DENVER—Democrats are divided over whether they should try to create more competitive congressional districts in the face of opposition from two of Colorado’s current representatives in Congress.
U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who represents one of the nation’s most competitive districts in suburban Denver, and Rep. John Salazar, both oppose a bill that would urge lawmakers to try to make districts that are about evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters. They say the bill, awaiting its first vote in the full Senate, isn’t needed because there’s already enough guidance about how to draw district boundaries based on the many court cases on the issue.
Perlmutter spokeswoman Leslie Oliver said Monday that he’s concerned that the bill’s languague is confusing and could land the redistricting issue back in the courts. She said he’s not worried it would cost him re-election.
“He was just looking at it strictly from a policy point of view,” Oliver said.
Salazar spokesman Eric Wortman said the bill is searching for a problem that doesn’t exist. He said Salazar’s district, which covers most of Western Colorado, is already competitive, and that Salazar has won it twice even though there are 22,000 more Republicans than Democrats.
The bill is the latest attempt by Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, to tone down what’s usually a partisan fight every decade.
In the next round of redistricting in 2011, the bill says that lawmakers should try to make districts competitive after they’ve met other criteria such as making sure districts have the same number of people and keeping regions like the Western Slope or the Eastern Plains in the same district.
However, it says counties could be broken up in an attempt to create districts that have an even distribution of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
Gordon delayed a vote on the bill Monday because of the objections raised by the congressmen. However he said he didn’t think he could change the bill to satisfy them because their opposition was based on “unfounded” fears. Republicans won five of the state’s congressional seats in 2002 under a redistricting map that was approved by a judge when lawmakers failed to agree on one. But Democrats now control four of the seven seats on that map, as well as both chambers in the legislature and the governor’s office.
Some Democratic senators don’t think it’s the right time to meddle with a system that has been good to them lately.
“If we want to play the good guy, the fair guy, that could actually backfire on us,” said Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo. He said he had spoken with Salazar and Perlmutter about the bill.
Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, said it didn’t make sense to push the bill in light of the congressional opposition.
“What’s broken? We’re messing with the franchise that got us here,” Romer said.
However, Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, said lawmakers should expect opposition from congressmen who benefited from the current system. He said they might get a different answer if they talked to candidates who lost.
Gordon thinks competitive districts encourage candidates to reach out to the political center rather than the extremes of each party. He thinks having more representatives elected from such districts nationally would lessen political gridlock in Congress and lead to more consensus.
