Thirty Years Ago This Week: The disruptions caused by pro-gun activists at two of Democratic U.S. Rep. David Skaggs’s, CD2, town hall meetings held at Wheat Ridge and Northglenn were so concerning that uniformed police were deemed necessary by Skaggs’ staff at future events, “for everyone’s protection.”

Skaggs had introduced legislation that would require parental consent before juveniles could purchase a firearm and parental supervision when firearms were used with few exceptions.

Skaggs’s bill had received the vociferous support from 12 of Colorado’s police chiefs, but there was a very strong headwind headed his way.

Ninety minutes into the town hall meeting in Wheat Ridge, Skaggs was reportedly jeered by a crowd of more than 200 pro-gun supporters. The “wild” town hall had been recorded by a supporter of Republican congressional candidate Sharon Klusman.

Several Republican opponents expressed surprise at Skaggs being escorted out of the event by police officers and asked who was footing the bill for the congressman’s protection.

“After the first town hall meeting, the police chief recommended that we have people there in case anything happened,” said Skaggs’ press secretary Brooke Anderson. “The congressman’s juvenile crime bill brought out a lot of opposition. The decision to have uniformed police present at the meeting was for everyone’s protection. People came up to the staff and said that they felt personally unsafe because of the volatile participants at the meeting.”

In contrast, a town hall in Boulder, which drew nearly 400 people, whether due to the subject matter — issues in health care — the presence of uniformed police, or the city it was hosted in — went smoothly.

Twenty Years Ago: Colorado Republican Party Chairman Ted Halaby told The Colorado Statesman that there was an “under the radar operation” and a “cynical and super secret plot” underway to siphon votes from Republican candidates.

Halaby claimed that the person behind the operation was Rutt Bridges, former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate. A company in Colorado Springs, Kennedy Enterprises, had collected signatures for petitions to form two new parties; the “Pro Life Party” and the “Gun Owners’ Rights Party.”

Halaby further claimed that Bridges’s partner in the endeavor was Scott Lamm, son of Gov. Dick Lamm, who Bridges had paid $210,000 to gather signatures in 2003.

“We have now discovered that there is a prior link between Scott Lamm and multi-millionaire Rutt Bridges,” Halaby said, “to dramatically alter Colorado’s election landscape by wiping out our longstanding caucus system.”

When asked by reporters, Dan Kennedy of Kennedy Enterprises told The Statesman that his firm had contracted with Lamm Consulting to do the petition drive but said that a “professional relationship” prevented him from disclosing the identity of his clients.

Bridges and Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Chris Gates vehemently denied being part of any scheme to draw votes away from Republican candidates.

But after several weeks of sleuthing The Statesman ascertained that there were no conservative groups behind the petition gathering. The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the Colorado Right to Life Party, the Christian Coalition and the Colorado Shooting Association all denied any knowledge of the entire “operation.”

Not long after, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Elections Division issued a “statement of insufficiency” regarding the petitions submitted to qualify “The Pro Life Party” and the “Gun Owners’ Rights Party” as official minor political parties.

According to John Sackett, the attorney representing both parties, several thousand signatures had been rejected as invalid and, as a result, both petitions fell slightly short of the mandated 10,000 signature threshold.

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.