When I first ran for the Colorado Legislature in 1978, I was buried under a pile of issue surveys and questionnaires. Relatively unfamiliar to voters in my district at the time, I laboriously responded to these interrogatives, many of which ran to as many as 30 pages. It was evident that the most responsible reply to the bulk of the questions should have been, “It depends.”

Whether you are willing to consider a tax increase depends on economic circumstances, the purpose for the additional expenditure and the cost/benefit trade-off for taxpayers. A candidate’s responses rarely provide better information to voters at large, but are used to assure the members of a narrow faction that you will either provide a reliable “yes” vote on their concerns, or, alternatively, alerts them to the probability that yours will be a “no” vote. There is a not-so-subtle element of intellectual blackmail inherent to this process. Nonetheless, it has become an integral part of our political process for partisans across the political spectrum.

While I was serving a sentence as Denver Democratic Party chair in 1984, the Colorado AFL-CIO announced it would not support state Rep. Charlie Brown for re-election because he had failed to vote with them 100 percent of the time. Required to serve as campaign referee and under an obligation to defend the party’s candidate, who had successfully defeated a Republican incumbent to win his seat in southeast Denver, I commented, “A legislator who votes with any group all the time probably isn’t representing his or her constituents.”

As you might expect, not just labor, but interest groups of every stripe objected to this observation. None were interested in candidates who might exercise their best judgment, but instead preferred legislators who would smartly salute the partisan agenda they advocated. Charlie lost his seat, which would remain in Republican hands for nearly a decade. Why, you may ask, would any political organization prefer a candidate likely to oppose them 100 percent of the time in favor of one that supports them 85 percent of the time?

All this came to mind last week when it was reported that the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the largely Koch-funded conservative advocacy network, was asking Republican lawmakers to sign a pledge to protect TABOR. It’s hoped these pledges will bind the Senate majority in opposition to an effort to reclassify the hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund, rather than continuing as a tax that bumps the budget up against TABOR revenue limits.

There is ample reason to question the wisdom of this change. The mere fact that non-TABOR revenues have grown from 14 percent of the state budget, following voter approval in 1992, to nearly 40 percent today tells us there has been a fair amount of fiscal redefinition taking place beneath the gold dome. On the other hand, TABOR was not delivered to legislators on golden tablets etched by the trembling finger of a conservative god. In truth, it was drafted nearly 24 years ago by a loosely hinged California transplant enamored with the adoption of Proposition 13 in his home state. Nonetheless, there are ample escape valves built into TABOR for those seeking change — the most obvious being the ability to ask voters for approval. With virtually no evidence that voters are incapable of grasping the issue in dispute or the changes in Colorado’s economic circumstances, supporters presume they will reject the move and vote in favor of TABOR refunds.

Sooner or later, the systemic contradictions buried in the fiscal rules embedded in our state constitution will have to be unraveled at the ballot box. In the meanwhile, legislators will continue to be confronted with legislative scorecards that attempt to label them as loyal or traitorous to the priorities of specific interests. In many cases the test votes selected for these scorecards are chosen more for their capacity to divide issues along partisan lines than for their intrinsic importance.

What does a Colorado legislator’s position on the Keystone XL pipeline tell us about his or her personal commitment to environmental protections? We should not forget that even El Paso county voters approved a levy for open space and parks acquisition. Republicans are not necessarily slash and burn plunderers. Neither are Democrats uniformly spendthrifts. Once elected, incumbents are not as vulnerable to the bellyaching of partisan zealotry. It even becomes possible to explain to voters that you are refusing to return questionnaires, provide pledges or pay attention to scorecards as a matter of principle.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former state legislator. He can be reached at mnhwriter@msn.com