Oil companies, casinos give big money to ballot campaigns

The big money has started to come out in Colorado’s brewing ballot initiative battles.

Two groups on Thursday reported raising more than $3 million apiece last month for their respective campaigns from deep-pockets companies.

The group Coloradans for a Stable Economy, which is fighting a proposed initiative to effectively raise taxes on the oil and gas industry, reported receiving $3.6 million in just five donations. All of the money comes from energy companies, with heavyweights Chevron, EnCana and Williams each shelling out $1 million.

Meanwhile, the group Coloradans for Sensible Solutions, which is backing an initiative to raise the maximum bet at Colorado casinos to $100, reported raising about $3.1 million. Most of that comes from various casinos, with Black Hawk’s Isle of Capri Casino contributing $1.5 million.

To put the monthly hauls for both groups into perspective, Gov. Bill Ritter raised about $4.4 million during the entirety of his 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

Both groups share a campaign strategist, local political consultant Rick Reiter. Dan Hopkins, a spokesman for Coloradans for a Stable Economy, said the overlap is merely a coincidence.

Hopkins said the eye-popping fund-raising numbers for his group show just how concerned the energy industry is about the proposal to take away a tax credit worth about $300 million per year.

That amount, Hopkins said, “is considerably more than what the industry is paying to fight it. It’s a huge tax increase.” Hopkins said consumers would ultimately suffer.

George Merritt, spokesman for the group A Smarter Colorado, which backs the initiative, said his group’s fund-raising report will be ready next week, when most campaigns are expected to file their monthly updates.

“It won’t be three-and-a-half million dollars, I can tell you that,” Merritt said of his group’s fund-raising total. “We said from the beginning this will be a David-and-Goliath struggle.”

Late last month, according to state records, the Sierra Club formed a committee also to push for the proposed initiative. The initiative would put the money it generates into a college scholarship program, as well as several roads, habitat protection and clean energy projects.

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