The New York Times-20080125-Colorado Lawmaker Censured for Kicking
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Colorado Lawmaker Censured for Kicking
In the week leading up to his first day on the job, State Representative Douglas Bruce, a Republican, got into a lengthy dispute with the Democratic speaker of the House over the time of his swearing in.
On the day he took office, Jan. 14, Mr. Bruce did something more contentious. He delivered a swift kick to the knee of a photographer for The Rocky Mountain News who was snapping his picture during a ceremonial prayer. Mr. Bruce refused to apologize. The paparazzi, he defiantly told members of the House, would not leave him alone.
The kick was captured by a television camera, splayed across the Internet and led to a legislative inquiry that ended Thursday when Mr. Bruce, an antitax crusader from Colorado Springs who was appointed by his party to fill a vacancy, became the first member of the Colorado General Assembly to face censure.
The 62-to-1 vote in favor of censure came as state Republicans appeared upset over the entire situation.
What I find particularly disturbing is that after the incident, Representative Bruce failed to take responsibility for his own action, said Representative Frank McNulty, a Republican from Highlands Ranch. Mr. McNulty is a member of a legislative ethics committee that unanimously recommended censure.
At a committee hearing last week, Mr. Bruce described the kick as a nudge intended to restore order in the House chambers that, he contended, was being disrupted by the news media crowd. He said he had warned the photographer, Javier Manzano, to stop taking his picture during the prayer.
In local news coverage of the incident, Mr. Bruce is seen standing with his head bowed and eyes closed. At one point he opens his eyes, appears to grow distressed and says, Do not do that again! before stomping down on the knee of Mr. Manzano, who was crouched at his feet.
This wasn't a field goal kick, Mr. Bruce told the committee. This was, you know, putting the bottom of my shoe against his exposed knee.
Mr. Manzano told legislators he was simply trying to capture an image of Mr. Bruce during a spiritual moment.
I did not foresee him losing his composure and kicking me, Mr. Manzano said at the hearing.
The situation harks back to a day when Western statehouses were halls of brawling, boozing and ill repute. Some legislatures, like that of neighboring New Mexico, have not entirely shed that reputation. But though political divisions can be bitter here, modern-day Colorado lawmakers have mostly remained civil toward one another.
The manager of library services for the Colorado Joint Legislative Library, Molly Otto, said she found no evidence of any public censure dating back to 1881, the oldest records she could locate. The General Assembly was first convened in 1876.
Still, veteran lawmakers and members of the press corps here say the General Assembly used to be decidedly more rough and tumble, with a steady supply of beer and liquor available to legislators and occasional shenanigans and practical jokes.
On the last day of the session, the air would be perfumed with alcohol, said Fred Brown, a retired Capitol bureau chief for The Denver Post.
That all ended in 1972 with the passage of the state's sunshine laws, which imposed stricter oversight of public officials, Mr. Brown said.
The hallmark in Colorado is that you leave your debates at the door, and you might still be debating at the door, but you don't try and isolate yourself, said Jerry Kopel, a former Democratic state representative from Denver. But Bruce really did start off on the wrong foot.
Throughout it all, much to the exasperation of fellow Republicans, Mr. Bruce has maintained that he had done nothing wrong. In an interview this week, he insisted that he was the victim of a media conspiracy to provoke him and that legislators had singled him out because he led a campaign to pass a constitutional amendment in 1992 that requires voter approval of tax increases and limits state growth.
I regret the whole thing happened, he said. They are wasting all this time labeling me as a belligerent wild man. That's the furthest thing from the truth.
Mr. Bruce has posted a seven-page rebuttal of the censure, called The Nudge, on his Web site (www.douglasbruce.com).
Just before he was censured, Mr. Bruce gave a speech on the House floor comparing himself to the main character in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which he said Jimmy Stewart plays a rookie senator who is hounded by the press until he physically attacks them.
Mr. Bruce's colleagues were unmoved.
You're not Jimmy Stewart, responded Representative Al White, Republican of Hayden. This is not a 1939 movie. This is today. Your actions were wrong.
[Illustration]PHOTO: State Representative Douglas Bruce during a Colorado House prayer. A moment later Mr. Bruce kicked the photographer. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAVIER MANZANO/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS,VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS)