Twenty Years Ago This Week: For nearly a decade, Ginnie Kontnik had served as U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell’s chief of staff, so the abrupt announcement that her role in Campbell’s office would be changing to focus on appropriations — even though the senator already had a staffer dedicated to appropriations matters — caused rumors to blossom throughout the political grapevine.

Kontnik was widely respected and was viewed in both Republican Party circles and in Washington D.C. as the lynchpin to Campbell’s success.

“No one was ousted,” wrote Campbell’s spokesman Camden Hubbard in a statement to the press after the news broke. “It was simply a change in personnel matters. Ginnie just has a slightly different position. She will retain the title of chief of staff as well as her salary but will concentrate on appropriation(s), as Sen. Campbell sits on the Appropriations Committee.”

News out of the state’s General Assembly was that debate over House Bill 04-1146, which would limit public officials and state legislators from receiving compensation for lobbying on behalf of an issue while in office, had forced state Reps. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, and Rob Fairbank, R-Littleton, to recuse themselves from the House State Affairs Committee vote. Both lawmakers had been involved in lobbying efforts unnamed in the news report.

“The committee hearing was a perfect case in point,” said Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs. “Lawmakers can’t do the people’s work when their own financial interests are on the line.”

Rep. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, called for a super-motion to move the bill immediately to the floor without closing comments, but his motion was defeated and the bill was postponed indefinitely.

Ten Years Ago: On November 27, 2013, Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, resigned her seat rather than face potentially losing a recall election due to her support of House Bill 03-1226, which would have banned concealed-carry weapons on college campuses.

Speaking at a Colorado Reproductive Freedom Coalition meeting, Hudak lauded the great strides in women’s rights that had been made in the recent decades. But Hudak argued that sexism was alive and well and had been the primary factor behind her decision to resign her senate seat.

At a Senate State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee hearing on he bill the year before, a rape survivor had told legislators that if she had been permitted to use her concealed-carry permit and gun on her college campus, the assault might have ended differently. But Hudak had disagreed on record and quoted statistics from the Colorado Coalition against Gun Violence that for every one woman who used a handgun to kill someone in self-defense, 83 were murdered by them.

Hudak then told the survivor that, “…chances are that if you would have had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you and possibly use it against you.”

Made a pariah nationally, with threats to her and her daughter’s safety, and now facing the recall election over opponents to the bill, Hudak said she was made to realize “that women in politics still face a difficult road.”

Arguing that former state Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, who was also recalled over a similar stance on gun-control legislation had not received hateful messages like those that she and Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo, had endured, Hudak said she felt the writing was on the wall for her.

Although she was still coming to terms with the vitriol of the last year, Hudak said we was beyond proud of her work in the legislature.

“Serving in the state senate was a culmination of all the work I’ve done over the years for women’s equality,” Hudak said.

During her five years in the state senate, Hudak had championed the parents rights of rape victim’s bill and legislation preventing the shackling of pregnant women prisoners when they are in labor.

“Can you believe I had to explain … to the Department of Corrections that women in labor would not be a risk for running away?” Hudak quipped. “That you didn’t have to chain her to the bed? And even if she tried to run, which she wouldn’t, she could be easily caught.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.