In media appearances and at townhall events, Colorado Republicans are reflecting on the recent legislative session which saw bills addressing housing, property taxes, and gun control.
“Even being 19 Republicans to 46 Democrats in the House, we came in with more leverage, I feel like, than we did last session,” said House Minority Leader Rep. Rose Pugliese (R-El Paso County) during a May 10 appearance on the Mandy Connell show.
“The tool of the minority is delay,” said Sen. Mark Baisley (R-Roxborough Park), during a Monday evening townhall in Larkspur. “Fifty-nine bills had died on the calendar … so what we, in our filibustering or delaying, when we were trying to get bills pushed off to the other calendar, if they’re not heard by … midnight on the last day. Then they’re just done.”
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Paul Lundeen (R-Colorado Springs) discussed their strategy during a Monday appearance on the Richard Randall show. “We keep track of the list of bills that we think are bad, either for the economy or they offend our principles,” he said. “And then we set out to kill as many as we can.”
The bills they can’t kill, they try to modify. “The Senate tends to be a little more open to moderating some of the things, like on the gun bills that pass — it’s terrible that they passed, but we’re able to amend them on the Senate side in ways that the House just wouldn’t even comprehend, because they, just have a tremendous amount of disrespect,” said Sen. Kevin Van Winkle (R-Castle Rock), during Monday’s townhall. Van Winkle is one of many incumbent Republicans declining to run for reelection, instead pursuing a Douglas County Commissioner seat.
Other Republicans were more direct in their criticism of the distinctions between the House and the Senate. “The House is controlled by Marxist mentality,” said Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-Colorado Springs) during an appearance on Richard Randall last week. “It’s a Marxist, anti-child regime that has taken over.”
Bottoms went on to claim as he has done before, without evidence, that Democrats are planning to lower the age of consent. “There was plenty of stuff that was just attacking children, setting up a future for pedophilic behavior,” he said. “I know people think I’m exaggerating when I’m saying this, but I’m not. I anticipate within the probably next session, that maybe within two years, that somebody is going to try to present a bill that makes the age of sexual consent that will be 12 years old.”
Van Winkle also accused Democrats of supporting pedophilia, due to Sen. Julie Gonzales’ (D-Denver) bill to revise sex offender sentencing. “There was a sex offender early release program that was tried, and this is again an effort we see oftentimes, on the Judiciary Committee where I spent 120 hours this year, is trying to just normalize sexual attraction that forever has been just taboo and off-limits, trying to kind of normalize the sex offenders and trying to normalize that normal sexual practice,” he said.
Accusations of pedophilia against Democrats led to some of the more acrimonious moments of the legislative session. “I was in a Twitter war, so the Democrats held my bill hostage, which is unconstitutional,” said Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton) during Monday’s townhall. “Now they’re going to get sued.”
Bradley’s Twitter war escalated after a bill she cosponsored with Rep. Regina English (D-Colorado Springs), that would have set a mandatory minimum sentence for various crimes related to child prostitution, was killed in committee. Bradley said she has been consulting with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom regarding a possible lawsuit.
Bradley also criticized Democrats for not allocating enough funding to school safety. “It’s almost as if more school shootings would help with an agenda of ‘guns are not safe,’” she said. “And so whose kids get to take that bullet?”
