Healing the wounds: Ritter faces battle of perception
By Charles Ashby 
| July 14, 2009 | 5:01 AM
Gov. Bill Ritter, left, speaks with reporter Charles Ashby at the state Capitol. (RMI photo by Matthew Roberts)
With the 2010 governor’s race beginning to gear up, the Rocky Mountain Independent is running a two-part analysis exploring Democratic incumbent Bill Ritter’s prospects for a second term. Part two examines how Ritter must heal wounds created in his first term, not only with supporters who feel betrayed, but also with the powerful oil and gas industry.
When Bill Ritter first jumped onto the campaign trail for Colorado governor four years ago, his advisers told him not to make climate change and a green energy economy central to his campaign.
Too obviously Democrat, and it just won’t appeal to voters.
But Ritter, who knew little more than how to be a prosecutor in those days, was determined to push it, saying that not only did it make sense for the environment, but also it would produce jobs and help national security by saving the country from having to import foreign oil from hostile nations.
“I had a group of consultants who said to me, ‘Your first commercial has to be about being tough on crime because they’re attacking you for your plea-bargaining record,’ ” Ritter recounted. “I said we’re not going to make a commercial about that to start with. I did that for 20 years. I have a record about being tough on crime. We’re going to go out in a wheat field. We’re going to film a commercial that has to do with wind farms.”
It’s often said that perception is politics, and right now some are perceiving Ritter as being vulnerable as he enters his bid for re-election. The governor has vetoed labor union bills that staunch supporters wanted desperately, he appointed an unknown to the U.S. Senate, and he’s been blamed for causing the oil and gas industry to close drilling rigs and eliminate jobs.
Ritter’s push for a new energy economy did work as a campaign strategy, but it has caused him numerous headaches from Republicans and the oil and gas industry, who immediately assumed that the policy meant he didn’t like fossil fuels and was bent on ending all drilling.
That attitude was reinforced two years ago when Ritter signed legislation that remade the state agency that oversees the industry and gave them marching orders to rewrite regulations that protected the environment.
While all of that made the environmental community happy, it made him enemy No. 1 for the industry.
He further upset the industry last year when he backed Amendment 58, which would have increased the tax they pay for the oil and natural gas they pull out of the ground. The industry spent millions of dollars to defeat it.
Ritter said that much of that industry opposition came because his political opponents made the wrong assumptions about his intentions. He said he isn’t opposed to fossil fuels but that the time has come for the U.S. to move away from it, and that the industry needs to get on board with that.
“Too many people viewed it as a zero-sum game, that any gain on the part of renewable energy was going to hurt the coal producers or hurt the oil producers,” he said. “This is not a zero-sum game. People are going to have to focus on their greenhouse gas emissions. If you marry it to a climate policy, it’s not a zero-sum game. It just depends on how clean you can be.”
Fallout in midterm elections
Regardless, the conflict did shorten the governor’s coattails during Colorado’s midterm elections last year. Like his soured relationship with labor unions, the governor still mourns the loss of one of his best supporters in the legislature, Rep. Bernie Buescher, who failed in his re-election bid, in part, because of Ritter.
Buescher is a Democrat from Mesa County — a traditionally Republican stronghold where, coincidentally, Ritter’s likely re-election opponents, former congressman Scott McInnis or Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, are from.
Even though Buescher, whom Ritter later named secretary of state, was the heir-apparent to be speaker of the House — one of the post powerful positions in the legislature — he lost the race to newcomer Laura Bradford. Political groups repeatedly pegged Buescher to Ritter as if the two were joined at the hip.
Although the race became something of a referendum against Ritter, Buescher puts much of the blame on Grand Junction visits by GOP presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, who energized the Republican base in the county. Still, he said there was some fallout.
“I was successful in the legislature by being nonpartisan, but it became a partisan year,” Buescher said. “Whenever one party controls the governor and both houses, in an area where the predominate politics is on the other side, you get dynamics that I found very, very difficult in my re-election.”
Ritter also has been criticized for not telling people what he thinks about bills, vetoing them rather than giving lawmakers a chance to alter them to his liking. But Buescher defends him on that score, too.
He said that former GOP Gov. Bill Owens was no different.
“My first two years in the legislature, I was constantly amazed, and sometimes upset, about how we could not find out what Bill Owens’ position was on bills,” Buescher said. “They would give you only the softest comment of, ‘We have concerns about this bill,’ or ‘We like this idea.’ He would never say he’d sign it or veto it. I heard that comment more often from Republicans. I don’t see this governor having played those cards differently than Owens did.”
Stars aligned for Ritter in 2006
John Straayer, political science professor at Colorado State University, said he would put his money on Ritter winning re-election, barring anything major hurting his chances over the next year. But he said much depends on whether the governor heals some of the wounds he has created during his first term.
In addition to the oil and gas people, labor unions aren’t really happy with Ritter because of vetoes he has issued since taking office. On top of that, if Republicans can come up with a solid candidate next year, the governor likely won’t get the 56 percent of the vote he won in 2006.
That year, Ritter had no voting record on major issues, which meant there was little for negative campaigners to draw on as fodder for their ads. As a Denver district attorney, the best his opponents could find were bills he supported through the legislature, none of which were controversial enough to merit notice.
Additionally, he faced an opponent who ran a fault-ridden campaign. Bob Beauprez, a congressman from the 7th Congressional District, ran into trouble at just about every turn, even getting bitten by some negative campaigning that he tried to do about Ritter’s plea bargaining of illegal immigrants. As it turned out, the information for that campaign came to him illegally, and it quickly hurt his own race.
Ritter can’t count on that happening again.
“It will be a spirited race, but you’re still talking about somebody who’ll come in with a substantial name recognition deficit, even if it’s McInnis,” Straayer said. “The Republican Party still suffers a little bit from being a damaged brand, and they’re still divided.
“On Ritter’s side, some of the groups that supported him — labor, environmental groups — may come into it with less enthusiasm, but you only have two alternatives when you go to the polls. To argue that, for labor and the environmentalists, that a Republican option is going to be preferable, I question that.”
But it could hurt Ritter’s fundraising and voter turnout.
The results of next year’s election also will depend on the state of the economy, something Ritter has little to say about. He and the Democratic majority in the House and Senate have touted measures that they’ve passed to help, but ultimately the economy is tied to national issues that a single governor has little control over, Straayer said.
“If the Republicans and others in the ‘Tea Party’ world are successful in riling up the voters for what they’re doing nationally with the stimulus funding, a little bit of that could rub off negatively against Democrats across the board,” he said. “But I’m not sure that Ritter’s going to get blamed for the economy tanking. Some of the voter punishment that they meted out to the Republicans will dissipate a little bit, but a lot of it is still there.”
For the most part, the governor dismissed his detractors, saying that you can’t make a decision without upsetting someone somewhere. He said he hopes voters will look at his complete record, and not just pick and choose the issues they want to get excited about, either for or against him.
“I know enough about this business to know it is a business full of critics,” Ritter said. “The prerequisite for running is you have to have such a strong feeling in your stomach that this is the right thing to do. You won’t survive if you don’t have it.
“In 2005, when I actually announced, there were several people who were named as likely opponents. Over time, we just kept running our business our way. I wound up not even having a primary, in spite of all that noise. That’s why it’s so important to have it here in your gut because if you have it here, that other stuff is just noise.”
RELATED:
Part one of this story: Tipping Point? Has Ritter pushed Dems too far away?
Ritter video interview, part one: the “new energy economy”
Ritter video interview, part two: the fiscal crisis
bill ritter, campaign, colorado, democrat, governor, new energy economy, oil and gas, politics, republican
