The Federation for American Immigration Reform was in Arizona when that state wrote its famous senate bill to crack down on immigration. They were in the Colorado Capitol last November when the Republican Study Committee of Colorado hosted a forum on immigration reform.

At that time, Republicans in the Colorado Legislature told The Colorado Independent they planned to pursue Arizona-style legislation in Colorado, a position they backed down from over the next couple of months as it became clear that Arizona had paid a hefty price for its own legislation.

When FAIR came to Colorado, The Independent reported on
FAIR’s ties to Tanton and on Tanton’s ties to racist organizations as well as on his propensity for racially tinged statements.

Sunday, The New York Times published a major cover-story profile of Tanton, noting his liberal roots–as a supporter of Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club–and chronicling his steady movement toward white nationalist sympathies. including his ties to the Ku Klux Klan, holocaust deniers and those who claim white people are genetically superior to other races.

Tanton was concerned all along as he established his network of anti-immigration organizations that the groups and its supporters could be perceived as racist if they weren’t careful. In the end, a FAIR executive told The Times, it was Tanton himself who brought such infamy to the cause.

From The Times:

“The fear was that one ugly person could tar the larger movement, and sadly, ironically, it turned out that person was John Tanton,” said Patrick Burns, who was then FAIR’s deputy director.

But if anything, Dr. Tanton grew more emboldened to challenge taboos. He increasingly made his case against immigration in racial terms.

“One of my prime concerns,” he wrote to a large donor, “is about the decline of folks who look like you and me.” He warned a friend that “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Dr. Tanton acknowledged the shift from his earlier, colorblind arguments, but the “uncomfortable truth,” he wrote, was that those arguments had failed. With a million or more immigrants coming each year — perhaps a third illegally — he warned, “The end may be nearer than we think.”

In an attempt to thwart the uprising, state Rep. Chris Holbert vowed to persuade his fellow RSCC executive board members to cease and desist. Holbert blamed the RINO insults on RSCC Executive Director Rich Bratten. But, sources said that most of the GOP legislators pondered whether the architect of the attacks was retired Sen. Dave Schultheis, RSCC treasurer and founder.

Former Colorado Springs Senator Dave Schultheis is no longer holding forth on bills on the Senate floor in Denver, but he has continued to exert influence this year as the powerful force behind the conservative Republican Study Committee of Colorado. Now that influence may be waning. This week, a third of the RSCC flock quit the committee, rejecting the would-be radical-right revival.

The RSCC claimed 34 Republican members in the state Legislature – 11 in the Senate and 23 in the House – prior to Tuesday. At least 10 legislators quit in the wake of allegations that it was crossing ethics boundaries in influencing lawmaker votes, directing legislative aides and meddling in the race for state GOP chairman.

The committee drew media attention this year for pushing Arizona-style anti-illegal immigration legislation. It held informational hearings that were stacked with anti-immigration witnesses, some with clear ties to white spremacist organizations.

A high-profile surprise rebuke

The committee also took a strong stand in the race to replace Dick Wadhams as head of the Colorado Republican party this month. Schultheis and most conservative study committee members had endorsed RSCC member Senator Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch.

The committee members scrambled on stage last Saturday to nominate Harvey but their “we’ve got it nailed” confidence withered when the Republican Party Central Committee overwhelmingly elected state GOP Legal Counsel Ryan Call on the first ballot with 167.6 votes to Harvey’s 74.4.

As the vote was being read, RSCC Vice Chair Senator Kent Lambert tweeted, “They didn’t buy these ballot boxes at the magic store, did they? ;)”

The committee members and other hard-right Harvey supporters shouldn’t have been so surprised. Wadhams, dogged this year by Tea Partiers as a compromised establishment figure, received an enthusiastic standing ovation at the event. Also, influential RSCC member Senator Shawn Mitchell had seconded Call’s nomination as the kind of leader who could unify a party still reeling from the fractured 2010 Republican primary races for governor and U.S. Senator, offices the GOP lost in the general election.

The rump committee

Gone from the RSCC website membership page are photos and names of House Speaker Frank McNulty, Majority Leader Amy Stephens, Majority Caucus Chair Carole Murray, Majority Whip B.J. Nikkel and Representatives Cindy Acree, Kevin Priola, Ray Scott, Ken Summers, Spencer Swalm and Libby Szabo.

Several legislators recently questioned whether Schultheis and the group had crossed the line between a policy ad-hoc committee and a volunteer lobbyist coalition. They wondered whether the committee compromised a legislative aide who might have breached ethics by disseminating positions on bills and by twittering opinions.

The RSCC produces Senate and House reports – up to 20 pages long – that designate whether a bill “DOES” or “DOES NOT” support conservative values.

For example, an RSCC report evaluated HB 11-1144, which requires health benefit plans to cover medical evaluations of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. The disease is preventable by treating the mother during pregnancy.

The bill, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Judy Solano, Edward Casso, Andy Kerr, Nancy Todd and Democratic Senator Lois Tochtrop, passed in both chambers and was signed into law, despite receiving the thumbs down by the RSCC.

The RSCC said the bill “DOES NOT” support the principles of “constitutional limited government, free markets and personal responsibility.”

That judgment sounded eerily familiar to Schultheis in 2009 citing the need for personal responsibility and less government regulation when he voted against a bill to protect fetuses exposed to the HIV virus. In a Rocky Mountain News interview, he reasoned that as an AIDS-afflicted baby grows up, “the mother will begin to feel guilt… The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity.”

The Colorado Springs wing

Earlier in this legislative session, Schultheis candidly discussed his role in monitoring bills and votes for the RSCC with the same eagle-eyed scrutiny he once brought to his search for illegal drug runners and undocumented workers on his treks with the group to the Arizona-Mexico border, most recently in August.

Schultheis appears to be going underground. He claimed “he’s not the brains behind the RSCC” and he blocked public access to his Facebook page.

The RSCC operates under the Legislative Support Group, a nonprofit organization registered with the Secretary of State’s office in June 2006. Schultheis registered the RSCC trade name and designated the entity as an “Other Non-Profit… Social Welfare” located at 1250 Golden Hills Road in Colorado Springs.

The base of operations is Schultheis’ $500,000-plus home perched above the canyon community of Pinecliff, where he rises before daybreak each weekday to assess legislative bills, their sponsors, and the votes cast by members of the Colorado House and Senate.

“It’s frustrating. The Republicans are acting like RINOs,” groaned Schultheis in late February. Among the GOP legislators gone rogue and drawing the ire of Schultheis by defying his version of conservative principles is House Speaker McNulty.

Skewing the initiative process to favor liberal ideology

The source of Schultheis’ anxiety was Senate Concurrent Resolution 11-001, sponsored in the Senate by President Brandon Shaffer and Nancy Spence and in the House by Majority Caucus Chair Murray and Minority Caucus Chair Lois Court. McNulty joined the bill’s numerous co-sponsors.

The resolution aims to tighten requirements to amend the state Constitution. It passed third readings in both chambers, and is pending Senate approval of House amendments. If approved, the measure will go before voters on the 2012 general election ballot.

Schultheis opposed SCR11-001 in a Feb. 23 memo dispatched to House State, Affairs Committee Republican Representatives Randy Baumgardner, Don Coram, Larry Liston, Jim Kerr and Mark Waller. The resolution’s numerous co-sponsors also included Baumgardner, Coram and Liston.

“As conservatives and those who advocate their allegiance for TABOR (Taxpayers Bill of Rights), it seems very apparent to me that should the legislature pass this bill, that two very onerous conditions will result,” wrote Schultheis, who asked that the resolution be killed or at least postponed.

If the resolution passes, Schultheis predicts that TABOR would be repealed and that “more liberal Constitutional amendments will be passed.” He said he had analyzed voter-approved initiatives and amendments over the past two decades, particularly those that passed by at least 60 percent of the vote.

“The shocker is that you will notice that all but one that passed placed liberal ideology in the Constitution,” said Schultheis in a memo. “You can verify that in the initiative summary that I’ve asked Lauri (sic) Bratten to provide you.”

Defining lobbying

Some RSCC members bristled at the notion that Schultheis or the RSCC has lobbied for or against legislation. According to Amendment 41 passed by voters in 2006, statewide elected officials cannot become paid lobbyists until two years after leaving office. Schultheis is free to voice opinions as a citizen or volunteer lobbyist although the latter are supposed to register with the House Clerk.

“I don’t consider the [RSCC] as lobbying,” countered Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, an RSCC member. “They’re just trying to promote Republican ideals and which they stand for. I don’t think they’re lobbying. There’s no difference between the RSCC and Colorado Municipal League or CEA (Colorado Educators Association).”

Both CML and CEA employ registered lobbyists.

More skeptical legislators said Laurie Bratten, referenced in Schultheis’ memo, is dangerously teetering on the ethics line.

Bratten is Director of Communications for RSCC and married to RSCC Executive Director Rich Bratten. She is also the paid legislative aide to RSCC-affiliated Senators Harvey and Scott Renfroe.

The legislators spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of RSCC members killing their bills or dredging up a primary contender in future re-election bids. They objected to a legislative aide circulating information to influence votes and twittering opinions on bills and politics during committee and floor discussions.

For example, Bratten twittered about Senate Bill 126 that proposed in-state college tuition rates for high school graduates who attended a Colorado school for the three previous years regardless of immigration status. It was introduced and discussed in the Senate on Feb. 2.

On that day, from 1:00 – 1:19 p.m., Bratten pecked several tweets bashing the bill.

“Your kids can’t get a break for tuition in CO but Dems thinks they should give tuition money to illegals,” wrote Bratten.

“CO Dems just CANNOT stay focused on jobs and the economy! Giving an tuition to 4 illegals pressuer NOW.”

“Dem Senator Michael Johnston and the CEA are sponsoring this redistribution to a special class. Be afraid.”

“We have 8.8% unemployment in CO and a 1.5 billion $ deficit & CO Dems want 2 subsidize illegals college degrees?”

The rule governing legislative aides is well known to Schultheis, whose legislative aide Dave Crater testified before the House State Affairs Committee on behalf of the “Dr. Laura” bill in March 2001. The committee rejected Schultheis’ bill to mandate counseling for couples seeking a divorce, and Crater lost his job as a legislative aide.

“We can’t have someone on the state payroll that is advocating for the passage or defeat of a piece of legislation,” then-House Speaker Doug Dean, a conservative Republican, told The Colorado Springs Gazette.

Crater was demoted to an unpaid intern working for Schultheis. The senator, however, admitted that he’d personally padded Crater’s $800-a-month salary to the tune of more than $3,000 a month.

Has Laurie Bratten been inadvertently placed in a similarly compromising position?

“We’re very careful to simply put the legislative analysis in the perspective of whether a bill is consistent or inconsistent with our principles,” said RSCC Executive Director Bratten who refused to comment on his wife’s role. “I suppose that’s a question you will have to ask Senator Harvey.”

“It’s kosher!” laughed Harvey.

Harvey said that the legislative aide’s work on behalf of RSCC is part of her duties for himself and Renfroe, and asserted that other Republican senators’ aides also assist. Legislative aides, he said, follow the directives of their bosses.

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Polis told the Colorado Independent during an August recess meeting with some of his Second District constituents that he thought election-year political analysts who are suggesting it’s a good idea to step back from major policy initiatives are misreading the American public.

“The public is speaking overwhelmingly that the time is now to fix our broken immigration system, especially with [sections] of the Arizona law being overturned– that has refocused attention on Washington.” Polis said there is plenty of time to get to work, that Congress will be in session three weeks in September and that there will be a post-election lame-duck special session in November or December.

Meantime in Arizona on Wednesday, lawmaker-members of the Republican Study Committee of Colorado, including hard-line social conservative senators Dave Schultheis of Colorado Springs, Scott Renfroe of Greeley and Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud and a number of Republicans running for House seats announced their support for Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law and their aim to pass similar legislation in Colorado.

Progressive political bloggers have tagged the move by the Republicans as grandstanding on a hot button topic that will play well in an election season where Colorado Republicans have struggled and where illegal immigration warrior Tom Tancredo has entered the race for governor on the American Constitution Party ticket and is sure to push the debate on immigration up front and to the right in races up and down the ticket.

Already, Colorado has some of the toughest immigration laws in the country. A series of strict statutes passed in 2006 under Gov. Bill Owens, the centerpiece of which denied undocumented immigrants access to taxpayer cash except where the ban would butt up against federal law. In 2007, the Denver Post deemed the new Colorado laws a failure, writing that they had cost the state millions in enforcement and had provided almost no savings in benefits payouts. The law also limited undocumented students’ access to financial aid for higher education.

The laws raised the thorny issue of spending on illegal immigrant children. The idea of letting undocumented children languish without schooling and beginning to work illegally at a young age with no hope of moving into mainstream legal life through no fault of their own seems like bad policy, or at least an absence of policy that works to move potential productive members of society to the fringes and into lawlessness.

Indeed, the matter of undocumented youth seems the most likely area where right and left might be able to come together, and for that reason analysts have suggested it might be a way to begin movement on reform.

In 2009, a “tuition equity” bill was introduced to the Colorado Senate that would have allowed undocumented immigrants who attend at least three years of high school in Colorado and graduate the chance to pay in-state tuition at college. The bill failed after five Democrats joined Republicans to vote against it.

Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, told the Colorado Independent that a similar bill is “unlikely to be introduced given the current fiscal position of the universities in the state… although I would support it if it did.”

Polis says all of these moves on the state level underline the urgency of federal action. Others agree and have focused on passing the bipartisan Dream Act as a sort bridge or starter immigration legislation.

The Dream Act sets up provisions through which qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a six-year path to citizenship that would require applicants to complete a college degree or two years of military service. Supporters of the act saw hope in remarks on immigration reform made by Pres. Obama in July.

“We should stop punishing innocent young people for the actions of their parents… The Dream Act would do this, and that’s why I supported this bill as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator and why I continue to support it as president.”

But Polis, who has been an outspoken proponent of federal immigration reform and who in May landed a spot on the House Judiciary Committee, which would likely play a large part in drafting and pushing any coming immigration legislation, believes the Dream Act is no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform.

He told the Colorado Independent that the Dream Act would clearly help “a lot of kids who are de facto Americans,” but he added that the American people have signaled that the time for go-slow or incremental approaches to immigration policy reform has long passed.

“I strongly support the Dream Act, and if it can pass alone it’s certainly a good thing, but in no way, shape or form does it fix our broken immigration system.”

Polis said Congress can and should begin working on immigration policy this fall.

“The people of this country on the right, the left and in the middle are demanding congressional action. I think there’s more public will than ever to act now to replace our broken immigration system with one that works– one that enforces our laws and rules, maintains border security, makes sure that people’s [resident status] is verified before they can work and eliminates the ability of people to work here illegally.

“So again, if all Congress can do is pass the Dream Act that’s a good thing but it’s not what people are crying out for. ”

Read interviews conducted by the Colorado Independent with young undocumented people in Colorado, who shared their stories and their thoughts on immigration reform.

–
Additional writing and reporting by John Tomasic

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Big talk of the week has shifted to who would replace Sen. Ken Salazar after he, in what is looking like a done deal, leaves his Senate seat to lead the Interior Department. But days after Colorado House Minority Leader Mike May announced he was stepping down, there’s no word yet on who might lead Republicans in the House into the new year. Among the top contenders to emerge: Reps. David Balmer, Frank McNulty and Amy Stephens.

On Friday, May, of Parker, announced he is leaving the Legislature before his final term even starts, to focus on his hotel business during tough economic times.

May’s decision “was completely unexpected,” Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, told the Colorado Statesman. “I don’t think anyone thought that something like this could happen.”

The Statesman and other outlets reported that Balmer, currently the assistant minority leader from Centennial (known for his ability to raise money), and Rep. Frank McNulty of Highlands Ranch (considered a rising GOP star) are pounding the pavement for support. The Rocky Mountain News added Amy Stephens, the minority caucus chairwoman from Monument (“well-liked and conservative”), to that list.

All are members of the conservative Republican Study Committee of Colorado, which describes itself as modeled after the Republican Study Committee of the U.S. Congress, which is committed to “advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives.”

In all, 25 Republican legislators are members or officers of the Republican Study Committee of Colorado, including May, the outgoing minority leader.

UPDATE: The following is the three-sentence statement that Mike May issued announcing his decision to “delay” his retirement:

“Today I have made the difficult decision to temporarily delay my retirement from the House because of my sense of duty to the members of the Republican caucus. With the possibility that outside influences may have attempted to interfere with the leadership election, and the reality of a delayed election, I do not feel that now would be an appropriate time to leave.

“I will remain the representative of House District 44 and will continue to serve as minority leader until this situation has been resolved, as long as that may take.”…