Spate of setbacks has Douglas Bruce at a crossroads

An exit interview for Douglas Bruce?

This city's most famous political figure is talking about stepping away from the limelight and letting someone else fight the small-government war he has waged in Colorado for 20 years.

Beaten in an August primary, Bruce is less than two weeks from completing a rocky half-term in the Legislature representing House District 15, which straddles the North Powers Boulevard corridor.

On Nov. 4, Colorado Springs voters extended Bruce's losing streak by defeating two anti-tax measures he proposed for the city charter. Bruce's name was not on the ballot, but the campaign theme of the opponents of the two city measures was "Stop Doug Bruce From Destroying Our City."

"The ballot question wasn't ‘Do you like Doug Bruce's personality?'" the 59-year-old said in an interview the day after the vote. "But they made it a referendum on that."

After that slap in the face, Bruce was still examining his options as the year was drawing to a close.

"Am I dropping out, am I leaving town, am I sulking? No, no, no," he said in mid-December. "I still feel a sense of civic responsibility and a desire for involvement in public policy issues."

But there was no denying his reluctance to gird for more battles as champion of the beleaguered taxpayer.

"Why would I want to force myself on people who are then going to insult me for trying to help them?" he asked, offering his lance to the next Don Quixote. If he finds a taker, he said, "then I get to stand on the sidelines and encourage them to go charge into a brick wall of public indifference."

Bruce has voiced such opinions after previous defeats. But never has he suffered so complete a repudiation.

Bursting onto the scene
Bruce first made a splash in 1992, when Colorado voters approved the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, the landmark law he wrote that imposed a revenue cap on Colorado's state and local governments, essentially preventing public spending from growing faster than inflation and the population.

Since then, he has spent much of his time defending TABOR from legislative end-runs and trying to stem the flow of municipalities that have voted to "de-Bruce."

He's won some and he's lost some. But he has never lost his abrasive style.

Even so, 2008 began with his elevation from the El Paso County Commission to a seat in the state Legislature - seemingly a position more proportional to his influence on public policy in Colorado.

Appointed by an assembly of District 15 Republicans in December 2007 to complete the two-year term of Bill Cadman, who was moving to the state Senate, Bruce wasted no time before irking his House colleagues by failing to show up for his swearing-in.

He said cutting short his service by a few days would allow him to skirt the state's eight-year term limits law and make him eligible to run for re-election in 2014.

He didn't even make it to the 2008 election.

In January, on his first day in the Legislature, Bruce kicked a news photographer. He called it a "nudge" and refused to apologize. He became the only member ever to be censured by the Colorado House of Representatives.

In February, the GOP leadership removed him from the State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee after he refused to support a resolution honoring veterans. He regards such measures as frivolous.

Then in April, speaking on the floor of the House, he called Mexican farmworkers "illiterate peasants," earning him a new round of rebukes from both sides of the aisle.

Later that month, a legislative aide accused him of sexual harassment. No official action was ever taken, suggesting that an investigation, handled in secret by the House leadership, had found the complaint to be without merit.

But the cumulative damage was done. The El Paso County Republican Party threw its support behind Mark Waller, a 39-year-old lawyer challenging Bruce. In August, Waller won the Republican primary, mainly by vowing that he wouldn't behave like Bruce.

Then came the defeat of Amendments 200 and 201, which would have barred Colorado Springs from creating enterprises, like the one created to collect a mandatory fee for stormwater drainage projects. Bruce calls them taxes, and according to TABOR, taxes must be approved by the voters.

"I just wish that the people had understood what a dangerous precedent they're setting for the city to call every tax a fee," he said.
Bruce claimed some vindication in the success of the anti-tax side on a variety of proposed amendments to the state constitution, including one that would have eliminated TABOR, that were on the Nov. 4 ballot.

"I took public positions and was involved in campaigns on nine issues, and my position prevailed on seven out of nine," he said. "So that's pretty good."

He refused to acknowledge the other two - 200 and 201 - as a personal defeat.

"I kept a couple as a souvenir," he said, trying to make light of the "Stop Doug Bruce From Destroying Our City" lawn signs that sprinkled the landscape. But later his words suggested that the personal attack had left a mark.

"They're doing their best to libel and smear me, making ridiculous accusations," he said. "I guess what's next is they'll say, ‘Vote No on 200 and 201, Douglas Bruce has AIDS' or ‘You should be on the other side because Doug Bruce is an anarchist and a terrorist.'

"How am I destroying the city?" he asked. "There were 35,000 signatures to put this on the ballot, and I was allowing people to have the right to vote, to keep their own money until they gave it to the city in a lawful election, and that's somehow destroying the city.

"I had hopes that the electorate would have the dignity and common sense not to reward such a preposterous campaign theme," Bruce said. "But I was wrong."

As ornery as ever
"What is wrong with my image?" Bruce asked, his tone clearly indicating that he thinks the correct answer ought to be "nothing."

Yet he understands that he has become a bête noire to many Coloradans.

"If I come up with a proposal that encapsulates motherhood, apple pie and the flag, they're going to say, ‘Oh, vote no, it'll destroy Colorado because it's written by Douglas Bruce,'" he said.

He says he doesn't care whether he's a pariah. "You're assuming that the important thing is to get something done," he said when reminded that he can't get anything done if he has no allies.

"I don't care about the mainstream," he said. "If we have a big tent, then we don't stand for anything."

So where does he go from here?

Elective office appears to be off the table, at least in the near term. Bruce has burned his bridges to many of his constituents in the districts he served in the House and as a county commissioner, and the fate of 200 and 201 suggests he'd also have trouble running for the Colorado Springs City Council.

If he wanted to run.

"I would tear up a $100,000 check if somebody gave it to me to run for City Council," he said.

Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera chuckled when told of Bruce's remark. "Since he hasn't really been in support of what the majority of City Council has been wanting to do since I've been on City Council, he's probably not a good fit," Rivera said.

But the mayor was confident that Bruce isn't going away.

"I think Doug Bruce will continue to be Doug Bruce," Rivera said. "He will continue to work toward achieving his philosophy of government, whatever that is at the time, and he'll use the petition system to do that. And frankly, he's more effective putting stuff on the ballot as an individual citizen than getting things done as a county commissioner or a state legislator."

No Assembly required
Clearly, Bruce doesn't need an elected office to be effective.

In more than two decades of political activity in Colorado, he has only been in elected office four years.

"In January I will not have a political office," he said. "That doesn't mean I am a shrinking violet."

"I am going to continue to try to lead a moral life and to be a good citizen," Bruce said. "Part of being a good citizen means that you should take an interest in society and government. So I'm still going to take an interest. I'm not going to go to a cave."
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Contact the writer: 476-1654 or dean.toda@gazette.com