Dan Morain and Nicholas Riccardi eagerly proclaimed that “The strategy of pushing propositions likely to draw conservatives to the polls has faltered as Republicans face mishaps in drafting measures and a more aggressive opposition.”

While Morain and Riccardi are right that Colorado initiatives are facing aggressive opposition from well-funded liberals, including multiple millionaire and labor-backed lawsuits, the fact remains that of the four initiatives certified for the November ballot, all represent conservative or free-market efforts. As of Wednesday, not a single liberal initiative had been approved. But Morain and Riccardi got this basic fact wrong as well, writing, “. . . Democrats have succeeded in qualifying measures of their own [in Colorado].”

Morain and Riccardi obviously didn’t do their homework. The four initiatives certified include the Amendment 46, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative (of which I am the executive director and which would ban racial and gender preferences or discrimination in public hiring, public contracting, and public education), Amendment 47, which would prohibit workers from being forced to join unions, Amendment 48, the personhood amendment referenced above, and Amendment 49, which would prohibit government from using public payroll systems to deduct union dues.

As it stands: 4-0 conservatives.

And it hasn’t been an easy battle, either. Liberals have challenged at least three of the four above initiatives at every step of the way, first fighting to shoot down ballot language before the Secretary of State’s title setting board and the state Supreme Court. When it became clear that this strategy wouldn’t work, they launched allegations in district court and before the office of administrative courts.

They’ve forced initiative campaigns to spending tens of thousands in legal bills, meanwhile racking up their own hefty legal expenses. While the Amendment 47 campaign has shelled out $556,000, the Rocky Mountain News reports that it has been faced with $4.3 million in union opposition-a hefty sum considering that only 8 percent of the Colorado workforce is unionized.

Currently, the Secretary of State is in the process of certifying three additional initiatives (campaigns must submit more than 76,000 valid signatures to be approved for the ballot). Of these, at least two are distinctly conservative. Initiative 120 is backed by leading Republican state legislators and would restructure the state’s severance tax system, allocating for greater funding of transportation. Initiative 121, also backed by Republicans, would allow casino towns to vote whether to increase bet limits, extend hours of operation, or add games. Initiative 128 would increase the state sales tax to fund services for the disabled.

If we assume for a moment that all three make it to the ballot, and that the only slightly liberal one of these is 128’s tax increase, conservatives maintain a 7-1 ballot advantage.

Finally, as unions scramble to play catch up, they are pledging to submit by Monday’s deadline signatures for four proposed initiatives collectively directed toward increasing regulations of Colorado business owners. Even if all four of these initiatives make it on to the ballot-hardly a certainty at this point-conservatives will still maintain a 7-5 advantage when it comes to the initiatives voters see on this November’s ballot. These facts aren’t exactly consistent with the polemic authored by Morain and Riccardi in the Times.

Should voters see 12 initiatives on this November’s ballot, opponents to the initiative process will predictably proclaim that this number is simply too great for voters to digest. Again, untrue. In 2006, voters were able to aptly manage 14 different ballot issues.

While Democrats now control both houses of the Colorado legislature and the Governor’s mansion, they are clearly behind when it comes to the initiative process. While the media may be eager to write off Republicans in the West, hundreds of thousands of Colorado voters who signed on in support of center-right initiatives beg to differ.

Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of a feature on PoliticsWest called “Diary of a Mad Voter.” The group blog, published in partnership with NewWest.Net/Politics, is intended to give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the 2008 election year.

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