November 06, 2008 11:02 PM UTC

Bruce defeats raise questions

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• by: NEWSMAN

“To say this was the state of Colorado dissing Douglas Bruce or that he’s somehow been discredited in politics is an overreach,” Lambert said.

Colorado Springs GAZETTE- November 5, 2008

The past several months have seen two big setbacks for Douglas Bruce, the Colorado Springs resident and lightning rod tax opponent.

Voters in Tuesday’s election trashed Bruce’s attempts to eliminate the city’s Stormwater Enterprise and sever some of its ties with its other enterprises. Back in August, Republican voters bounced Bruce from the state Legislature after he served as a midterm replacement in House District 15.

The pummeling Bruce has taken from voters lately has some people wondering whether his political influence is in decline.

His highest achievement was the 1992 statewide passage of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), an amendment to the state constitution capping government revenues and spending.

Since then he’s had a mixed record, winning a seat on the El Paso County Board of Commissioners, but losing numerous court battles and attempts at passing ballot measures.

The difference recently, said Colorado Springs City Councilman Scott Hente, is voters have rejected both Bruce as a candidate and his ideas about changing city government.

“At some point, I think Mr. Bruce has to realize that the community is rejecting him and his ideas,” Hente said Wednesday.

Other observers warned against counting Bruce out just yet. Bruce’s positions prevailed on several fronts in Tuesday’s election, said state Rep. Kent Lambert, a Republican and frequent Bruce ally.

“To say this was the state of Colorado dissing Douglas Bruce or that he’s somehow been discredited in politics is an overreach,” Lambert said.

Bruce might have failed to pass city questions 200 and 201, but he and others succeeded in defeating Referendum O, Lambert noted. That means Bruce thwarted a measure that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution, leaving open a method by which Bruce has often tried to enact his ideas. Bruce also helped defeat Amendment 59, an effort to rescind a key portion of TABOR.

It’s not the first time political observers have mused over whether it’s time to write Bruce’s political obituary.

In 1994, after statewide voters rejected a Bruce-authored measure to reform elections, respected pollster and political consultant Floyd Ciruli said: “This could be the last we see of the extraordinary phenomenon of this Californian who changed Colorado politics.”

Even Bruce raised the possibility he would fade from the political scene.

“I’m going to withdraw, hibernate, whatever term you want to use – retire,” he said.

Bruce was back in 1996, when he lost a primary-election bid to represent state Senate District 10. He’s had ups and downs since then, but given Bruce’s intelligence and determination he’s likely to continue as an influence on Colorado politics as long as he wants to be, said Republican Rep. Bob Gardner, a frequent Bruce foe.

“So long as he continues to place things on the ballot and force people to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to at the very least defeat them, he is going to have some influence,” Gardner said.

Whether Bruce will be effective in pursuing his agenda is a different question, Gardner said, citing Bruce’s reputation for being unyielding and combative.

“I’ve never known Douglas to compromise on anything, even when the compromise would be in the interest of achieving his goal,” Gardner said.

Bruce thinks his efforts to promote the city ballot measures played a role in his defeat for the House District 15 seat. He devoted time to gathering petition signatures that would guarantee a place on the ballot, which left little time to campaign for his office, he said.

Questions 200 and 201 might have been defeated because voters didn’t understand a vote “for the initiated ordinance” in Question 200 would have eliminated mandatory stormwater fees, he said.

As for his political future, Bruce expressed frustration with a process he’s learned as well as anyone in Colorado since his arrival in the state in the late 1980s.

“I would welcome somebody else taking some of the establishment criticism for disagreeing with governmental dishonesty and word manipulation,” he said. “I get e-mails and people saying ‘don’t give up, go do it again,’ but all these people are standing on the sidelines, they didn’t help.”

http://www.gazette.com/article…

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