Thirty Years Ago This Week: Two Republican Colorado Springs state representatives, Charlie Duke and Rep. Tom Ratterree, were locked in a fierce competition as they sought exiting Sen. Mike Bird’s seat. During the heated race, the concept of “opposition research” was stretched to its extremes, drawing questions over Ratterree’s campaign ethics.

At a planned legislative briefing to the Cattleman’s Association at the Hilton Hotel in Colorado Springs, Duke launched into an attack of Ratteree’s voting record and his rating by the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.

Visibly rattled, Ratterree told the audience he was thoroughly caught off guard by Duke’s aggressive edge. “The gloves are off,” Ratterree said. “I appreciate that, Charlie.”

For weeks both campaigns had videotaped each other at nearly every event the candidates attended. Allegedly, Ratterree had even been overheard saying that he was going to buy audio tape recorders for teenage Republicans to follow and record Duke everywhere he spoke.

The evening following the Cattleman Association’s event, Duke routinely flipped through the messages on his home answering machine and, in one of the messages, was surprised to hear the voice of his campaign manager, Joyce Campbell, having a muffled conversation accompanied by the sound of toilets flushing.

Concerned, Duke brought the recording to Campbell and had her listen to it. She confirmed the voice was indeed hers and was a conversation she had in the bathroom of the Hilton Hotel.

“I was shocked,” Campbell told The Colorado Statesman.

She and Duke agreed that only Ratterree would have the motive to tape such a mundane conversation and then use it to try to intimidate them.

“We’d heard he planned to bug us but I didn’t see any teenagers in the ladies room,” Campbell said. “Maybe the woman who taped the conversation was Ratterree in drag.”

But when approached by reporters with the allegations, Ratterree laughed off the entire scenario, but didn’t necessarily deny the strange incident.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of this,” Ratterree said. “Are they paranoid? Paranoia obviously exists in that camp. If things continue like last Saturday at the Cattleman’s, I might start taping bathroom conversations. Campbell and Duke took the gloves off for sure. I felt ambushed. I lost all regard and respect for those two people.”

Twenty Years Ago: Sean Tonner, campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, recounted in casual conversation with reporters his evening a few weeks previously when he first saw the campaign finance report for Rutt Bridges, one of the Democrats vying to challenge Campbell.

Bridges had only recently announced his campaign for U.S. Senate, but Tonner said that Bridges’ campaign had very little cash on hand – too little for a serious U.S. Senate candidate. As a result, Tonner told reporters he was giddily imagining the prospect of a Cambell-Bridges race.

But a little after 7 a.m. the next day, it was quickly learned that Campbell had phoned Bridges to inform him that “he was backing out.”

“He was just tired,” Tonner told The Statesman. “The prospect of flying back and forth to Washington for six more years was daunting.”

Campbell, who was 70 at the time, had already been hospitalized twice for chest pains stemming from chronic stress. And there had been scandal enough in his senatorial office when his chief of staff acknowledged that she’d accepted a kickback. The matter had been turned over to the Senate Ethics Committee, but Colorado Democrats were pushing for an official Justice Department probe.

“Sen. Campbell was arguably the most popular politician Colorado has had,” Tonner said.

The Colorado GOP immediately pivoted and many were looking to Gov. Bill Owens as the most logical successor but at a press conference in his Capitol office Owens announced that he would stay put. He cited family reasons along with a strong desire to oversee the unfinished business of the state.

“To be honest, I’m disappointed,” said Chris Gates, chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party. “I think it would have been good for Colorado’s voters to have A-list candidates from both parties. But now it looks like it’ll be our A-list, Ken Salazar, against their B-list.”

Bridges would soon suspend his campaign to throw his support behind former Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar.

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.