Sen. Norma Anderson – the Colorado General Assembly’s resident historian and rules maven – resigned her seat on Tuesday, leaving the post one year before her term expired.
Anderson, a moderate Republican from Lakewood, has served in the statehouse for 19 years and is one of the last lawmakers who was first elected before voters imposed term limits in 1990.
“I will miss a lot of the people, and I love the game,” Anderson said. “I love the game, the free-for-all and counting the votes and the debate.”
Anderson, 73, said she has been considering resigning for a year and plans to spend more time with her family. She has three children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Last year, Anderson was a leading Republican supporter of Referendums C and D – the ballot measures that called for letting the state keep more tax revenue and boost spending. Referendum C passed and D failed on Nov. 1.
Her support for those proposals was vintage Anderson: It was a hard-fought bipartisan compromise wrangled with arm-twisting and tough-talking.
She was effective because she knew history and the rules of making new laws, said Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Jefferson County.
“She had an institutional memory that will probably not be equaled thanks to term limits,” Fitz-Gerald said.
Anderson, who sported an elephant pin on her lapel Tuesday, describes herself as a proud Republican and an old-school politician who preferred making deals to driving wedges between Coloradans for political benefits.
“When you’re doing the state’s business, it’s what’s best for the state, not what’s best for Norma or the party,” she said. “(Former House Speaker) Bev Bledsoe taught me a lesson. He said if you do what’s best for the state, it’s what’s best for the party.”
She said the style has changed in recent years.
“It’s much more partisan than it used to be,” she said, “and I’m one that works with all sides. I try to create solutions instead of conflicts.”
Still, Anderson could play hardball politics. She had an instrumental role in the controversial congressional redistricting measure that Republicans pushed through the statehouse in the final days of the 2003 session.
“That was the stupidest thing,” she said. “I really didn’t want to do it. But I was majority leader, and I had to do it. I mean, that was my job. I bit my tongue and gritted my teeth and did it, but I didn’t like it. I thought it was the wrong thing to do.”
Former Republican Senate President John Andrews, a key architect of that effort, recalled that Anderson was a key supporter of the proposal, but he added that her skills no longer may match the current system.
“Sen. Anderson was the consummate legislative professional,” Andrews said. “By the will of the voters with term limits, we are now in an era of citizen legislators, not professional politicians. New times require a new style.”
A special vacancy committee is expected to meet Saturday to appoint her successor.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
