Colorado Fears Boycott Avalanche : More Firms Get Cold Shoulder From Clients

Rebecca Vories was appalled when Colorado voters unexpectedly approved Amendment 2, the measure banning local laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination. But she didn’t figure on the vote affecting her directly.

She figured wrong.

Before the November election, Vories was asked to join a team working on a project for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. Her firm, Infinite Energy, provides marketing and promotions for energy efficient products and environmental programs.

After the election, Vories was notified that she was being excluded from the project. “The feedback I got was that DWP didn’t want me involved because I’m in Colorado,” Vories said. For a small, niche business, she added, “every contract counts. This hurts a lot.”

Vories is not hurting alone, even though enforcement of the law has been stalled by a state court injunction. While the wrath of organized boycotters and individual protesters was vented immediately on Colorado’s convention and tourism industries, other businesses increasingly are feeling their sting.

New York gay activists have announced a harassment campaign against a Boulder magazine subscription clearinghouse and a “tea party” to dump Celestial Seasonings teas into the East River. Mo Siegel, founder and chief executive of the herbal tea maker, has said an effective New York boycott could severely injure the Boulder-based company.

In dollars, the economic impact of the passage of Amendment 2 is insignificant so far. Boycott Colorado--the organization urging the nation to ostracize the state and its businesses until Amendment 2 is repealed or overturned--says the verified economic damage to date is $25 million. That sum is not even a gnat on the hide of a $75-billion state economy.

Even so, any loss of business is a source of dismay for a state that was largely left out of the boom of the 1980s and that, until November’s election, was being touted as one of the nation’s brightest economic lights.

“It’s definitely been a setback to what was remarkable progress,” said John Huggins, director of Mayor Wellington Webb’s Denver Economic Development Office.

Moreover, executives are painfully aware that today’s ripple may be tomorrow’s tidal wave. How many conventions now in the planning will go elsewhere? How many companies considering relocation in Colorado will scratch the state off the list? How many contractors will turn to suppliers somewhere else? How many performers simply will not find time for a Colorado appearance?

A poll of its members by the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce, the largest business organization in Colorado, found that one-third of the respondents believe that their own firms will experience a direct negative impact from the passage of Amendment 2. Two-thirds believe that the state’s economy and image will suffer.

Business leaders say the fires of protest have been banked, somewhat, by the Jan. 15 Denver District Court injunction, which postponed implementation of Amendment 2 until the Colorado Supreme Court determines its constitutionality. But nobody anticipates a return to normalcy until the amendment is thrown out.

In the meantime, the initiative’s surprise passage--pollsters had predicted that it would fail--has plunged the business community here into a sort of regional crash course in political activism and damage control. Individually and collectively, formally and informally, firms are hammering out strategies to combat what they say is a grossly distorted image of Colorado as the “hate state” and to minimize the economic fallout that image is spawning:

* Dozens of Denver-area business and community groups have combined forces to form the Colorado Alliance for Restoring Equality, or CARE, a nonprofit coalition committed to overturning Amendment 2. Among other actions, the group is planning to hold town meetings on the issue statewide.

* Companies that didn’t have non-discrimination policies covering sexual orientation are adopting them, and companies that did are letting their position be known.

* Ski areas, those snowy magnets for out-of-state winter visitors, have undertaken an array of measures--from passing out fact sheets in Vail’s shops and hotels to posting non-discrimination messages at the base of Aspen, Snowmass and Buttermilk mountains.

* A handful of organizations have taken out advertising to communicate their message to selected markets. The town of Aspen and Aspen Skiing Co., the Denver Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts all have advertised their messages to key audiences.

* One of the region’s largest public relations firms has donated services to public and private organizations in need of strategic direction.

“We advise people to look at their corporate values and to take a strong look at whether their own personnel policies need to be revised,” says Bob Schenkein, president of Schenkein/Sherman Public Relations. Training is urged for employees who handle telephone calls from the public, with briefings and scripts provided for that purpose.

* A computer software company has provided $1 million in seed money to establish a foundation that will underwrite projects to educate people about cultural diversity.

Amendment 2 is by no means being felt uniformly across industries or across the state. Denver, which draws a large convention business, has been harder hit than Grand Junction, which has little. Durable goods manufacturers, whose business relationships tend to be of long standing, are taking less flak than consumer companies, where loyalties are more fleeting.

Perhaps the most visible activism has come in high technology, a field where progressive employment practices are common.

At Quark Inc., a producer of computer software, Chairman Tim Gill responded to the passage of Amendment 2 by asking the company’s vendors and financial institutions to institute policies barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation--or risk losing Quark’s business.

“It wasn’t really ethical for me to say, ‘I won’t discriminate against my gay employees,’ and then go and do business with someone who would fire an employee for being gay,” Gill explained.

Only one of the company’s 50-plus vendors resisted. The sole objector, a supporter of Amendment 2, was terminated as a supplier. Quark is also funding the yet-unnamed foundation to promote understanding of life in a diverse society.

Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.--a subsidiary of Ziff Communications and one of the world’s largest producers of computer magazines--has expressed growing reluctance to move an estimated 1,200 employees from the East Coast to a Denver suburb because of the passage of Amendment 2.

In a memo to employees, Chairman William Ziff Jr. termed the measure “damaging and wrong.” He added: “Our consideration of Colorado will be affected by the course this issue takes.”

On the other hand, though, many retailers and others in consumer-oriented businesses feel compelled to tread more softly.

“You have to be careful not to alienate one constituency over another,” explained John Fellows, group manager for Coors Brewing Co. in Golden.

The brewer has experienced a dribble of one or two telephone calls a day regarding Amendment 2--and they illustrate the dilemma. Some callers say they’re going to boycott the company’s beers because they are brewed in Colorado; others say they’ll buy it for the same reason. The company’s position is that it has no position on the issue.

The task of assuaging one constituency without offending another has certainly been on Marion Julier’s mind as she grapples with Amendment 2.

Julier is general manager of the Scanticon Hotel Resort and Conference Center in Denver. Within weeks of the election, the Scanticon saw 5,000 room-nights--the equivalent of 10% occupancy for nearly three weeks at the 300-room hotel--canceled by groups protesting the 53%-47% vote in favor of the ballot measure.

In response, all sales personnel were trained to field caller questions and concerns by simply explaining what the amendment says, why it is confusing and what it does or does not do, Julier said.

Next, a letter was sent to former visitors within Colorado urging them to return to the Scanticon rather than take their conference business elsewhere. “Why go out of state when people out there are boycotting us?” Julier asked.

When it came to out-of-state visitors, however, the hotel opted to lay low. “You have to be careful,” Julier explained. “You don’t want to remind someone (about the amendment). We prefer not to make it an issue if it isn’t.”

Despite the black eye that business leaders believe Amendment 2 has given Colorado--and the resultant corporate agonizing--a number of community leaders contend that the measure is a silver-laced storm cloud.

At the Colorado Business Council, a sort of gay chamber of commerce, founder Marie Tapp said that businesses that do not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference and others owned by gays or lesbians are benefiting.

“People will flock to some businesses because they are non-discriminatory or because of heightened desire by people to do business within their own community,” said Tapp, president of her own accounting firm.

“In the last week,” she said, “we have received calls from several people who have their taxes done professionally and now want to have them done by someone in the (gay) community.”

“Good things always come out of bad things,” added Barbara Grogan, president of Western Industrial Contractors, a major construction firm and chairman of the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce.

“This is bringing people together in the community that have never sat down at the same table together,” said Grogan.