Littwin: One man's legacy is another man's burden

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Bob Beauprez has a problem.

You could see it - although you had to look carefully.

It was hovering somewhere offstage at the gubernatorial debate Friday over at channel 12.

There, I swear I saw the ghost of Bill Owens.

For a ghost, he looked pretty much alive and kicking. But this is the strange thing: the person being kicked - spectrally speaking - was fellow Republican Bob Beauprez.

The real Bill Owens has, of course, basically left the building. I read where he's on his way to Jordan next week on some kind of "mission" or whatever the term of art is for boondoggle these days. I'm not sure it's the best time to go to the Middle East. I'm not sure it's the best time to get on an airplane anywhere.

Still, as a wise man once said, a soon-to-be-former governor's gotta do what a soon-to-be-former governor's gotta do.

But the ghostly Bill Owens was definitely hanging around Friday.

Yes, he has tendered his last veto and, yes, he has called his last special session. And, yes - emphatically, yes - I'm sure he's in the market for a well-paying job from a Republican-friendly company.

He'd just better hope the company doesn't look too carefully.

Because if Beauprez goes down to defeat this November, he might have Owens, or at least Owens' legacy, to blame.

There are two issues at work here.

The first, as you might have guessed, is Ref C. You remember Ref C. Bill Ritter certainly remembers Ref C. He will bring it up at every opportunity he gets in this campaign.

That's because Beauprez opposed Ref C - and then, to make matters worse, he endorsed a Jon Caldara initiative that would have gutted Ref C.

And the more often it comes up, the worse Beauprez looks. Because, it's fair to guess, more people favor Ref C now than when it passed last year. This was a triumph of government and a triumph for the governor.

Fixing the budget was an issue that had dominated state government for years. Owens looked like a statesman by joining Democrats to get Ref C passed. It's not often that a governor from either party takes that chance. It will be what Owens is remembered for - if you don't count Republicans losing both houses of the legislature under his watch for the first time in 40 years. But that's another story.

In this one, he looked good - and he helped make the Democrats look good. And I've got the negatives to prove it.

And Beauprez? Not looking so good. Not any way - of however many ways - you look at it.

Ritter, of course, supported Ref C. Beauprez, of course, didn't - although his one-time primary opponent, Marc Holtzman, kept insisting that he secretly did. That would make him seem disingenuous or cowardly or both.

So, he has to stay firm in his opposition to Ref C. And he had to be relieved when Caldara didn't put his Ref C-gutting initiative on the November ballot, which would have been an every-day reminder of the issue.

This is what I know: Many people supporting Beauprez begged Caldara to dump the initiative. Caldara has said the begging had nothing to do with his decision to dump it. Beauprez has said that he had nothing to do with the begging.

And Owens' ghost? Well, he didn't say anything. He didn't even clank his chains. But you know what he was thinking.

It was Ref C that got Beauprez his nickname from Holtzman. And it was a funny moment at the debate Friday when Beauprez asked Ritter to call him Bob - and I'm thinking, just so long as he doesn't call him Both Ways Bob.

Ritter calls him Congressman because, if you trust the polls, it's even worse these days to be identified as a congressman than a waffler.

Which brings us to Issue No. 2 - illegal immigration.

I'm not sure why it has become such an important issue, but there was Beauprez standing next to Tom Tancredo, trying to look just as tough.

Meanwhile, a Republican House and a Republican Senate and a Republican president has been unable to come to an agreement on illegal immigration while the state ends up passing what the Democrats like to call the toughest legislation in the country.

In this one, Owens, a wily politician who always seems to best the Democrats, got taken.

If you remember, the Colorado Supreme Court kicked an illegal-immigration initiative off the ballot, and Owens called for the special session - at which the Democrats decided to give him almost everything he wanted while they claimed the credit.

And Ritter now gets to say he favors that legislation and favors the president's proposed plan - and how much tougher does a Democrat have to be on this issue?

At the debate, which went pretty much as expected, Ritter looked tough enough. Where he stumbled was on the abortion question. He still hasn't got a good answer for how he can be anti-abortion but not seek to change the laws. Beauprez looked defensive on Ref C.

They both did a decent job of making the debate look like a moderate Democrat vs. a reasonable Republican.

As in every election - this is your pundit alert - it's the people in the center who decide.

But this may be the first one in which anyone walks into the voting booth quoting Hamlet: "Ghost, my hour is almost come."

Or Bill Murray: Who you gonna call?

littwinm@rockymountainnews.com.