Matt Jones’s election to the Boulder County Board of County Commissioners has heralded the start of a quiet race among local Democrats vying to fill the outgoing state Senator’s District 17 seat.
Jones — who won District 3 last week with a decisive 68 percent of the vote — has presided over the east Boulder County Senate district since 2012. His most recent term is scheduled to expire in 2020 and his resignation — to come before he is sworn in as a commissioner January — will open the seat for a fellow Democrat through the end of 2020.
According to Colorado election laws, a replacement on the state Senate is appointed by a vacancy committee made up of party leaders, both at the state and local level, within the central district. For Jones’s seat, there are well over a hundred on the committee, and a majority vote among them is all that is needed to appoint the replacement.
Comprised of Louisville, Lafayette, Longmont and unincorporated areas of eastern Boulder County, the district’s typically left-leaning politics have largely been shaped by the debate around oil and gas, affordable housing and transportation issues that have pervaded Front Range communities in recent years.
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