Maine Republicans must not have gotten the memo about how the Taxpayer Bill of Rights is not only bad policy &tstr; it is bad politics. In my state of Colorado &tstr; the only state to have enacted TABOR&tstr; the GOP had to learn the hard way.


Our legislature lost the Republican majority in 2004 for the first time in forty-four years; the problems with TABOR were front and center during that election and several Republican incumbents who supported TABOR lost their elections.


Furthermore, the Republican governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, who is now appearing in a pro-TABOR ad in Maine, has been a strong TABOR supporter &tstr; earning him major kudos within national conservative circles and even consideration for a possible presidential bid. But when he did the responsible thing in 2005 and endorsed a state referendum to suspend TABOR for five years in order to allow the state to avoid a major fiscal crisis, he was called a traitor by the Wall Street Journal and attacked by national conservative organizations.


The pundits who abandoned Gov. Owens did not have to face the reality of an unrealistic budget formula and its impact on education, prisons, transportation and health care. It is easy to be ideologically rigid when you are not accountable to anyone. Gov. Owens did the right thing but he paid a political price for it.


TABOR, and the need to suspend it, has caused serious and lasting damage to the Republican Party in Colorado.


The conservative flank in the GOP turned on Gov. Owens, publicly opposing the suspension of TABOR, while the business community, traditionally very strong GOP supporters, joined the governor and led a huge coalition supporting the TABOR suspension. As a result, several Republicans who fought against the suspension are estranged from their natural base of support. In fact, many business organizations have publicly endorsed the Democratic candidate for governor this year. It is a distinct possibility that Colorados government will be under complete Democrat leadership for the first time in over four decades due to the TABOR split in our party.


Gov. Owens pro-TABOR ad in Maine suggests that he may be more concerned with restoring his credibility with the right wing of the Republican Party than with warning Maine Republicans about the fiscal and political consequences of TABOR.


In other states where TABOR proposals have been pushed this year, Republicans wisely stayed in sync with their business leaders and opposed it. The Republican governor in Nebraska, and Republican candidates for governor in Michigan, Nevada and Oregon have all announced their opposition to TABOR. In Ohio, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ken Blackwell, has had trouble in his campaign as a result of having championed a TABOR-like initiative.


If TABOR passes on Nov. 7 in Maine, Republicans who have publicly endorsed it will, sooner or later, regret having done so.

Mark Larson is Republican State Representative from Cortez, Colorado