Colorado's citizens passed Referendum C (and possibly D) yesterday -- in spite of almost $3 million of mystery money spent by the national drown-government, anti-tax crusaders.
Two meta-lessons from this:
1. The extreme right wingnuts running the country are losing their grip.
Katrina, the Iraq War and corruption collectively have tipped the citizenry past the Grover Norquist last-century, hate-eveything messages... People want competent leadership delivering appropriate services for all.
2. Colorado's citizens are awesome.
You should have seen the crowds across the Front Range wielding signs joyously the last few days. I've never seen an effort like that for an election before. Citizens are smarter than the rich carpetbaggers running the country;
'My job depends on it. Without it, we're toast,'' said Laura Manuel, who works at Metropolitan State College in Denver and supported suspending the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. ''People want a free lunch -- they want roads and sidewalks but don't want to pay for it.''
Other lessons;
1. Don't bring a professor to a street fight.
I thought the pro C&D TV ads were generally too anemic. While it's true that the opponents generally simply lied in their ads, the forces for good would have been benefited by more direct exposition of the opposition. The fact that the father of one of the right-wing candidates for Governor funded TV ads featuring his son opposing C&D as a way to avoid campaign finance limits ... is outrageous, and could easily have been linked to the out-of-state cabal that spent massively in opposition. The negative countering effort could have been done indirectly, and would have helped.
2. While leaders mattered, the citizens mattered more.
Grassroots were highly effective in the campaign. As I mentioned before, check out ProgressNow's cheap-and-cheerful internet TV ads, in contrast to the campaign's expensive efforts...
3. Stand for something, #1.
Governor Owens gets great credit. He stood against the national anti-tax zealots to do the right thing for his state. That stance, coupled with his personal issues, have all but kiboshed his national political ambitions. I don't think his profile on this mattered nearly as much as Hickenlooper's (whose golden touch continues) or even Romanoff's (huge credit -- the structure of this fix was substantially his idea)... but Governor Owens did the right thing for his state, at great personal cost.
Remember when that's what we expected leaders to do?!?
4. Stand for something, #2.
Bob Beauprez, the U.S. Rep from the 7th who will run for Governor, comes out about as badly as possible in this whole thing. He was for C&D before he was against it becasue the right-wing base told him he had to be; but he never did anything one way or the other on the single most important issue facing the state he wants to lead this year. "Back and forth Bob" is not the tag-line one wants heading into an election year where a major theme will be competence (Katrina, Iraq, disaster preparedness generally, etc...)
