Forty Years Ago This Week: Betty Rendel, president of the National Federation of Republican Women, traveled to Denver to personally check in on preparations for the national convention, which was rapidly approaching in September.

“The future of today’s more educated and highly trained young woman in the political arena is brighter than ever,” Rendel told reporters. “In fact, politics hold tremendous promise for a young woman today.”

Rendel argued that the greatest disadvantage women candidates for public office had faced in previous years was a reluctance to ask for money.

“But they’re getting over that,” Rendel told the Colorado Statesman. “They’re learning how to go out and ask for the money that they need. And men are willing to give to women candidates.”

The bias that women should be at home taking care of children was slowly slipping away, Rendel said, and women were, in her opinion, realizing that they could hold office as well as be a wife and mother.

“One of the best public offices for a young woman with children is being mayor. It’s a housekeeping-type office,” Rendel said, “with a crisis every minute. Women are well trained for that type of situation.”

Rendel admitted that there weren’t enough well-trained women in the public sphere to expect a woman president “in the near future, but I’m sure there will be a woman vice president soon.”

In other news, state Rep. David Skaggs, D-Boulder, said he was thoroughly exhausted after having waded through over 1,100 bills so far that legislative session. Many of his colleagues felt his pain with 41 other members of the House joining with him to co-sponsor a resolution limiting members to each be prime sponsor of just eight bills per session.

“It is time for some self-discipline to be exercised,” Skaggs said. “Unnecessary bills waste so much time.”

Skaggs told Statesman reporters that under the current rules, legislators could introduce an unlimited number of bills before the session began and then six more bills once the session started.

“The flood of bills coming onto the floor in the last two weeks – many of them trivial – has frustrated everybody,” Skaggs said. “The number of legislators who support my resolution reflects this frustration.”

According to Skaggs’ estimate, the 8-bill limit would save the state up to $500,000 a year in printing and staffing costs.

An anonymous insider quipped that “if there is a limit to the number of bills, certain committee chairmen won’t be able to kill bills in committee and say that there just wasn’t time to give them a hearing.”

Fifteen Years Ago: At the start of the special session on growth control, Gov. Bill Owens gave a “pep talk” to legislators – calling for “cooperation and compromise” and urging both parties to come up with a solution. There was no hiding that the message was significantly directed at Senate President Stan Matsunaka, D-Loveland, had refused to budge on growth control during the regular session and was seen as the chief reason the special session had been called.

“Let’s pass something we can agree on,” Owens said. “The partisan rhetoric can wait until next year.”

But mere minutes after Owens spoke, Matsunaka stood at his microphone in the Senate chamber and reaffirmed his dedication to binding urban service areas and preserving rural land uses outside cities.

“If we can’t pass legislation that will protect Colorado, then we sure as hell can make sure that nothing passes that will make it worse,” Matsunaka said.

Leaders of both parties had called for growth control legislation to avert another citizens’ initiative, but it wasn’t likely to happen as Democrats maintained a 18-17 majority in the Senate and Republicans a 38-27 hold on the House.

“We don’t want to pass one growth control law because we’re afraid of an initiative,” Matsunaka said.

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.