By Ed Quillen
In ways, I miss the old-fashioned Election Day. Our precinct polling place was across the street from our house, and I work at home. I’d look out the front window, and when I didn’t see many cars parked, I knew there wouldn’t be much of a line.
Now we have “voting centers,” and ours is four blocks away, too far for easy traffic observation. So it’s easier just to vote early, which makes the whole concept of Election Day rather meaningless. It’s more like “Election Season.”
That said, how am I going to vote this time around? Well, mostly for Democrats, since Republicans seem to hate me and everything I believe in. I often write for the Evil Biased Liberal Lame-Stream Media. I try to mind my own business, so I don’t care if there are gay couples down the street, and Republicans seem to think I should care. I figure what a woman does with her own body is her own business, and Republicans don’t like that attitude.
It’s weird, because the Republican Party of my youth had such different beliefs. The GOP then supported civil rights, public education, environmental protection, and separation of church and state. If that Republican Party existed anywhere but in memory, I’d happily support it.
There are other ways to rate the candidates this year. My favorite is Referendum A. It was a proposal in 2003 for the state to issue up to $2 billion in bonds for water projects to be named later. Although lots of prominent people supported it, starting with Gov. Bill Owens, it went down by a 2-1 margin.
I opposed it as much as I could in my writing here and in the Denver Post. And I decided I would never vote for any people who supported Referendum A because their support meant they were totally out of touch with Colorado voters.
That sure simplifies matters. Start with the U.S. Senate race between Michael Bennet, the appointed incumbent Democrat, and Republican Ken Buck. I voted for Andrew Romanoff and against Bennet in the primary. Bennet once worked as an executive under Phil Anschutz, the billionaire who has made a career out of gutting Colorado.
But when I look at the list of Referendum A supporters I downloaded and saved from 2003, there’s “Ken Buck, Hensel Phelps Construction Company, Weld County.” Reason enough not to vote for him, though you can find plenty more as he flip-flops from his Tea Party primary positions in hopes of appealing to a broader audience.
So consider Bennet the lesser evil and move to the governor’s race. Dan Maes, the Republican candidate, is not on the list of Referendum A supporters, but his running mate, former state Rep. Tambor Williams, is on the list.
As for that potent third-party challenger, former Republican Tom Tacredo, now of the American Constitution Party, he’s among the elected officials supporting Referendum A.
So that leaves Democrat John Hickenlooper, whose name is not on the list even though he had just taken office as mayor of Denver. Hickenlooper has always struck me as a pragmatist who puts getting the job done ahead of any particular ideological bent. So I think he’ll make a fine governor.
See how easy this is when you’ve got the Referendum A list to work from?
When we get to electing somebody for the U.S. House of Representatives, it turns out that our incumbent, Republican Doug Lamborn, supported Referendum A. So of course I’ll vote for Kevin Bradley, the Democrat. And of course it won’t make a bit of difference since we’re in the fifth district with the GOP bastion of Colorado Springs.
Now to various statewide offices. I’ve got no problem with Democrat Bernie Buescher getting a full term as secretary of state, or another term for State Treasurer Cary Kennedy.
I voted for Republican John Suthers for attorney general in 2006. That’s because even though I’m a Democrat, I figure it’s good to have someone of the other party in office to discourage abuses of power. For example, back when Colorado was all Republican, except for Attorney General Ken Salazar, it was Salazar who went to court to block a Republican midnight-gerrymander scheme. A Republican attorney general would not have done so.
That said, Suthers has disappointed me with his joining other state attorney generals in filing a suit against the federal Affordable Health Care Act. No matter how you feel about that law, the suit is a waste of his office’s limited resources; if other states want to fight it in court, the ultimate decision will be the same whether or not Colorado is a party. It was just grandstanding on Suthers’ part, and it doesn’t speak well of his judgment. So, I’ll reluctantly vote for the Democrat, Stan Garnett.
Democrat Gail Schwartz certainly deserves another term as our state senator. I don’t know anybody who works as hard as she does to represent us and she has an excellent grasp of the issues. No, I don’t agree with her on everything, but the only way I’d get a senator I always agreed with would be to run myself, and there are other things I’d rather do.
And while I have some issues with our state representative, Republican Tom Massey, over his attitudes about medical marijuana, in general he does a good job of representing our part of the world. So, I’ll vote for him.
In the county races, I’ll be a yellow-dog Democrat and vote for Bill Reeves for commissioner (just a few years ago, didn’t local Republicans tell us how horrible it was to have all three commissioners of the same party?). And for Pete Palmer for sheriff and for Joyce Reno to get another term as clerk.
Which leaves all those initiatives and referenda that cover everything from “personhood” for fertilized eggs to bail bonds, along with Doug Bruce’s latest schemes for reducing our power of self-government. I’ll just vote “no” on all of them, with the possible exception of 3A, the local question on building a new high school in Salida.
I’ll grant that the existing facility is old, patched together, and in need of replacement. And that with the state grant, this is likely the best deal we’ll ever get for something we’re going to have to do anyway. And hey, even if my kids are grown and out of school, somebody paid for nice new schools for me to attend when I was a kid (Well, some of them were nice and new. Our grade school came straight out of about 1905, but the junior high and high school were relatively new.)
But this is the same school district that a decade ago built a new middle school that suffers chronic roof problems. And the same district that always seems to be on the ballot with building proposals and mill-levy over-rides, which makes you wonder whether they can set a budget in line with local resources and stick to it, instead of frequently asking for more. Sure, education is important – but so are streets, the hospital, the library, parks, trails and the like. We can’t focus solely on public K-12 education and have the kind of community we’d like to have.
I’ll likely vote for it, but with a sinking feeling in my belly that something will go expensively wrong in the process of building and operating a new high school, and the certainty that even if it passes, they’ll be back wanting more money to replace Longfellow Elementary, improve administrators’ pay, and the like.
Oh well. As the old Doors song put it, “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near,” and that never seems more true than at election time.
Ed Quillen first cast a ballot in 1972, so he could vote against holding the 1976 Winter Olympics in Colorado.
