Beauprez’s anti-gun past may come to haunt him

When asked about the Second Amendment, Bob Beauprez has a tendency of only talking about Governor John Hickenlooper’s policies.

So what about Bob?

A mere 14 years ago, Beauprez and and former Governor Bill Ritter were on the Amendment 22 band

Bob Beauprez flip-flops on 2nd Amendment.

wagon, which was a state-wide referendum calling for special restrictions for gun shows. These included an instant background check for certain sales that take place at a gun show, even if not required had the same sale occurred not at the gun show.

Amendment 22 passed with 70 percent of the vote.

During the 2006 contest between Beauprez and Ritter; Beauprez claimed Ritter loved gun control, whereas he supported the Second Amendment. This claim was the basis of one of the Both-ways-Bob ads which mocked Beauprez for flip-flopping on the Second Amendment.

The Independence Institute defended Beauprez’s mistake, by claiming the error was due to poor journalism by the Denver Post.

However, going back a bit further, when Beauprez was Colorado Republican State Chairman, he sent out a letter to GOP legislators calling for the party uniting on new gun control laws in the aftermath of the Columbine Shooting.

At the time, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners responded to the message by saying, “Gun rights supporters are told, in essence, to sit down, shut up, and take their medicine.”

Beauprez constantly called for closing the “loopholes in our gun laws.” The Owens Administration, working with Chairman Beauprez, crafted legislation to reign-in gun shows, proposed mandatory gun locks, and moved to disarm Coloradoans between the ages of 18 and 21.

Even Congressman Tom Tancredo voted for an assault weapons ban and a ban on magazines, along with making a few incriminating statements after the school shooting.  

The strategy, in the wake of Columbine, was to compromise a little on gun control, in order to maintain control of all three branches of state government. The results of the 2000 General Election saw the Republicans lose the State Senate to the Democrats.

The question now turns, has Beauprez become a hard-line Second Amendment kind of guy?

Recently, the question of gun control arose during an Aspen gathering. Aspen is not necessarily the friendliest of towns for gun advocates. Beauprez, playing to the audience said, if elected, and if a (gun control) repeal comes to me, I’d sign it.

Beauprez further stated that people with mental illnesses shouldn’t have easy access to guns.

Sounds a bit like the old Beauprez?

Perhaps compromising on some aspects makes political sense in some areas of strategy, but once you go down the road of giving an inch, before you know it, you’ve given a mile.

To be fair to Beauprez, he has claimed that a propensity to commit crime must be an element of limiting the Constitutional rights of someone who is mentally ill.

If society knew who had a propensity to commit a crime before a crime occurred, then why wouldn’t we create a pre-crimes police force, as illustrated in the film Minority Report to stop all evils before they occur?

Beauprez has also failed to define who would be legally classified as mentally ill? Does one visit to a psychologist mean a citizen could be pre-empted from their Second Amendment rights?

Prior to endorsing Beauprez this week, State Senator Greg Brophy, had declared both Beauprez and Tancredo weak on the Second Amendment. Yet in his endorsement, Brophy steered clear of gun talk, saying Beauprez had the best odds of winning.

Perhaps being soft on the Second Amendment is the key to winning the even-split urban-7th Congressional District twice, but for voters in rural Colorado the difference between the incumbent and Beauprez regarding gun control is a shady haze of grey.

All hope is not lost.

Republicans Mike Kopp and Scott Gessler, both have served America in the Army and both believe the Second Amendment is a right not to be compromised.

The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners feels the same way and has given Kopp and Gessler the two-thumbs-up.

Defeating Hickenlooper will be tough, but victory only comes if there is a candidate who can draw distinctions, not blur the differences over key policy issues, such as the Second Amendment. 

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Matthew Soper, Letter to the Editor, Beauprez’s past may come back to haunt him, Delta County Independent, May 21, 2014, at A2.

Matthew Soper, Letter to the Editor, Beauprez evaluated on the Second Amendment, Gunnison Country Times, May 21, 2014, at A14.

Colorado Primary 2010: Post Election Analysis

Post election analysis are akin to Monday morning quarterbacking, but the opportunity to debrief and objectively look at what were strengths and weaknesses of certain political campaigns in Colorado’s 2010 Republican Primary Election is worthwhile. The majority of the candidates who won were novices to the grand political arena, backed largely by the right-wing movement known collectively as the “Tea Party,” a term conjuring thoughts of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, in which some 342 chest of East India Co. tea were destroyed by protesters, dressed as Mohawk Indians, who were against a series of taxes imposed on the colonists by Great Britain, including a tax on tea.

The current Tea Party movement is against the entire Washington establishment, regardless of political party, though ideologically it is more aligned with the Libertarian Party, than with the Republican Party. The mantra of “change” started during the 2008 US Presidential Election has sparked a revolutionary style movement from the grass-roots level and the message seems to be clear: No more individuals who are part of the establishment, no more career politicians, no more candidates with experience in the public sector, along with favouring fewer taxes, a balanced budget, and less government intrusion into the daily lives of citizens. Followers of the movement tend to be highly nationalistic and nostalgic about the good old days. Former 2008 GOP Presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is considered the uniting figure-head of the Tea Party movement.

So what happened in Colorado in August 2010? An election change, while subtle had a major impact on campaign strategy. This election was completely mail-ballot, which meant a campaign had to adjust political marketing tactics accordingly. Voters also tended to vote in three waves (early, middle and near election day), a candidate like Ray Scott managed to capitalize on these voting waves by sending out three mail pieces, one was a get to you letter, the next was a positive/negative comparison with his opponent, Bob Hislop, and the third was a Political Action Committee (PAC) funded mail piece which aggressively attacked Hislop. These mail pieces were very effective and managed to give voters a sense of who he is/was, on his terms, and put his name in front of the voters at the same time they had their ballots.

Bob Hislop on the other had had three times the campaign budget of Scott, but took an entirely different strategy. Hislop invested in radio and television ads and later online and in-print advertising. While effective to raise his name ID in the target market that listens to certain radio stations, watches certain TV programming, or reads certain newspapers, but failed to consider the entire voter-universe, that being all registered voters in Colorado House District 54. This is the same reason why Doug Atchley defeated Vern McCracken for Delta County Commission, district one. Atchley out-raised and out-spent McCracken, but Atchley invested in four direct mail-pieces: one to the county assembly delegates, another inviting folks for a regional meet & greet / coffee, a third the day the ballots were received, and a fourth hitting the middle wave of voters. Vern opted to walk precincts, use robo calls, and radio ads, rather than sending a single direct mail piece. Atchley won with nearly 70% of the vote. This is also the reason why Greenwood Village Mayor, Nancy Sharpe, defeated former 4-term Colorado House Representative Lorry Clapp for Arapahoe County Commissioner. Sharpe had the good fortune of having Clapp’s campaign manager caught on video-tape by the police having her young son steal signs and then bringing them back to her car. Clapp picked up a bizarre sympathy gain on Election Day, which is worthy to note.

Jane Norton, a former Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, lost to Ken Buck, the Weld County District Attorney. Norton became blamed as being part of the establishment, while Buck early on touted himself as the Tea Party candidate. Both Norton and Buck used direct mail pieces, but while Jane’s were clever, Buck’s were hard hitting, liking Norton to tax hikes, failed policies, and wasteful spending. These mail pieces, radio ads, TV ads, online ads, and print ads started early and continued to build. Norton first began attacking US Senator Michael Bennet, whom she assumed she would be facing in November. After State Senator Josh Penry dropped out of the governor’s race, Norton tapped Penry to be her campaign manager, a move which stunned many regional political junkies. The change in strategy occurred too late, the damage was sticking, because the attacks had been used long enough and hard enough that by Election Day, many voters believed the fallacies about Norton to be true. Buck made two off-the-wall comments in the late part of the election, which Norton capitalized on to gain lost ground, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time in the game to score the needed percentage points in order to squeak out a victory which had been winnable back in January.

Dan Maes, an Evergreen, Colorado businessman, defeated former six term Colorado congressman, Scott McInnis by one percentage point. Maes, who claimed the title of Tea Party favourite was never suppose to win, however McInnis was attacked relentlessly by the media, who alleged he plagiarized multiple documents, including portions of a series of 26 papers he wrote on water policy, a line in a Washington Post editorial and a sentence in a Congressional House speech. Insiders claim the attack was leaked to the media by Maes’ camp and given the Denver media’s affinity towards their mayor, John Hickenlooper (who is the Democrat running for governor), it is no surprise they ran with it. Maes was fined $34,000 for illegal transfer of campaign monies, something which would be called boarder-line money laundering in the business world, but received a plea down $17,500 fine, which is still one of the largest rendered in Colorado history. McInnis defeated himself through the handling of the plagiarism scandal, as he went into hiding, then continued to make it worse for himself by placing the blame on an 82 year old, whom he had hired to do research for the water papers, not to mention failure to communicate with those involved to nip the story, before it could snowball. Maes is being preasured to leave the race by former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who is running for governor on the American Constitutional Party ticket and is polling at a higher level than Maes. Top donors and party officials would also like to see Maes replaced with a much more electable candidate like Josh Penry, Mark Hillman, or the founder of ReMax, though serious talk cannot begin until Maes resigns from running, a move he said he will not take.

The victories indicate the Tea Party has clout in the Republican Party and that certain party members want to see completely new faces in politics. While Tea Party candidates were on the whole, terrible fundraisers, they were tremendously helped by PACs and 527s which funnelled millions of dollars into defeating opponents of the Tea Party. The real test will be in November 2010, when the general voting population will be asked to evaluate a Tea Party candidate v. a Democrat one.