Move Over, Christian Coalition: The New Political Kingmakers

Al Yates, sporting a CSU sweater, leans on one of the famed elm trees that line the oval on the CSU campus in Fort Collins on Thursday, December 27, 2001. (Photo: Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post)

Part 1: The Gang of Four

For more than 40 years, the Colorado legislature was dominated by Republicans. The GOP, rooted in the state’s Wild West libertarianism and backed by local oil magnates, ranchers and corporate chiefs, was synonymous with the Colorado Establishment. The party controlled the state House and Senate since the 1960s, with only brief victories by the Democrats. By 2004, with George W. Bush on his way to carrying the state a second time, the Colorado Republicans seemed invincible. (The Democratic sweep of Congress in 2006 was still years away.)

“There was a mind-set that we couldn’t lose,” says Alan Philp, a Republican strategist in Colorado. “There was a sense that the Democrats didn’t have the resources or potential to take the legislature.”

Then, along came the Gang of Four.

In the early fall of 2004, the state was suddenly flooded with mailings, TV ads and radio spots attacking Republican candidates. Ray Martinez, a popular Republican candidate for the state Senate in Fort Collins, came home one day to find a mailer that showed him peeping into a woman’s bedroom. “Ray Martinez wants to control what goes on in your bedroom,” the pamphlet said, criticizing his staunch pro-life stance. Another mailing portrayed him lounging on the beach in Florida and said he was taking vacations on the taxpayer dime. (As the Fort Collins mayor, he had gone to Florida for a mayors’ conference.)

Other Republican candidates faced similar broadsides. A TV commercial targeting Republican U.S. Representative Marilyn Musgrave showed an overweight blonde in a pink suit stealing a watch from a corpse, picking the pockets of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and dunking a family in toxic waste — highlighting Musgrave’s positions on soldier pay and environmental issues.

[See TV ad below targeting U.S. Rep. Musgrave in the 2004 election.]

Other TV and radio ads accused local Republicans of bowing to extremist ideologues who cared more about pushing a Christian agenda than fixing the state’s more pressing problems like education, health care and jobs.

The messages struck a chord with voters. On November 3, Coloradans handed the GOP a stunning defeat. Martinez and others, who had strong leads before the advertising blitz, were handily defeated. In the Senate, the GOP’s one-vote majority swung to a one-vote Democratic advantage. More surprisingly, the Democrats picked up seven seats in the House, giving them control. It was the first time the Democrats ruled both houses since 1961.
Jared Polis in 2005. (Jerry Cleveland/The Denver Post)

The Republicans had been outspent by three to one in many races. In the Martinez race alone, the opponents spent a record $1 million or more to Martinez’s $350,000. In a state where the GOP had always been the party of the rich and powerful, party leaders scrambled to figure out where all this new, Democratic money was coming from. Campaign filings showed the funds came from four organizations — the Coalition for a Better Colorado, Forward Colorado, Alliance for a Better Colorado and Alliance for Colorado Families. No one had ever heard of the groups, which were all 527s—the lightly regulated advocacy groups that can pour unlimited amounts of money into elections.

Even more surprising was the fact that the vast majority of the funding for the groups came from just four individuals. They were all Coloradans and they were all very rich. Three of them were self-made tech entrepreneurs, and one was the billionaire heiress of a medical-device fortune. While they had all been active in state politics over the years, they had never teamed up to transform an important election.
Tim Gill at his home office in 2004. (Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post)

The Republicans branded them “the Gang of Four,” and accused them of forming a cabal so rich and powerful that they could buy elections. “These four individuals had a huge impact,” Philp told me. “They were very focused, they had a goal and they executed it. There is little doubt that legislators and candidates in the state of Colorado are wary of getting on the wrong side of these folks.”

The Gang included Jared Polis, a 32-year-old dot-com whiz who’s already created and sold several tech companies and has a net worth estimated at more than $200 million.

It included Tim Gill, a former software magnate who’s worth more than $400 million and who’s become the nation’s top funder of gay-rights causes.
Pat Stryker in 2003. (John Epperson/ The Denver Post)

Rounding out the group was Pat Stryker, the billionaire heiress to the Stryker medical-device fortune, and Rutt Bridges, a geophysicist who made his money creating software for oil exploration and had a fortune worth tens of millions.

They came from vastly different backgrounds and ideologies. Yet they united around one big idea—to create greater opportunities for all Coloradans. They wanted more money spent on education, health care and job creation. In contrast to wealthy Republicans, who often advocated less government and lower taxes (especially for the rich), the Gang of Four wanted more public support for the less fortunate.

As Bridges told a local newspaper, “There are reasons as a society we support public functions. We seem to be losing that. There’s this attitude we have to lower taxes and have less government.”

Rutt Bridges in his Denver loft, 2004. (Jerry Cleveland/The Denver Post)

Of course, the members of the Gang of Four were acting partly out of self-interest. Bridges and Polis were both considering a run for higher political office, while Gill, who’s openly gay, had a personal stake in leading the crusade for gay rights.

Yet through their 2004 campaign and their continued efforts, the Gang of Four is trying to create a new kind of rich-man’s politics. Rather than trying to use government to make themselves richer—through lower taxes or special handouts for their businesses—they see government as a tool for more progressive agendas.

While their campaign has gone largely unnoticed beyond Colorado, the Gang of Four may signal a broader, national shift in the politics of the wealthy.

Part 2: Learjet Liberals

Part 3: Nuking the GOP

Part 4: A Band of Brothers

Reprinted from "Richistan: A Journey Through The American Wealth Boom And The Lives of The New Rich" by Robert Frank. Copyright © 2007. Published by Crown Business, a division of Random House, Inc.

Bookmark/Search this post with: