September 07, 2012 11:00 PM UTC

Tipton's Unfortunate Water-Exporter Fundraiser

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Matt Hildner reports:

Congressional candidate Sal Pace on Thursday criticized his opponent’s association with a San Luis Valley rancher who unsuccessfully tried to ship water from the region in the mid-1990s.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., received a $1,000 donation from Crestone-area rancher Gary Boyce in August 2011, according to Federal Election Commission records.

“Rural Colorado’s water is not for sale,” Pace said in a campaign release…

Here’s a little more about former Baca Ranch owner Gary Boyce, and the controversy that erupted in the late 1990s over Boyce’s ultimately failed attempt to export water from deep underneath the San Luis Valley. From a 1997 Westword feature story on Boyce:

The opposition to [Boyce’s ballot] initiatives included a lengthy list of environmental groups, agriculture organizations, virtually every newspaper in the state and a bipartisan alliance of the state’s politicians. Gubernatorial candidates Gail Schoettler and Bill Owens, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Representative Scott McInnis were just a few of those who claimed Boyce’s measures were an attempt to bankrupt the farmers who opposed his company’s plan to remove and sell water from beneath the valley’s alkali-dusted soil. Boyce, they claimed, was a black-hearted businessman in a Western-cut suit, seeking revenge on the salt-of-the-earth types who had mocked him as a youth and who now fight him in the state’s water courts.

“He’s mad at the potato farmers’ kids because they had a few more dollars to spend than he did when he was a kid,” said Lewis H. Entz, a Republican from Hooper, Colorado, and the District 60 state representative who led the fight against Boyce. “He’s bitter and vindictive. So now he’s gonna get even with us spud farmers come hell or high water. It’s a personal deal with him,” added Entz…

To Entz, the fact that Boyce got these measures on the state ballot in the first place was a pillaging of the state’s political system, proof that money can buy a button under the fingers of Colorado voters. “It’s the worst abuse of the ballot-initiatives process that I’ve ever seen,” Entz says. “It’s the first time an individual company has had enough money to put issues on the ballot to destroy the economy of the San Luis Valley.”

And Boyce says it won’t be the last… [Pols emphasis]

Gary Boyce’s ballot measures to penalize San Luis Valley farmers opposed to his water export plans failed miserably at the ballot box in 1998, after the plans themselves were defeated in the state legislature. Ultimately, the ranchlands Boyce had wanted to pump water out from under were bought by the Nature Conservancy and incorporated into Baca Wildlife Refuge.

In addition to the $1,000 donation from Boyce to Rep. Scott Tipton, the Chieftain reports that Boyce hosted a fundraiser for Tipton in June of 2011 at the Brown Palace in Denver–presumably, many more donations than just this $1,000 can then be attributed at least in part to Boyce. And while Tipton may not have held Boyce’s hand back in 1998 when Boyce tried to export this water, Pace spokesman Chad Obermiller makes an unassailable point:

“We’ve never asked anyone that’s tried to dry up the San Luis Valley to host a fundraiser for us,” he said. [Pols emphasis]

Like John McCain can tell you, never ever mess with Colorado’s “water buffaloes.”