"It's shocking how much news this has gotten," she says. "When I talk to people who are not political junkies, they don't think [Bruce's role] is any big deal at all."
So what is Bruce's current involvement in the campaign?
John Johnston
Attorney Paul Grant battled Colorado's restrictions on petitions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -— and won twice.
Mark Manger
Mark Grueskin has been the go-to guy for groups fighting citizen initiatives — or trying to get their own issue on the ballot.
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"As far as I know, none," Menten says.
With only four months to go until the November election, only four citizen's initiatives have made it onto the 2010 state ballot: the anti-tax measures and a perpetual favorite seeking a legal declaration that "personhood" begins in the womb. Caldara, Tvert and others may yet get their petitions done, but the total will still be much smaller than the pile of ballot questions facing Colorado voters two years ago.
Some petition proponents blame HB 1326 for the dropoff, saying that the new law is already having a chilling effect on free speech. But Caldara suggests that the obstacles to citizen's initiatives in Colorado go well beyond any single piece of legislation. They have to do with the rising legal costs of enduring a gauntlet of challenges from bureaucrats, entrenched private interests and skillful hired guns — a process he calls "getting Grueskinned."
"My goal in life is to help Mark Grueskin put his kids through college," he says drily. "The left is much better at tangling folks up with litigation. We don't have anybody like that on the Republican side; maybe we should. He's been very effective. He keeps throwing things against the wall until something sticks, and our Supreme Court justices are often just looking for something they can use."
In 2005, Caldara led the charge against Referendum C, the legislature's key maneuver to get out from under TABOR's spending limits. He ended up in a legal wrangle, with Grueskin on the other side, that cost the Independence Institute $80,000 — and, perhaps, the election.
"It took up all of our time and energy, which was the purpose," Caldara says. "We did win the case — three days after the election. I spent eight hours on the witness stand in the middle of one of the most important elections for us in the last decade. That's legal harassment."
Grueskin sees the drop in the number of citizen's initiatives this year as an encouraging sign that more interest groups are willing to work with the legislature to achieve reforms, avoiding the costly petition route. "I don't think it suggests anything is broken," he says. "Just the opposite. A lot of these initiatives are poker chips in the legislative process. In many cases, maybe there was never a serious intention to put them on the ballot."
Dozens of initiatives get filed with the Secretary of State's office every election season, prompting reporters to predict a "flood" of ballot measures. But, Grueskin points out, few of those measures make it past the early stages, often because the proponents don't bother to take them to the next level. They are "vanity" issues, drawn up to impress someone or to use as leverage in negotiations with lawmakers and lobbyists.
"Colorado is the easiest state for getting on the ballot," he says, "but it still costs a quarter of a million dollars, even if you're using pay-per-signature. That's a lot of money, particularly when the economy is down."
Despite the injunction Caldara's group obtained against HB 1326, the barriers to citizen initiatives keep growing. This year legislators passed yet another law — tightening the disclosure requirements for issue committees supporting or opposing statewide ballot measures — aimed at "purposefully anonymous interests attempting to influence the outcome of the election." To Bruce, the new law, like 1326, is just one more attack on the right to petition by an autocratic legislature.
"They must figure that if someone voted for them, they're so stupid that they don't deserve the right to vote," he says. "The landscape is littered with these attempts. People need to realize that no petition ever changed anything. It just puts the issue in front of the voters."
But getting your petitions transformed into an actual question on the ballot is more than half the battle. You can't win if you're not there. Just ask Tom Wiens, who dropped out of the Republican race for U.S. Senate this year amid procedural problems with the company circulating his petitions. Or ask Caldara, who says that hiring the right circulators and paying them properly is crucial.
"This is an art, not a science," he says. "Very few people can actually get it done. Everybody who thinks it's easy to change the state constitution are people who haven't tried."
For more on petition controversies, go to the Latest Word blog at westword.com. Contact the author at alan.prendergast@westword.com.
