Thirty-Five Years Ago This Week: Starting out with no viable candidates to challenge Gov. Roy Romer earlier in the year, the Republican Party suddenly had its hands full with a bumper crop of candidates vying for the GOP’s nomination, including John Andrews, executive director of the Independence Institute.

Three weeks previously, Andrews had announced that he would run for lieutenant governor and then abruptly told the press that he had changed his mind and would run for governor instead.

Andrews joined former U.S. Rep. Mike Strang and Robin Heid, mostly known for his advocacy for legalized drugs, in the gubernatorial race. Colorado Springs Mayor Bob Issac had put his own candidacy “on hold.”

Andrews, an outspoken advocate for school choice, said that his gubernatorial campaign would be “a neighborhood campaign, a people’s campaign, a campaign about the real issues facing our state and the real strength we have to meet those issues when we pull together as freely choosing individuals.”

Andrews also advocated for tax ceilings, slowing spending in government, allowing parents greater control over schooling, upgrading public services through competitive contracting and term limits for state government officials.

“Romer’s popularity is very thin,” Andrews said. “By November it may vanish like the emperor’s new clothes.”

Andrews also told The Colorado Statesman that he’d been welcomed into the gubernatorial race by state Republican Party Chairman Bruce Benson and former party chair Dwight Hamilton.

But unlike Issac who expressed his reluctance to put the GOP through a divisive primary that he said would only help Romer, Andrews said that while he was a “party loyalist and not a spoiler,” he wouldn’t commit to dropping out of the race to avoid a primary if he didn’t get enough votes at the state assembly.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Andrews said.

Twenty-Five Years Ago: “The legislature made a wise decision when it defeated House Bill 00-1454,” said Susan Morrisey, executive director of the Colorado Tobacco Education and Prevention Alliance (CTEPA). “That measure would have crippled Colorado’s ability to address it’s tobacco problem.”

Under HB 00-1454 all decisions regarding the sale of Colorado’s tobacco settlement payments, including the percentage sold, how many years of payments are sold, and the minimum rate of return, would all have been made by a state-created corporation not subject to legislative oversight or final approval.

“House Bill 1454 would have sold off the rights to Colorado’s tobacco settlement payments to out-of-state investment bankers,” Morrisey said. “Under this measure, Colorado may have only received 30 cents on the dollar, or even less.

The bill’s fate was in doubt after failing the Senate Finance Committee and then being revived by the same committee but failing again on a 4-to-3 vote.

Morrisey told The Colorado Statesman that vital programs, which received a large percentage of their funding from tobacco settlement dollars, would have been under threat of massive shortfall if the bill had passed. Over the next 25 years Colorado was expected to receive an estimated $3.2 billion in settlement payments.

CTEPA did endorse SB 00-71 which allocated 38% of settlement funds to a trust, 15% to tobacco education programs, 19% to Gov. Bill Owens’ Read to Achieve Program, $10 million to the Children’s Basic Health Plan, and the remaining to a home nurse program, community care grants and the Colorado State Veterans Trust Fund.

Colorado became the ninth U.S. state to defeat a securitization bill for tobacco settlement funds.

Rachael Wright is the author of several novels including The Twins of Strathnaver, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette.