Politics
Amendment 41 was advanced by Colorado Common Cause with the financial support and endorsement of Democrat Jared Polis, then a member of the State Board of Education, and more importantly, one of the leading financial backers of Democrats and liberal causes in Colorado. Many have pointed out the irony of Polis's spending money to establish a public policy of prohibiting the use of money to influence public policy.
Democrats in Colorado have been divided by Amendment 41 before and after its enactment on the lines described above. Democratic members of the Colorado General Assembly have taken differing sides on how to implement the measure since it has been passed.
Some Colorado political observers have hypothesized that Jared Polis supported the measure in an effort to advance his fortunes in the upcoming open Congressional race in Congressional District 2 (Boulder) which incumbent Democrat Mark Udall is vacating to run for the U.S. Senate in 2008. Those observers see the battle over Amendment 41 as a proxy fight between Polis supporters and those who did not want Polis to have a major accomplishment going into the 2008 Congressional election. Other observers discount this political interpretation of the struggle and see this as a dispute over legal interpretation and process issues. Polis won a three-way primary battle over former Colorado Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald and environmental activist Will Shafroth on August 12, 2008.
Since Amendment 41 was adopted, the Republican caucuses in the state house and state senate, both of which are controlled by Democrats, have largely taking a position embracing strict enforcement of Amendment 41, despite a history of opposing measures proposed by Common Cause. Republicans have generally argued that the Amendment 41 should be given the strict interpretation urged by Amendment 41 opponents, and that legislation to weaken this strict interpretation should not be adopted.
The Amendment 41 debate has aroused only limited interest for voters who are not governmental employees and do not follow politics in Colorado closely.
Read more about this topic: Colorado Amendment 41 (2006)
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“I have come to the conclusion that the closer people are to what may be called the front lines of government ... the easier it is to see the immediate underbrush, the individual tree trunks of the moment, and to forget the nobility the usefulness and the wide extent of the forest itself.... They forget that politics after all is only an instrument through which to achieve Government.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)