DENVER—State lawmakers killed a bill Wednesday that would have allowed voters to decide who fills any vacancy in a U.S. Senate seat from Colorado, instead letting the governor choose as current law dictates.
Republican state Sen. Mike Kopp of Littleton, who sponsored the measure, said it was not about Gov. Bill Ritter’s selection of former Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet, who has been criticized for never having held elective office before. Kopp said lawmakers have a higher duty to voters to make sure their vote counts.
The Senate State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee killed the measure on a 3-2 party-line vote.
Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, said a vote for the bill would have been interpreted as a rebuke of Ritter’s choice to fill the vacancy created when Democratic U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar resigned to become Interior secretary.
Kopp said Ritter can’t even appoint someone to the state parks board without the approval of the full state Senate, but he had the power to appoint a U.S. senator who serves in one of the most powerful lawmaking bodies in the nation.
The bill would have required the governor to call a special election within 49 days after a vacancy is announced, unless it’s within 90 days of a general election. In that case, the seat would have remained open until the regular election.
Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Common Cause, a political watchdog group, told lawmakers that voters should have an opportunity to elect the people who represent them, as they do in 12 other states. She said the current system is unfair.
“Rather than one person, one vote, there is one voter, and that’s the governor,” she said.
