Thirty-Five Years Ago This Week: Republican candidate Jason Lewis started off the Northglenn Rotary Club’s 2nd Congressional District debate with sweeping promises of a balanced budget, term limits, and enactment of the death penalty. His opponent, incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. David Skaggs, slipped into the event and ended up apologizing for being late. He’d just come from a meeting about Denver’s strategy to lure a $250 million branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to the vacant Stapleton Airport, he told the audience.

“It’s one of the few ideas I’ve had that just about everybody thinks is a good one,” Skaggs said with a wry smile.

With the practiced ease of a professional, Skaggs then guided the audience through a discussion of the crisis brewing in the Middle East. “The Kuwait Invasion is a quick reminder that the world remains a dangerous place,” Skaggs said. “It’s important for the citizens of this nation to support President Bush in this difficult, difficult situation.”

Skaggs also noted that after the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was investigated by the FBI and EPA for alleged environmental violations, he was instrumental in getting the plant temporarily shut down.

“We have to take advantage of the closure to get the safety job done right,” Skaggs said. “Then, after we’ve given events in the Middle East time to settle, we can look at what nuclear weapons we need now.”

Prior to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, Skaggs had criticized the massive reductions in defense spending.

“This whole wake-up call should serve as a warning that the road to disarmament is not as easy as we believe,” Skaggs said. “There should be defense cuts, but they should be earmarked for outmoded weapon systems, and remaining money should be funneled into strategic nuclear modernization.”

The candidates then turned to the Second Amendment. Skaggs had voted in favor of the “Brady Bill,” which imposed a one-week waiting period after a firearms purchase so that the purchaser’s criminal and psychological records could be checked.

Lewis said that people felt fine to mess around with the Second Amendment, but wouldn’t touch the First Amendment.

“I’m hesitant to dilute any amendment,” Lewis said. “Washington D.C. has the strictest gun control laws in the country, yet it also happens to be the murder capital of the nation.”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: “If Colorado voters approve Amendment 23 this November, the new State Education Fund it creates will ensure a fiscal train wreck for the state when the economy inevitably cools down,” warned State Treasurer Mike Coffman.

Coffman explained that during an economic boom the SEF would act like a tax for Coloradans of at least $339 million per year and provided no guarantees that the fund would be used for the textbooks, computers, reduced class sizes, additional teachers or higher salaries promised by the supporters of the amendment.

While Amendment 23 promised much, Coffman argued it in fact only would guarantee that the General Assembly increase the general fund appropriation for public school by at least 5% each year, regardless of actual inflation and student population. Secondly, the Legislature would transfer 7.2% of the state annual income tax revenues, and more in subsequent years, in perpetuity.

“The state will have to deposit the estimated $339 million in the fund even in years when there is no TABOR surplus,” Coffman said. “In those years … the legislature will have to meet this obligation by taking the $339 million … from other legislative programs, such and corrections, transportation, higher education and health care programs.”

Coffman predicted that by forcing the state to reduce spending in every other sector, Amendment 23 would create “a fiscal and operational crisis as it makes the legislature slash just about every other portion of the budget.”

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 columnist to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Denver Gazette.