Ten Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Gov. Bill Owens and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey agreed that Texas was a great state but, beyond that, clashed over the wisdom of Referendum C, finding little common ground. Armey, the Republican head of FreedomWorks, was in town to spark a looming battle over ideology among conservatives over the best way to fix the ailing economy — more budget cuts were on deck in Colorado — by drawing the line on any tax increases. Owens, who helped craft a compromise with Democratic legislators, said he was a strong proponent of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, noting that the constitutional amendment included a provision allowing voters to over-ride the automatic revenue limits, known as “Debrucing,” after TABOR author Douglas Bruce. And that’s just what Referendum C was meant to do, giving the state a five-year hiatus from revenue caps and allowing it to rebound after years of a depressed economy. “A lot of people have spent the last 10 years celebrating TABOR as a great idea, including your governor,” Armey said at a Capitol press conference. “Now all of a sudden, we see that here in your great state of Colorado there have been folks drinking ‘backsliders’ wine, it seems, by the gallon.” The real culprit, Armey said, was Amendment 23, which siphoned off lean revenue for education. The state ought to be allowed to benefit from an expanding economy and recoup some of the losses, Owens said during a Channel 12 debate between the two. That didn’t convince Armey. “Once you let the government learn a bad habit,” he said, “they’ll repeat the bad habit.” Owens countered that Armey was used to borrowing, or “printing,” money when the federal government needed extra, but states don’t have that option. …

… “Slam it, smoke it, shoot!” read the headline for a story about the Independence Institute’s third annual Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms party at the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club out on the plains. Institute president Jon Caldara described the party as “a celebration of all the things that government would like to take away: alcohol, tobacco, firearms.” Conservatives could enjoy those pleasures while showing “the nannyist Left that there are people out there who control their own lives.” He postulated that liberals were doing some “sensitivity training” while the party was going on. It wasn’t just Republicans or Libertarians at the event — state Sen. Lois Tochtrop, an Adams County Democrat, did some damage to the clay pigeons, but it appeared that U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, sporting a “USA Border Patrol” cap, was perhaps the most comfortable with a shotgun. “I watched Congressman Tancredo blast seven out of the 10 sporting clays,” Independence Institute fellow Ari Armstrong observed. “Tancredo told me, ‘It gets you kind of excited. You think it’s going to be a great day.’” There was plenty of interest in Tancredo’s recent trip to New Hampshire, where he was reportedly testing the waters for a 2008 presidential run. …

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo had one of the best records shooting clay pigeons at the Independence Institute’s Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms party in July 2005.

Colorado Statesman archives

Thirty Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … Democrats were charting a course to the year 2000 in a series of meetings around the state. “It’s time to get the special interest issue off our backs and onto theirs,” said House Minority Leader David Skaggs, a Boulder Democrat. “A clear, concise and appealing message is what we need,” concluded consultant Rick Reitter. He lamented that Democrats would never catch up to Republicans when it came to fundraising but said the party needed to remember a maxim of U.S. Sen. Gary Hart: “Bigger isn’t better. Better is better.” State Treasurer Roy Romer, who was considering a campaign for governor in the 1986 election, said the party needs to “imagine itself as the party of frugality and efficiency.” Ten years ago, he noted, the treasurer’s office had 17 employees and he’d whittled that down to 16. “It can be done,” he said. U.S. Rep. Tim Wirth, a potential candidate for Hart’s seat in the next year’s election, said the problems with the Democratic Party started a decade earlier when the party concentrated too much on how to divide the economic pie “and not enough on how to make the pie grow.” …

… Furniture magnate Jake Jabs played host to some 50 friends for an afternoon of volleyball, swimming, tennis and, of course, a discussion about his possible run for the Senate seat held by Hart, which was looking more and more likely to be an open seat. Whoever can raise the most money and use it to buy TV ads will win the campaign, said Jabs, no stranger to the power of TV ads. He pledged to run his Senate campaign like a business. “I could have spent $60,000 on a poll and an office and computer, etc.,” he said. “But all I have to do is read the polls out there. My name ID is the same as Ken Kramer and higher than Hank Brown.” Jabs said he’d bring a strong business sense to the Senate, too, if he ran, telling a story about one of his American Furniture Warehouse trucks facing a $7,800 fine in Arizona for breaking a law Jabs hadn’t even known existed. “We could do with less laws and regulations,” he proclaimed.

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com