But no one can say House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, did not prove once and for all how much power the Speaker can wield. If the session had a theme, that was it.

House Speaker Frank McNulty holding forth on the House floor. (Tomasic)

When Colorado progressives look back on this legislature, they see both success and failure, heroes and villains.

“This was the definition of failed leadership,” said ProgressNow Colorado Executive Director Joanne Kron about McNulty’s time as Speaker.

“This year, progressives in the Colorado legislature had many successes fighting for Colorado jobs, our public health and environment, and advancing equality that we can all be proud of,” said Kron. “Unfortunately, right-wing extremists in both chambers obstructed progressive jobs and equality goals whenever they could, and a lot of good bills died as needless political fodder.”

ProgressNow was one of several Colorado organizations to issue legislative report cards or similar end-of-session commentary.

Ellen Dumm, executive director of Campaign for a Strong Colorado, was equally blunt in her assessment of McNulty.

“Obviously, the failure of leadership is the big take home. The failure of leadership in the House is the story. They just lost control of their caucus. When was the last time in Colorado that an issue that had broad bipartisan support didn’t reach the floor for a vote?

“It bodes ill for Republicans. Not only did they get outmaneuvered on reapportionment, but leadership proved completely out of touch with Colorado. It would be quite the come down for McNulty to sit in the minority next year. I’m not sure his own caucus would vote him minority leader. It’s going to be a tough year for Frank,” she said.

State Democratic Party Chair Rick Palacio said the product of lots of good work and cooperation was big-footed by McNulty’s end-of-session bad faith.

“2012 was a tale of two sessions, and not just because Governor Hickenlooper had to call a second one to complete unfinished business,” he said. “Many hardworking legislators did a lot to jump start Colorado’s economy. Linda Newell’s film incentives bill is a great example of creative ideas that can bring new activity to our state. Betty Boyd, Pat Steadman, and Claire Levy did a remarkable job of advocating for diverse needs while respecting a bipartisan process in writing our state budget. Our legislators deserve a lot of credit for their hard work.

“Unfortunately, much of this work was obscured by the extreme lengths Frank McNulty went to in order to block civil unions. His willingness to inflict so much collateral damage to the state for the sake of his political base is a dark mark on public service. With hard work, Democrats will make sure that Frank McNulty never has another chance to manipulate the legislative process to stop important progress for Colorado.”

Jobs and the economy

At the kick-off of the session, pols from both parties and both chambers said this legislature would be all about jobs. It didn’t turn out that way, dominated as it was by the civil unions showdown, but some progress was made.

the Skills for Jobs Act, sponsored by Sen. Linda Newell, D-Littleton, and Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Greenwood Village, will set up a new collaborative relationship between the state’s Departments of Labor and Higher Education to help ensure that skills being taught in Colorado colleges line up with the needs of Colorado employers.

HB12-1272, sponsored by Rep. Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, and Rep. Robert Ramirez, R-Westminster, provides $8 million for additional unemployment benefits for people interested in acquiring new job skills.

Other passed jobs bills include one to encourage space travel and one to encourage filming in Colorado.

Other jobs bills, though, went nowhere. One bill, HB12-1129, which would have provided $300,000 to leverage matching funds and strengthen Colorado’s existing network of Small Business Development Centers made it through one House committee before being killed by another.

Crime and punishment

Hickenlooper last month signed legislation that limits the ability of Colorado prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults.

“This legislation will save some kids who make a bad choice in their youth from a lifetime of ostracism and limited opportunity. [Gov. Hickenlooper] was under pressure to veto this bill, but progressives are grateful he didn’t,” said Kron.

Another bill, sponsored by Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, makes automobile hit-and-runs a Class 4 felony, which carries the same penalties as DUI. Prior to this, impaired drivers actually had an incentive not to stop after causing as accident. No longer.

Health Care

If you have health insurance and you’ve ever had a major procedure or spent extended time in the hospital, you may have received mathematically baffling statements that read something like this:

Cost: $10,000
Amount paid by insurance: $2,000
Amount due from patient: $200

Fact is, insurance companies negotiate much lower prices for procedures than they actually cost and much lower than an individual uninsured consumer ever could.

A bill passed this year will change that for at least some patients.

SB12-134 would limit the amount that low-income uninsured patients (250 percent of Federal Poverty Level or below) would be required to pay hospitals not more than the lowest-negotiated rate paid by private insurers for the same services.

The bill would also require hospitals to notify patients about discount programs and charity that may be available and to help patients determine if they qualify.

A statement issued by The Colorado Center on Law and Policy was succinct:

The Colorado Center on Law and Policy, while fundamentally disappointed in the political gamesmanship that closed the 2012 regular legislative session, still regards the session as one with more advances for policies supporting the health, economic security and well being of low-income Coloradans than might have been expected in this election year.

In the realm of health care, Hillary Jorgensen, director of Colorado Progressive Action, said much of the good news came in the form of bills that were defeated.

“We were able to kill a number of bills that would have impacted Medicaid. SB12-085, Concerning Reduction of General Fund Expenditures, would have made deep cuts to state spending in Medicaid and SB12-032 would have forced the governor to ask for a Medicaid waiver, which would have thrown the program, and by extension the state’s entire health care system, into chaos. While these two bills were started in the Senate and had little hope of passing, it’s both disappointing and frustrating that in a session when the GOP caucus pledged to focus on jobs and the economy, they wasted their time with meaningless bills that would have caused a very real health care crisis for the state.

We were also able to kill HB12-1175, Concerning the Encouragement of State Agencies to Pursue Colorado Solutions in Lieu of Federal Regulations. While this bill’s impact would not have been limited to health care and the Colorado Health Benefits Exchange, it would have had a huge impact on both of those things and very well could have resulted in the end of federal funding for both the exchange and several health care programs. It’s just another disappointing example of time wasted playing partisan politics,” she wrote in an email.

The People

While the drama around civil unions was writ large, even that story was one told by the people involved as much as by the issue itself.

ProgressNow highlighted a number of winners and losers among legislators. If you’re a conservative, you might be able to just flip this list on its head.

Yet support for civil unions defied easy categorization: Sure liberals support more rights for more people, but so do many conservatives, who were motivated to support civil unions in the service of personal liberty and small government.

ProgressNow cited House Minority Leader and civil unions sponsor Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, as its No. 1 winner:

Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino had perhaps the hardest job at the Colorado Capitol this year, but he managed his caucus, and relations with the conservative one-seat majority, with patience and determination. Ferrandino drove the pro-jobs agenda from the House as the majority’s leadership faltered… Ferrandino’s tireless efforts are one reason why the state’s budget passed this year with near-unanimous approval–a truly rare event.

Dumm called out OneColorado for praise. “It’s just amazing how far they have taken civil unions and how quickly they’ve done it,” she said. “They have become a force to be reckoned with,” she said.

It may have been a handful of Republican women who stood the tallest in the eyes of Colorado progressives, though, by supporting civil unions even in the face of hard pressure from Speaker McNulty and other social-right warriors.

Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, cast the deciding vote in the House Judiciary Committee, sending civil unions on toward–but not quite to–the floor where the bill almost certainly would have passed had McNulty not pulled out all the stops to keep it from coming to a vote in regular session.

On every leg of its way not quite through the legislature, it was Republican women who stepped up to keep the civil unions bill moving. Of course, the bill also had unanimous Democratic support. From ProgressNow:

For the second year in a row, three brave Republican women in the Colorado Senate — Sens. Ellen Roberts, Nancy Spence, and Jean White — stood with their progressive colleagues to pass civil unions legislation for Colorado’s committed same-sex couples … someday it will be remembered that a few Republican women Senators were on the right side of history.

In the end, it all came down to Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, one of five Republicans on the “kill committee” that took a party line vote to keep the civil unions bill from reaching the floor for a full vote during special session. Coram was only one of five Republicans who could have broken ranks but he acknowledged having a gay son he was proud of and for whom he had every hope of success and equality.

After the vote, Coram’s son, Dee, did not sound so proud of his dad, whom he said missed an opportunity to be a leader.

Coram was hardly the only legislator this year to open himself to criticism. Republicans Greg Brophy, R-Wray, and Spencer Swalm, R-Centennial, tweeted themselves into trouble.

Brophy jumped on the short-lived anti-Sandra Fluke bandwagon just as it was crashing hard.

From ProgressNow:

This spring, Sen. Greg Brophy brought the “war on women” to our state, after publicly defending radio host Rush Limbaugh’s disparaging remarks about a law student who testified on Capitol Hill in Washington about contraceptive insurance coverage. Sen. Brophy actually told followers on Twitter that he too did not want to pay for “booze,” “spring break,” or birth control for the college student, Sandra Fluke of Georgetown University. Sen. Brophy’s antics had the opposite of their intended effect, motivating women to organize a large rally at the Capitol, and to get more politically involved in general to protect their basic rights.

Then, after ProgressNow had already issued its legislative wrap-up, Swalm made a late bid for the Twitter Hall of Shame, tweeting the writings of a man — Steve Sailer — who thinks all the GOP needs to do to be successful is get more votes from white men.

The Sailer essay had been posted at VDARE.com, a site run by Peter Brimelow. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers VDARE to be a white nationalist hate group.

Rep. Laura Bradford’s, R-Collbran, also grabbed the spotlight for an evening run-in with Denver’s Finest. ProgressNow:

Rep. Laura Bradford’s brush with the law after a “legislative happy hour,” and avoidance of arrest via an obscure law preventing the arrest of legislators during the session, turned into a major public embarrassment for the entire Colorado General Assembly. Although Rep. Bradford was subsequently “cleared” by Denver Police of asking for special treatment, the public was left to reconcile major questions about accountability for public officials with the fact that she was never charged or properly investigated. Lingering questions about what really happened that night were too much for Rep. Bradford’s constituents, and she is no longer running for reelection.

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Caught in that kind of mire on a few big bills, Colorado lawmakers nevertheless managed in some key cases to get out from under the rhetoric and posturing to solve problems in laudable bipartisan fashion.

Education

Early literacy, Senate Bill 1238

The new law revs up efforts to help struggling kindergarten to third grade students begin reading. The bill takes a refreshingly holistic approach to addressing the problem, adding reading programs at schools, involving parents in instruction, providing additional training for teachers and holding back students who need extra time to catch up.

Fair discipline in schools, Senate Bill 046

Lawmakers on the right and left came together to rework Columbine-era zero-tolerance school discipline rules, which leaned on law enforcement, threw lots of kids out of school and disproportionately affected minority students. The new law gives school authorities increased discretion and training to handle discipline on a case by case basis and it eliminates mandatory expulsions, except in cases that involve firearms. The bill also sets up procedures to improve reporting, so that patterns of discipline can be better examined and problems with enforcement better addressed.

Data in support of the bill showed that kids being expelled in the state in great numbers under the old rules were much more likely to drop out and end up adrift and in and out of criminal corrections facilities and programs.

Money for education

Big news was that for the first time in three years, since the national recession hit full force, legislators did not slash the education budget in Colorado. As the state economy evened out and tax revenues increased, lawmakers kept the k-12 budget at last year’s roughly $5.3 billion level.

But it wasn’t all good news on the education front. Fraught immigration politics killed one of the more popular bills introduced this session.

Undocumented student tuition, Senate Bill 015

Despite wide support among the public and among higher education boards and administrators on the left and the right, Colorado’s proposal to offer not-quite in-state tuition rates to undocumented students who have graduated from a Colorado high school was voted down by hardline anti-illegal immigration members of the legislature. Opponents argued the “ASSET” bill would reward lawbreakers, draw illegal immigrants to the state and offer false hope to young people who would still be unable to work legally in the U.S. after graduating with college and university degrees.

States surrounding Colorado already offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, including conservative states like Kansas and Texas, and those policies have been enormously successful– not just at graduating students and seeing them apply for citizenship, but also at attracting many of Colorado’s best undocumented high school graduates.

ASSET in different forms has been introduced repeatedly in Colorado over the last half-decade and its sponsors have vowed to bring it back again next year.

“I’d rather see our graduates going to school than sitting in their boxers playing Nintendo in their parents’ basement,” said bill sponsor Sen. Mike Johnston at an early Education Committee hearing.

For now, however, the thousands of undocumented Colorado kids who have graduated and who are graduating from high schools across the state won’t be paying to attend Colorado’s universities, colleges and junior colleges, nor will they be up and relocating to the countries where they were born but mostly haven’t visited since arriving in the States as toddlers. Instead, they’ll be watching their longtime friends go off to school and they’ll go to school in other states or they’ll sit in their basements playing video games or they’ll do yard work for cheap or they’ll sell dope.

Gay rights

Civil unions, Senate Bill 002

The gay-rights bill dominated the legislative session and the special session that followed it. The bill would grant state rights and protections to gay couples and to their children, establishing overdue legal responsibilities, for example, in regard to child support and visitation. Supporters called this a “family values” bill and it garnered unanimous Democratic support as well as the support of high-profile Republicans working inside and outside the capitol. It also eventually won over a clear majority of lawmakers in both chambers of the legislature. Yet Republican House leaders used unprecedented procedural moves to make sure the bill never made it to the floor for debate. Christian-right-orchestrated opposition argued the bill went against Biblical teachings and that it sought to legalize “gay marriage” in the face of a state constitutional amendment put in place by voters in 2006 defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

House Speaker Frank McNulty, urged on by Majority Leader and former Focus on the Family staffer Amy Stephens, threw up road blocks during the last days of the session as the bill chugged along through three Republican-controlled House committees on its march toward the full chamber. On the second-to-last day of the session, the bill lurked behind all activity, shaping discussion and leading to thinly veiled lawmaker confrontations. Amid an often absurd evening filibuster, when Democrats and their Republican allies maneuvered to bring the bill to the floor, the McNulty bloc called a recess and the Speaker, at a loss, went out on a walkabout for more than two hours, running out the clock on debate.

In the special session called by Gov. John Hickenlooper to revive the civil unions debate and to pick up the remains of the dozens of bills dropped in the wake of the battle over civil unions, McNulty assigned the bill to a stacked committee of loyalists who killed the bill.

Colorado Republicans enjoyed a one-seat majority in the House this session. Democrats are hoping to win that seat this year and gain control of committee assignments in both chambers. To make that happen, Metro State Political Science Prof. Norm Provizer said civil unions supporters and activists, including Republican voters, will have to keep their eye on the ball.

“Will this switch things to the Democrats? I’m not sure it will make a gigantic difference,” he said. “It’s natural to want to support people– regardless of party– who support [civil unions]. What people have to remember, though, is that they are also voting to give a seat to a party and that it may be in their interest to support candidates [explicitly to flip the majority].”

The sponsor of the civil unions bill, openly gay Denver Democratic Sen. Pat Steadman, will no doubt introduce a new version same as the old version on the first day of the 2013 session.

Women’s health

With an eye on the intense anti-abortion bills passed by the Republican Congress and in Republican-controlled state capitols across the country– efforts that for example attempted to outlaw contraception, limit legal rape to vague “forcible” instances and mandate doctors read scientifically inaccurate material to abortion seekers and submit them to vaginal-probe ultrasounds– Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains President Vicki Cowart expressed relief that Colorado beat back such efforts.

“We expected 2012 to usher in harmful bills targeting Colorado women and families but, thankfully, our champions in the House and Senate as well as our advocates in the community did not sit idly by,” she said.

Personhood, House Bill 1130 and Senate Bill 125

The Democrat-controlled Senate killed both of this session’s anti-abortion bills, which aimed to classify human embryos as persons with legal rights. The arguments in support of these bills caused some head scratching, coming as they did from the same people making arguments against civil unions.

In opposing civil unions, Republicans argued that voting for the law would violate the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box in 2006′s Amendment 43 and Referendum I, which respectively banned gay marriage and rejected civil unions. Yet Colorado voters have twice in the last four years rejected so-called personhood initiatives– and by much wider margins than they rejected gay partnership rights.

Health insurance and religious freedom, Senate Memorial 003

The Senate also killed a proposal aimed at backing congressional legislation that would allow employers, citing any moral objection, to refuse to provide health benefits for employees. Supporters of the proposal argued that it bolstered religious freedom. Opponents argued that religious freedom is already safeguarded in the U.S. Constitution and that these kind of proposals set up a legal free for all, where employers would be able to object to any category of action– like having unmarried sex or meat eating — and are given free rein to discriminate against employees, or at least take advantage of them by finding a spurious way to cut costs, by denying them coverage.

Speaking on this year’s legislative session, Ellen Dumm, executive director of the progressive politics Campaign for a Strong Colorado, said that, as a matter of political strategy, Republican lawmakers seem to understand that they are out of step with constituents on matters like gay rights and the obligation of employers to provide full reproductive health care coverage, that they seem to know that they should pay less attention to social issues and more attention to economic issues. “Still, they just can’t do it,” she said.

[ Image of Colorado capitol by TCI ]

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NOM has long insisted that its battle against same-sex marriage transcends partisanship. “We’re committed to achieving a majority for marriage, not any particular partisan majority,” said Brown in announcing NOM’s recent endorsement of an anti-marriage equality Democrat in New York.

Which is what makes NOM’s close relationship with a right-wing fundraising and activism organization called ActRight so striking.

ActRight, which is also run by Brown and shares office space with NOM, has often been presented as the conservative answer to the successful progressive fundraising site ActBlue. Its website allows users to sign petitions, fund conservative organizations, and donate to politicians.

The site makes clear that when it comes to candidates, its focus is electing conservative Republicans. “All federal Republican candidates appear on ActRight,” reads the “about us” page. “But from there you actually decide! Anyone who has become a member of ActRight by donating at least $5.00 to any federal candidate can vote RINO’s off of the site by hitting the RINO button.”

ActRight doesn’t automatically list Democrats, but it doesn’t ban them either. “Given that some third party candidates or even Democrats could be conservative (hey, it does happen!) we also allow you to vote candidates on.” Still, as of May 15, none of the federal candidates listed on ActRight were Democrats.

Fighting same-sex marriage together

As a clearinghouse for conservative and Republican causes, ActRight makes it seem like the right’s top priority is fighting against same-sex marriage.

Half of ActRight’s “top causes” — the groups the site has raised the most amount of money for – are campaigns pushing anti-gay marriage ballot measures in Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Washington state. NOM has been deeply involved with each of those campaigns. Most of the remaining top causes are groups affiliated with CatholicVote.org (a project of Fidelis, a socially conservative Catholic group), which also wants to prevent same-sex couples from marrying.

This placement does not appear to be coincidental.

As Good As You blogger Jeremy Hooper recently reported, the state anti-marriage equality campaigns backed by NOM have set up their websites so that online donations are processed through ActRight.

Hooper, who has written extensively about NOM’s ties to ActRight, reported last year that contributions made through Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.)’s presidential campaign site website were being process through ActRight. McCotter continues to be the highest-earning candidate on ActRight.com.

In addition to allowing users to donate to candidates and causes, ActRight allows users to create and contribute to “actions,” which mainly consist of petitions and letters to political leaders related to a particular cause. ActRight’s “top action” for this month is “Dump Starbucks for Supporting Same Sex Marriage,” an electronic petition informing the CEO and board of directors of Starbucks that signatories are “deeply offended by your corporate position to support same-sex marriage and your decision to oppose the reasonable moral views of half your US customers and the vast majority of your international consumers.” The signers pledge not to patronize Starbucks until it stops “attacking the natural institution of marriage.” NOM started the Dump Starbucks boycott initiative back in March.

Last week — after President Obama declared his support for gay marriage and North Carolina voted to ban it — NOM announced a new initiative called Stand for Marriage America, which allows marriage equality foes to contribute simultaneously to ballot campaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington: “For every dollar you donate, 25 cents will go to each of the four state campaigns where marriage is on the ballot – or you can re-allocate your gift to particular states!”

NOM’s Stand for Marriage America campaign is being conducted using ActRight. In a blog post on NOM’s site, Brown repeatedly directs supporters to ActRight’s site in order to fund the effort.

A close relationship

NOM’s relationship with ActRight goes beyond simply sharing its president and cooperating in fundraising activities.

Just last month, ActRight’s legal arm, ActRight Legal Services, took over as NOM’s counsel in two different federal cases. They replaced Citizens United attorney James Bopp Jr. and his colleagues at the Bopp Law Firm, which for years has been representing NOM in its efforts to skirt campaign-disclosure laws. (At least four of the attorneys who joined ActRight Legal Services earlier this year are former Bopp attorneys.)

NOM has avoided directly promoting ActRight or declaring a formal relationship between the two organizations, though the address listed for ActRight and its various entities is the same as that listed for the National Organization for Marriage. (ActRight Fund — the group’s 527 arm — lists rent paid to NOM on its IRS filings.)

The American Independent recently visited the K Street address listed by both NOM and ActRight, where we requested copies of ActRight’s 2010 tax filings for its 501(c)3 (ActRight Educational Trust Fund) and 501(c)4 (ActRight Action). We could not be helped because, we were told, the relevant ActRight staff member had the day off. That ActRight staffer is Paul Bothwell, who at one point worked at NOM. Bothwell later told TAI in an email that for 2010, ActRight was “not required to file as we had too little activity.” Bothwell would not confirm whether he was still working for NOM, but he responded to our inquiry using an actright.com email address instead of the nationformarriage.org email address at which we had originally contacted him.

Louis Marinelli, a former NOM employee who is now a marriage equality activist, released several of NOM’s internal memos and emails earlier this year. Among the documents Marinelli posted were minutes from a meeting in which he and other NOM staffers discussed ActRight’s technology at length.

Campaign-finance records for ActRight’s political action committee (ActRight) and its 527 organization (ActRight Fund) show that recent big donations have come from past NOM donors.

The ActRight Fund’s 2011 year-end report of contributions and expenditures showed that the bulk of its nearly $200,000 in itemized contributions came from one source, Sean Fieler of Equinox Partners LLP. Fieler — who gave the group $195,000 — is chairman of the American Principles Project, whose founder is Robert George, chairman emeritus of NOM. Excluding a bank payment refund, the rest — four installments of $700 — came from ActRight’s PAC.

The ActRight Fund’s 2012 first quarter report shows that it received $500,445 in itemized contributions. Nearly all of that came from one person: Terrence Caster, who helped bankroll the NOM-backed Proposition 8 in 2008.

According to a version of NOM’s 2008 tax return that was released by the Human Rights Campaign via a reported whistleblower, in 2008 Fieler gave $100,000 to NOM and Caster gave NOM $172,500.

“I’m not surprised by the outcome at all,” said House bill sponsor Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, after the hearing. “We saw the end coming when [House] Speaker Frank McNulty assigned it to this committee, known as the Speaker’s kill committee.

“We had a majority in the House and the bill passed with a solid majority in the Senate. We just wanted it to enjoy the same vigorous debate on the House floor that it received in the four House committees where it appeared this year,” he said.

Republicans over the last week and in the committee hearing today said Democrats were playing politics with the bill, dragging out its introduction in the House and introducing it in an election year to place pressure one way or another on Republicans. Primary opponents could run against an “aye” vote, they say, and general election opponents could run against a “nay” vote.

“That’s just not true,” said Ferrandino. “We didn’t play politics. We introduced this bill to help families.”

He said he wasn’t sure what he would do differently given the standoff in the House that ended in the bill’s death.

“We can just help make sure that next year there continues to be a pro-equality majority but that leadership in the House won’t undermine that majority. We can work and organize from now till November to change that leadership.”

Republicans control the House this year with a one-seat majority. Most analysts believe that the new legislative district lines drawn last year have made it very likely that Democrats will control both chambers of the state legislature next year.

Uphill battle

Gay-rights organization One Colorado, the main activist group lobbying over the last two years for the bill, told the Independent it was seeking out members of the State Affairs committee today to talk about civil unions. Spokesman Jace Woodrum said it was “an uphill battle” and that the group “wasn’t confident” they could win over a single necessary Republican vote on the nine-member committee. Woodrum said they were focusing efforts on Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, a personally sympathetic figure who nevertheless has been politically opposed to gay rights.

“I’m the proud father of a son who happens to be gay… but I also represent 75,000 constituents in southwest Colorado,” Coram said before voting against the bill. He referred to the ballot box votes in 2006 that defined marriage in Colorado as a union between one-man one-woman and that rejected civil unions for same sex couples.

“I have a lot of friends in the gay community but what you’re asking me to do here is to invalidate the vote of the people.”

Coram said he thought the gay community was being used as “a political pawn” by Democratic lawmakers.

“They controlled the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the legislature for four years. Why didn’t they pass it then. Why did they wait until we had a divided legislature? [Gay Coloradans] deserve respect but I feel an obligation to the voters I represent.”

Even as the proceedings got underway, the mood in the Old Supreme Court Chamber where the hearing was being held didn’t bode well for civil unions supporters. Opponents lined the walls and filled the seats, a departure from recent hearings on the bill, where opposition support seemed thin.

What’s more, Republican lawmakers seemed to be running away from the bill even as leaders waged war against it in the press.

An hour after the special session launched, House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, talked to the capitol press corps about the “gay marriage” politics being pushed by the governor. As the State Affairs Committee hearing got underway in the afternoon, Rep. Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, a one-time civil unions supporter, distanced himself from the bill on Twitter, writing that it was a “poke in the eye” for traditional marriage.

‘A fair hearing’

McNulty had assigned the civil unions legislation to the hardline State Affairs Committee in order to finally end the drawn-out battle over the bill. During the regular session, it had passed with strong bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Senate and it passed with bipartisan majorities through three Republican-controlled House committees.

In the face of the bill’s unlikely progress and as key Republican primary campaigns heated up, McNulty seemed desperate. He had publicly promised a “fair hearing” for the bill on a number of occasions but in the end seemed determined not to let that happen.

On the next-to-last day of the session, the House Appropriations Committee passed the bill and sent it to the main chamber for debate, despite stalling efforts led by Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Bob Gardner.

As many as eight Republicans in the House, however, reportedly were ready to vote in favor of the legislation and three of them allied with Democrats to halt a McNulty-orchestrated Gardner-led filibuster intended to run out the clock and kill the bill Tuesday night.

When the pro-civil unions bipartisan bloc moved to end the filibuster, House leaders cut off debate and called a two-hour recess. Nearly 40 bills, including civil unions, died as a result, leading Hickenlooper to call for the special legislative session aimed at addressing the major bills left for dead in the wake of the historic House impasse.

Gay marriage versus civil unions

At the hearing Monday night, opponents of the bill mostly argued that the bill was a step on the road to gay marriage and that “traditional marriage” was the best arrangement in which to raise children.

Carrie Gordon Earl from Focus on the Family said the bill would lead to lawsuits. Once civil unions laws pass, gay marriage supporters file discrimination suits, she said. The financial costs of those suits should be included in the debate.

“It cost $10 million to defend California’s traditional marriage amendment,” she said. “Do we have that kind of money? What programs will the Colorado legislature cut to pay for such a lawsuit?”

Supporters of the bill mostly argued for equal rights. They said children thrive in two-parent loving homes, regardless of the sexual orientation of the parents, and that LGBT people endure soft and hard legally-sanctioned discrimination all the time.

“We say we’re ‘designated beneficiaries’ but people don’t even know what that means,” said Anna Simon, sitting next to her partner Fran. “People think that just means she’s the one I leave things to after I’m gone. But she’s the one I want to share my life with.”

Ferrandino, one of several openly gay lawmakers in the state, was eloquent but subdued in his closing remarks.

“We’re just asking to be treated equally in our state,” he said. “We’re not asking anyone here to say that being gay is OK. The fact is, we don’t have the same access to the laws that everyone else here does. It doesn’t seem democratic. [It doesn't seem] to uphold the spirit of our country.”

[ Top: Denver Rep. Mark Ferrandino; bottom: Montrose Rep. Don Coram by TCI ]

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Swamped by reporters after making the assignment, McNulty said that Gov. John Hickenlooper called the special session to advance “gay marriage” in Colorado but that Republicans were focused on job creation. He said Hickenlooper was spending tax money to run the special session on an election-year campaign issue meant to trip up Republican candidacies.

The State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee is known as the kill committee this year. The civil unions bill, sponsored by Denver Democrats Pat Steadman in the Senate and Mark Ferrandino in the House, never went to the State Affairs committee during the regular session. It went to the Judiciary Committee, the Finance Committee and the Appropriations Committee, passing with one-vote majorities in each by winning over one Republican lawmaker on each committee.

Talking to reporters after McNulty finished, Ferrandino lamented the action taken by the Speaker.

“The majority, including 46 percent of Republican delegates to the party convention this year, has supported this bill. This is not a controversial issue here. He sent it to the kill committee. It should have followed the same process as it followed during the regular session.”

Ferrandino said the selection of the kill committee on the part of McNulty was of a piece with what happened at the end of the session when McNulty led a filibuster and called a recess of the House in order to kill the bill.

“[McNulty] says that [Hickenlooper] is playing politics but the Speaker let 37 bills die, many of them related to job creation, when he maneuvered to kill civil unions legislation last week.”

The State Committee is scheduled to meet at 3:30 this afternoon.

Ferrandio said that Coloradans are sick and tired of the games that have been played in the House this year.

“I don’t know why [McNulty] is so opposed to this bill. I think the Speaker is listening to a small minority of supporters. You’ve heard him referring to ‘gay marriage.’ This isn’t about gay marriage. That’s not in the bill.

“All we’ve ever asked for is equal rights. That’s it.”

[ Image: McNulty talking to reporters by TCI ]

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Jan van Lohuizen, a pollster for Pres. George W. Bush, wrote to GOP insiders last week that rapidly building public support for gay rights across the demographic spectrum of U.S. voters suggested that the hard-line Republican stance opposing those rights threatened to marginalize the party.

From the memo:

Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down. A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year. Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year. The most recent public polling shows supporters of gay marriage outnumber opponents by a margin of roughly 10% (for instance: NBC/WSJ poll in February / March: support 49%, oppose 40%).

The increase in support is taking place among all partisan groups. While more Democrats support gay marriage than Republicans, support levels among Republicans are increasing over time. The same is true of age: younger people support same sex marriage more often than older people, but the trends show that all age groups are rethinking their position.

For months now, supporters of Colorado’s civil unions Senate Bill 2, sponsored by Pat Steadman, D-Denver, have pointed to survey data that demonstrates similar rapidly building public support for gay rights in the state. Surveys commissioned by Christian organizations and presented by Christian-right lawmakers opposed to the bill and that suggest support has dipped for civil unions here have been mostly written off as unreliable.

At the state Republican Party meetings held last month, 45 percent of delegates to the state convention– party activists from around the state– supported civil unions.

High-profile GOP attorney Mario Nicolais, spokesman for Coloradans for Freedom, a Republican coalition formed in support of the civil unions bill this year, argued repeatedly before legislative committees that the Republican Party was the party of family values and that Senate Bill 2, sponsored by Pat Steadman, D-Denver, would put in place vital legal protections for gay couples and their children presently absent in state statutes. Establishing child support and visitation rights, he said, for example, would promote the kind of responsibility proponents of conservative values have championed for decades.

During the regular session of the legislature, the civil unions bill passed the Democratic-controlled Senate and won bipartisan majorities in three Republican-controlled House committees.

Yet House leaders led by Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, killed the bill on the second-to-last day of the session. A Republican bloc ran out the clock with a filibuster and then a recess called when it became clear Democrats and their Republican allies had gathered enough votes to halt the filibuster and force a vote on civil unions.

McNulty promised a fair hearing for the bill throughout the regular legislative session. His actions on the floor of the House last week, however, suggest he is determined to make sure the bill doesn’t pass into law during this heated election year.

In the special session, the bill has to start from scratch. It has to pass the Senate and make it through House Committees. Although supporters of the bill won over key committee members in select committees during the regular session, McNulty can now assign the bill to any House committee he chooses and he can also appoint whomever he likes to those committees.

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With only three hours left to consider a long slate of bills and with a GOP filibuster in full swing, House Democrats and their Republican allies sent Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, to the well to make a “rise and report” motion that would have moved civil unions legislation on to the agenda by postponing consideration of bills that could wait until Wednesday.

Suddenly the protracted performance at the front of the chamber, where Republican lawmakers held forth absurdly on transfat bans and license plate proposals, ground to a halt. Media gathered round Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the civil unions bill. He explained that the votes were lined up for civil unions and that that bill and the rest of the slate would be addressed if Republican leadership would act on Levy’s motion. The ball was in their court, he said.

Republican Mark Waller, the assistant majority leader from Colorado Springs, stepped up to respond. He said that Democrats were hijacking the process and that all of the bills on the agenda deserved careful consideration.

“Let’s be clear, the Democrats are playing procedural games to place one bill over all the others,” he said.

“Isn’t a filibuster a procedural game to kill that one bill?” asked a reporter.

Waller didn’t respond. Republicans had been denying for hours that they were filibustering, even as Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, read whole sections of text into the record, calling out punctuation marks, and Rep. David Balmer, R-Centennial, railed theatrically about how school lunch regulations amounted to a step on the road to Nazism.

“Why, you ask, why do I go on like this about a small amendment?” Gardner said winkingly at one point during a speech on the school lunch bill. “Because it’s a small amendment but a large issue.”

The chamber groaned on one side and laughed on the other. Gardner grinned.

As the recess stretched on and reporters tweeted updates on McNulty’s alleged whereabouts, lobbyists for all variety of bills paced outside the chamber, furiously tapping at their mobile devices.

A major water bill sponsored by Republican Senator Scott Renfroe died, as did a controversial high-profile bill that would have established legal limits for driving while under the influence of marijuana.

Democrats eventually handed out a list of the 37 bills that fell victim to the civil unions stalemate.

Social conservatives and religious organizations like Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family had been pressuring Republican leaders in the House to kill the civil unions bill for weeks. But McNulty seemed at a loss when Republicans on three committees last week and Tuesday defected and voted to advance the bill to the floor of the House for full debate.

It appears the filibuster led by Gardner was the last line of defense.

According to some of the capitol reporters’ minute-to-minute digital dispatches, McNulty at one point was on a walk outside the capitol, then he was allegedly in the hallway outside his office conferring and drinking scotch with Gov. John Hickenlooper, a civil unions supporter, who came to the capitol at 10 p.m. to try and broker a deal.

“The Democrats could have done this three years ago, when they controlled both chambers and the governor’s office. Why did they have to put it on the Republicans to pass it?” said one Republican staffer, a refrain on the right for the last few days.

Ferrandino answered that question for reporters earlier in the day after the Appropriations Committee passed the civil unions bill with one Republican vote cast by Evergreen Rep. Cheri Gerou.

“Hindsight is 20/20 but the fact is attitudes in the state and in the nation have changed at a rapid pace in the last three years,” he said. “We wouldn’t have had the public support. In fact, we wouldn’t be here today if Republicans weren’t supporting the bill with us. ”

When McNulty at last emerged from the halls outside the chamber, he appeared in shirt sleeves, cuffs rolled, his hair mussed. He moved slowly toward the crowd of capitol reporters who had been waiting again at the front of the room like statues for ten minutes with microphones and tape recorders and notepads and cameras at the ready.

He said that the civil unions bill was a “casualty of the impasse” that had bogged down the chamber.

A flurry of questions followed to which McNulty said something again about an “impasse” and getting back to “the work of the House.”

He walked away from reporters as cries of “Shame on you! Shame on you!” rained down for full minutes from the gallery before security cleared it out.

McNulty put his suit coat back on but no more real work was done in the House. Levy withdrew her motion and Majority Leader Amy Stephens, another Colorado Springs Republican and one of several Colorado Republicans facing heated primary challenges this year, called for adjournment.

After years spent in the legislative trenches making their case and successfully winning over key Republican lawmakers, the chief lobbyists for the civil unions bill at gay-rights group One Colorado decided to focus on November. The organization put out a fighting-mad fundraising letter minutes after the gavel pounded for the last time of the night.

“I am beyond angry, and you should be, too,” wrote Executive Director Brad Clark in an email. “House leadership just shut down the Colorado House to effectively kill the Colorado Civil Union Act. After promising a fair hearing and process, House leadership decided that it was more important to play politics than do the people’s business. Now, they must be held accountable.

“We have to keep fighting…. Although November seems far away, our work to change the legislature starts today. And you can be a part of electing a pro-equality majority.”

For a while after the events in the chamber concluded, shell-shocked lawmakers, staffers, reporters and lobbyists shuffled around in the hallways, looking at their phone screens and at one another. Senators were talking about whether there would be conferencing between the chambers on some last-minute bills or whether all of that should be written off in the wake of the historic House standoff they had just witnessed. Then everyone slowly trailed out of the building.

[ Image: Speaker Frank McNulty via WikiCommons ]

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The legislation, Senate Bill 2, has passed the Senate and two crucial House committees. It is scheduled to be heard at 2 p.m. this afternoon in the House Appropriations committee, its last committee hurdle and one that sponsors say it is all but guaranteed to clear. But the legislative session is scheduled to end tomorrow and Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, and Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Colorado Springs, oppose the bill and have suggested it may not make it to the floor before the session ends. McNulty has said that, if it does die, the bill woill have been a casualty of the schedule and of the bad timing of its sponsors.

The bill, sponsored by Denver Democrats Pat Steadman in the Senate and Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino in the House, would grant legal relationship recognition to same-sex couples in the state, conferring benefits and shoring up parenting and partnership responsibilities before the law.

In a state that is home to anti-gay rights Christian mega-organization Focus on the Family and that has passed constitutional amendments barring both gay marriage and laws that would protect gay people from discrimination, the civil unions bill would bestow no small measure of official legitimacy and acceptance to a long-targeted minority group.

For Republicans, the bill is a hot potato in an election year that has seen Stephens, for example, engage in an intense El Paso County primary, where social issues have featured prominently in the campaigning.

“This bill deserves an up or down vote, Mr Speaker,” Brad Clark, executive director of gay-rights group One Colorado said from the capitol steps. “It deserves a fair hearing. Nothing less. My mom always said ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’ Well, Mr Speaker, there’s clearly a will for this bill to be heard. Now show us the way.”

Governor John Hickenlooper’s chief legal counsel, Jack Finlaw, told the crowd the governor is closely watching the progress of the bill.

“The governor believes this is an historic day on which we’ll embrace equality for all Coloradans,” he said. “He expects House leaders to take the bill to the floor for a full and fair debate. The governor is looking forward to signing the bill in a few days.”

Lobbying on both sides of the bill has been intense ever since Steadman first introduced it in 2011 and those efforts seem to be culminating today.

The rally at the capitol this morning drew perhaps the largest crowd of any of the strictly pro-civil unions event here yet.

Despite the hectic legislative schedule, lawmakers lined up on the steps behind the speakers. Easily more than a hundred activists waved banners and members of the media wandered through the crowd for a half hour after the official event wrapped. At one point, House members climbed out of the windows of the chamber onto the deck above the rally and waved to the crowd.

Republican lawmakers have said they have received thousands of postcards and emails from Christian groups, including Catholic parishioners, imploring them to vote against the bill or stall it through procedural tactics. Speaker McNulty said his voice mail box fills with comments by the hour.

Mario Nicolas, a high-profile Republican attorney in the state and the spokesperson for pro-civil unions Republican coalition Coloradans for Freedom, asked the crowd today to thank Republican lawmakers who have supported the bill in the face of strong opposition. He asked in particular for supporters to contact Rep. B.J. Nikkel, the Republican from Loveland who cast the deciding vote in a crucial Judicial Committee hearing last week to advance the bill.

“I’ve known her for ten years. We worked for Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave together,” he said, referring to the arch social conservative 4th District representative voted out of office in 2008. “What [Nikkel] did was one of the most courageous things I’ve seen in my life in government. And I’ve worked in government or around government for the last two decades. That took courage. That took special strength of the heart.

“[Nikkel] has friends who will now denounce her. She has people who will put her face on a van to drive around and say awful things about her. People who are calling her. People who are attacking her at her place of worship. I ask you all to call Rep. Nikkel and say something to her that says ‘You are one of the most courageous woman I know and what you did this legislative session is one of the most courageous things I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.”

Nicolais said he was confident that House leaders would bring the bill to the floor.

“They have promised a fair hearing and so far we have been moving along that path… Just as Speaker McNulty has said, we are moving along with this bill with no special treatment. And I think that’s important for all of us who support this bill to understand. This bill doesn’t need special treatment to pass. It just needs to be heard, just like any other bill.”

A truck plastered with Nikkel’s name above slogans about her supporting gay rights cruised the streets around the capitol and parked a block from the Legislative Services Building where the Appropriations Committee meeting was being held.

“I heard it’s some version of Operation Rescue’s [anti-abortion] Truth Truck,” said Jace Woodrum, spokesperson for One Colorado. “It’s a form of intimidation aimed at Republican lawmakers. It’s sad.”

[ Image: (top) One Colorado's Jace Woodrum addresses the crowd (Ladd Bosworth); (bottom) the anti-Nikkel "truth truck." (Tomasic) ]

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After joining the five Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee to cast the deciding vote Thursday, Nikkel told the Colorado Independent that witness testimony bolstered arguments made to her by supporters of the bill in private conversations.

“Testimony made me further believe that granting legal rights [for gay coupes] is the right thing to do– and that we should do it in the legislature,” she said.

“It’s worth putting the bill forward to be heard from all my colleagues who represent all of Colorado.”

Last year’s version of the bill died in the same Judiciary Committee when Nikkel voted with fellow Republicans as a bloc against it.

One of the main arguments made by Republicans against Senate Bill 2 this year like last year has been that Coloradans in 2006 voted for an amendment banning gay marriage and against a referendum that would have established same-sex civil unions. In voting to pass civil unions now, the argument goes, lawmakers would be improperly overriding the will of the people.

But one of the people Nikkel has been discussing the matter with over the last half year is Mario Nicolais, a prominent Republican attorney in the state and the spokesperson for Coloradans for Freedom, a pro-civil unions coalition of similarly high-profile Republicans.

Nicolais told the Colorado Independent at the hearing that he doesn’t buy the “will of the people” argument and that he spoke with Nikkel twice over the last six months about the bill.

“We talked on the phone about conservative ideas. We talked about the merits of a ballot initiative versus a statute,” he said, reaching into his attache case and pulling out a worn paperback copy of the Federalist Papers.

“Look,” he said pushing his finger along a dog-eared passage highlighted in yellow and blue. It was a section of Paper Number 10, written by James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” as Nicolais put it.

“[This passage] is about the difference between a representative republic and a direct democracy,” he said as people moved and spoke all around him in the crowded Old Supreme Court chambers. He began slowly reading aloud.

“The purpose of a republic… is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”

Nicolais looked up from the page and shook his head.

“It’s right there. This is about civil rights. It’s not something you decide through a series of 30-second campaign commercials. It’s something for a deliberative body to consider. We live in a representative republic.”

Brad Clark, executive director of gay rights group One Colorado, told the Independent that the lobbying efforts of Republicans in favor of the bill has made an enormous difference this year. He called the formation of Coloradans for Freedom a “game changer.”

“I think [the coalition] signaled to lawmakers that now is the time for this bill in Colorado,” he said.

Indeed, of all the witnesses testifying Thursday, many of them sharing moving personal stories, Nicolais made perhaps the most persuasive case by speaking directly and in detail to Republican concerns. He cited sources like Madison revered on the right and marshaled evidence of deep Republican support throughout the state.

He argued that it was a mistake to dismiss conservative support for civil unions as a product of western “live and let live” libertarian ideology. There are many traditionally conservative reasons to support the bill, he said, explaining that members of Coloradans for Freedom were acting out of fealty to conservative ideas about religious liberty, civil rights, limited government, family values and sound public policy.

The bill promotes committed adult relationships, he said, and, more important, in the case of separation, it legally binds same-sex parents to their children through child support and visitation provisions currently nonexistent in state law.

“Why do Republicans promote traditional families?” he asked the committee. “We do so for the benefit of the kids. This bill supports kids… So the question is Do we fight for couples who love each other or do we turn our backs on them?”

Nicolais noted that 1,477 Republican delegates, or 45.7 percent of the delegates at the party convention last month, voted to support civil unions as a plank of the party platform.

“These are the base of the Republican party, the true believers, the people walking the districts… That can not be ignored here,” he said.

The bill passed the Democratic-controlled Senate two weeks ago and it passed the House Finance Committee the day after it passed the Judiciary Committee. Yet the end of the legislative session on Wednesday is fast approaching.

The bill is scheduled to be heard by the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning. It reportedly has already won enough votes to pass that committee but only once it does can it be introduced for debate in the full chamber. Whether or not Republican leadership in the House will move the bill forward remains a matter of much speculation in the media and in the halls of the Capitol.

One Colorado is holding a rally on the steps of the Capitol Tuesday morning.

“The Colorado Civil Union Act has passed the Senate and two House Committees with bipartisan support,” wrote spokesman Jace Woodrum in a Monday release. “But with only two days until the end of the legislative session, Speaker of the House Frank McNulty is threatening inaction on the bill in order to kill it.”

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Nikkel told the Colorado Independent she has been seriously weighing the issue from the time she voted against the bill last legislative session but that conservative arguments in favor of the bill this year eventually swayed her.

“I was determined to really consider it and I thought about it a lot. I studied it,” she said as members of the media thronged her desk in the Old Supreme Court chambers immediately following the vote.

“These folks deserve the same rights as the rest of us,” she said. “I just think the bill needs to be heard by the full House. It’s an emotionally charged issue on both sides and we have a lot of smart people able to look at this as a legal document. It’s worth putting the bill forward to be heard from all my colleagues who represent all of Colorado.”

When Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, another possible swing member of the committee, responded to the roll call with a fast no vote, all the energy in the packed chamber seemed to flow toward Nikkel, who seconds later responded with a yay vote just as fast as DelGrosso said no.

Instructed before the roll call by Chair Bob Gardner, R- Colorado Springs, not to react one way or another to the votes but to “maintain the decorum” befitting the proceedings, the crowd nevertheless let out a burst of mixed applause and gasps.

Nikkel was targeted by social conservative Senator Kevin Lundberg in a memo he sent out late Wednesday night. He wrote to Republican lawmakers that she was on the fence about the bill and that Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, should be pressed to replace her on the committee with a reliable opponent of the bill.

That memo leaked, however, and Nikkel was there in her seat when the committee opened for business.

“I’ve been an independent voice since I got here,” Nikkel told reporters. “Leadership knows what they’re getting with me.”

The bill now has to pass in the House Finance Committee, the Appropriations Committee and survive two readings on the House floor. But the bill’s sponsors and most analysts are confident that the House Judiciary Committee was the high hurdle to clear. They say the bill enjoys solid support in the other committees and that the votes to pass the bill on the floor have already been lined up. They say the problem now is only time. The session is scheduled to wrap a week from today Wednesday and committee chairs reportedly can take as long as three days to advance a bill.

[ Image B.J. Nikkel by the Colorado Independent. ]

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