“The people who work here, serve here and visit here all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect at all times. What we see at the national level with partisan politics and personal attacks is not what we want to see in Colorado,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie in her opening day speech this week.
Minority Leader Mike Lynch echoed the sentiment: “May we also never forget we are colleagues and individuals with way more in common as humans and Americans than we have differences as members of a political party.”
To reduce acrimony, the leadership is creating new rules for promote civil debate.
McCluskie recently reprimanded state Rep. Elisabeth Epps in a letter for her “significantly disruptive…disrespectful behaviors” during the 2023 special session and warned her that repeated divisive behavior would result in additional disciplinary action.
During a debate in the fall session, Epps joined jeering pro-Palestinian protesters in the House gallery and yelled at other lawmakers while they were speaking at the podium. In response, the leadership pulled Epps from the coveted House Judiciary Committee. The formal admonishment may have worked. While pro-Palestinian protesters again disrupted House proceedings, this time on opening day, Epps was not among them.
Epps was the second lawmaker to receive a formal rebuke.
Republican Scott Bottoms was reprimanded last August for making “deeply offensive” remarks about Democratic lawmakers. Two other state House members, Ruby Dickson and Said Sharbini, quit in December, citing a vitriolic environment as among the reasons.
Maintaining decorum has always been a challenge. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first Manual of Parliamentary Practice for Congress to create a civil environment in the chambers. The guide admonishes members against “reviling, nipping, or unmannerly words against a particular member.” Still, the rules get violated in words if not in tone.
As Will Rogers once noted, “They always say ‘gentleman’ in there. But the tone…it would sound right if they come right out and said ‘Does the coyote from Maine yield?’”
Why is maintaining decorum, or at least trying, so important in a legislative body? Because fighting words sometimes lead to fighting.
When I was a congressional staffer giving Capitol tours, I regularly mentioned the 1856 caning of Republican abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner by proslavery Democrat Rep. Preston Brooks in the Senate chamber. Brooks’ actions were unconscionable — the beating almost killed Sumner — but there was a backstory of which I was then unaware. During a debate days earlier over the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sumner belittled its sponsors, calling Sen. Stephen Douglas a “noisome, squat and nameless animal” and suggesting Sen. Andrew Butler, Brooks’ relative, had taken a harlot, the institution of slavery, as his mistress. He also mocked Brooks, who had recently had a stroke, for his slurred speech and limp.
After the incident, Sumner gained martyr status in the North, while Brooks became a celebrity among Southerners who mailed him canes. The episode presaged an all-out brawl on the House floor two years later. The fight started with insults and escalated to fisticuffs, with a couple dozen congressmen joining in the melee. The incidents both reflected and roused public division between North and South.
President Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, modeled strength and grace. He hated slavery, calling it a “monstrous injustice,” and worked first to limit its scope and then to end it as an institution.
While some leading abolitionist speakers like Sumner could be excessively vitriolic, Lincoln spoke out against the inhumanity of slavery without dehumanizing his opponents. One newspaper reporter said of him, “His language is pure and respectful, he attacks no man’s character or motives but fights with arguments.”
He set an example. Let’s see if the Colorado lawmakers can follow it.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
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