Colorado Republicans did well in the recent elections, but not as well as they might have.
The governor’s race was not their problem. It turns out that Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper won re-election by a greater margin than Republican Cory Gardner defeated Sen. Mark Udall, despite early impressions to the contrary. And as The Denver Post’s John Frank has pointed out, “Hickenlooper nearly won by the same margin as he did four years ago when you look at the total conservative vote” — the conservative vote being split last time between two candidates.
In one respect, Hickenlooper performed even better this time. He was the single top vote-getter in the state, whereas in 2010 that honor went to Republican Attorney General John Suthers.
No, the problem for Republicans was the state House of Representatives, where they won the most votes but didn’t get an equivalent number of seats.
Republicans picked up three House seats, narrowing their disadvantage from 37-28 to 34-31. But Republican candidates actually received 55 percent of the total vote. That’s a seven-point swing from the 48 percent of the House that they will control starting January.
How is that possible?
Gerrymandering.
Or, to use the more elegant term of art, reapportionment.
Legislative districts are redrawn every decade, and every time each party tries to skew the process to its advantage. In 2011, the reapportionment commission eventually adopted a Democratic map for state House seats, after much high drama and wrangling.
The result is that more voters who tend to support Republicans are packed into ultra-safe GOP seats instead of spread into districts that could be more competitive. One sign of this is that Republicans ran unopposed in 11 districts (with a Libertarian running in one of them, too), whereas Democrats ran unopposed in only three.
It’s impossible to say what the vote totals would have been if all races had been contested, but even if you deduct the ballots in those that weren’t, Republicans still end up with more statewide votes for House seats.
An analysis prepared by commission staff in 2011 indicated that even of districts officially considered “competitive,” more than twice as many actually leaned Democratic than Republican — while Democrats enjoyed a slight advantage in three of four “highly competitive” seats as well.
Reapportionment will never please everyone, of course, but it doesn’t have to be nakedly partisan. The Denver Post has editorially advocated that the state adopt the Iowa model, in which nonpartisan state staffers — say, from the legislature’s legal services group — draw up the template from which the commission’s work begins, rather than have the parties submit competing maps that guarantee lengthy bickering and power plays.
A member of the 2011 commission, former Republican lawmaker Rob Witwer, urged his colleagues to use a similar process at the time, but was airily rebuffed.
“Unless we choose to do our work differently,” he warned, “… any map proposed by a member of this commission will carry the presumption of being either a ‘Democratic Map’ or a ‘Republican Map.’ “
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he added.
No, it doesn’t. But if party power brokers remain reluctant to support a process aimed at more competitive seats, it may take a citizen ballot measure to get the job done.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter @vcarrollDP
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
