Fifteen Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … The waiting game had started as returns were still in dispute and a recount was starting in Florida, but in Colorado the results were clear: Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush had won the state’s eight electoral votes over Vice President Al Gore, while Democrats had taken control of the state Senate for the first time in 40 years. A trio of pundits — pollster Floyd Ciruli, former U.S. Sen. And current president of the University of Northern Colorado Hank Brown and former Gov. Dick Lamm — regaled a lunch crowd at the Denver Press Club with their take on the still-unsettled election. “I predict total war in Washington for the next two years,” Ciruli declared. “There is no mandate for anybody,” he said, adding that both sides would seek wedge issues to break out of the deadlock. The power of political parties was on the wane, all three agreed. In Colorado, Brown pointed out, at least four Republican legislative candidates had lost in districts where the GOP held a “huge edge” among registered voters. The passage of Amendment 23, guaranteeing increased funding for education, would have a dramatic impact on Colorado, Brown maintained. Earmarking a vast share of the budget for K-12 schools would hurt higher education, Brown prophesized. If the brewing recession got worse, funding for Medicaid and other welfare-type programs would have to rise, along with education spending, meaning state colleges and universities “would be left holding the bag” with big drops in funding while enrollment was rising. Ciruli said Gov. Bill Owens would benefit from the ouster of very conservative fellow Republicans, who had been blocking the governor’s more moderate agenda. The fact that Bush had endorsed Social Security reforms — long feared to be the untouchable “third rail” of American politics — and still had a chance at the presidency boded well, Lamm said. “There is less electricity in that third rail.” …

… “For the first time, there are more caucus members than I have children,” quipped state Sen. Bill Thiebaut, D-Pueblo, as Democrats celebrated picking up three seats in the upper chamber, enough to win an 18-17 majority. Thiebaut, who boasted 15 offspring in his brood, was elected majority leader, Stan Matsunaka of Loveland would be Senate president, and Ed Perlmutter of Golden won the title of Senate president pro tem. Terry Phillips of Boulder was named assistant majority leader and Denver’s Doug Linkhart would be caucus chair. “Unaccustomed to power,” Matsunaka assembled a dozen-member, bipartisan transition team headed by Colorado State University president Al Yates to help Democrats set an agenda in the Senate. The lone Republican on the panel was former state Sen. Al Meikeljohn, singled out for his commitment to education….

… Republicans, meanwhile, were bellyaching that Senate Democrats, led by outgoing Minority Leader Mike Feeley of Lakewood, had taken the majority with an unprecedented negative campaign. “The negative stuff hurt — absolutely,” said Sean Murphy, the state GOP’s executive director. “The Democrats’ mail was 100 percent negative, and they took a lot of liberty with the truth.” He cited a mailing aimed at state Rep. Penn Pfiffner, pretty much accusing the Lakewood Republican of being in favor of date rape because he’d voted against one bill establishing penalties for a date-rape drug without mentioning that he’d voted for a stronger version of the bill. Hogwash, Feeley said, arguing that Dems had won by recruiting the best candidates, training them on campaign techniques and requiring that they meet fundraising and voter-contact goals. “Our negative stuff wasn’t as nasty as theirs,” Murphy lamented. But Republicans, he added, had learned the hard way that negative campaigning works. “The Democrats ran a much better negative campaign. I’d have to tell them congratulations, and we’ll see you again in two years.”

Thirty-five Years Ago this week in The Colorado Statesman … U.S. Sen. Gary Hart and his Republican challenger, Secretary of State Mary Estill Buchanan, agreed about one thing just days before voters went to the polls: the other side was being mean. The Hart campaign complained that Buchanan’s media blitz, spearheaded by Walt Klein, unfairly attacked his credibility and integrity, with TV commercials wrongly portraying Hart as two-faced, saying one thing in Colorado and another in D.C. Buchanan’s team, likewise, was grousing that Hart’s TV commercials distorted her positions, accusing her of wanting to go to war in the Middle East over oil. Klein countered that there was hardly a difference between the candidates on the issue of military preparedness. Buchanan had portrayed herself as the victim — albeit one standing up against bullies — throughout the primary, winning a spot on the ballot by petition and snagging the nomination by a whisker. But now Hart was embracing the martyr’s mantle, too, The Statesman reported. “If you look at what’s happening, it’s Gary Hart who is being picked on,” said press secretary Kathy Bushkin. But Klein was leaning in rather than backing off, recalling that Hart had unseated Republican Peter Dominick six years earlier with similar attacks. One commercial vexing the Hart team showed an actor who resembled the lanky Westerner pushing a grocery cart while fuming about inflation and the high cost of food. What’s good for the goose, Klein cackled, pointing out that Hart had run similar attacks on Dominick, blaming him for 1974’s runaway prices. Not so, Bushkin countered, claiming her boss hadn’t even mentioned Dominick after the primary. Klein begged to differ, saying his memory was intact and that Hart had hammered Dominick relentlessly on something called the milk fund scandal. “[N]ow he’s whining and crying and saying that Buchanan is picking on him. He hasn’t taken exception to one single fact in regard to our commercials. He’s running ads that his opponent is a warmonger … and then he wants Buchanan to stop picking on him? He’s desperate,” Klein jeered. “He’s running around like a wounded elephant.” Bushkin ticked off more complaints about Buchanan ads, but Klein stood firm. “Hart is an almost paranoid political figure. He’s very sensitive about criticism, and he shouldn’t be in politics if he’s that sensitive.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com