Also going to the dogs was the debate over domestic partnerships. After the Gill Foundation launched an ad campaign featuring Norman, a Brittany spaniel that moos (because he's "born different," okay?), the folks at Focus on the Family responded with a basset hound named Sherman that -- in public, at least -- barks as God intended. "Dogs aren't born mooing, and people aren't born gay," a Focus press release explained. But are they born stupid, or do they have to work at it?
And was it nature or nurture that prompted Beauprez running mate Janet Rowland to go on a public television show and compare homosexuality to bestiality? "Do we allow a man to marry a sheep?" Rowland asked, while denouncing gay marriage. (The answer, incidentally, is no way -- not even if the bride has been injected with an irritant that causes her to bulk up.) Beauprez, of course, disapproved of the comment, as well as several of his own.
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Sheep of another kind are apparently the only beings welcome in the presence of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose visit to Beaver Creek in June resulted in a Golden man, Steven Howards, being led away in handcuffs. A Secret Service spokesman said Howards "wasn't acting like other folks" and became combative when questioned. Howards maintains he simply approached Cheney at an outdoor mall and said, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible." Charges of misdemeanor harassment against Howards were later dropped; he's since filed a civil-rights suit against one federal agent involved in the incident.
We expect politicians to stretch the truth, but how many bother to stretch themselves? In photos featured in his campaign literature, Beauprez challenger Marc Holtzman seemed to get taller. Critics of his maverick primary campaign accused him of inflating his ties to Ronald Reagan, and his campaign manager stepped down after admitting that he'd made up polling data he'd given to a reporter. But his overreaching caught up with Holtzman after officials tossed out thousands of dubious signatures on the petitions his campaign had gathered in a last-ditch effort to get on the ballot. In the end, size does count.
All politics are local, and the worst political blunders of the year were very, very personal. One leader in touch with the common folk was Broomfield state representative Bill Berens, who went ballistic when a nineteen-year-old college sophomore wrote a letter to a local paper taking issue with a $20,000 prize Berens won in a golf tournament. The student argued that the money was a gift from the tournament sponsor, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, in violation of state lobbying laws. Berens responded that it was perfectly legal prize money, paid by an insurance company, and he was keeping it. He even filed a complaint with Adams County, claiming the student had violated a law against making false statements during a political campaign and urging that the newspaper that published her letter be prosecuted, too. Talk about a political gaffer: Berens lost his bid for re-election.
Yet even Berens couldn't match the display of political savvy that flared up in Pagosa Springs last month, when a homeowners' association threatened to fine Lisa Jensen $25 a day unless she removed a Christmas wreath in the shape of a peace sign, which some neighbors viewed as an anti-war protest or some kind of satanic message. With irrefutable logic, the board decided a holiday symbol of peace is, well, divisive, and nobody wants that. But within a few days, it was the board that was gone, having humbly apologized and resigned in the face of coast-to-coast outrage and ridicule.
The wreath remains.
Peace, dude. Peace on earth, peace to all. And to all a good sheep.
Compiled from news reports, press releases and the police blotter.
