Redistricting may fence out Larson

Redistricting may fence out Larson

April 10, 2001

Rep. Mark Larson

By Charles Ashby
Herald Capitol Correspondent

DENVER – Rep. Mark Larson may not be able to run for re-election next year.

But that’s not because he doesn’t want to.

The seat the Cortez Republican now holds, House District 59, won’t exist as it does today after a state commission gets done redrawing all Colorado House and Senate district boundaries this year, as required by Colorado law.

That change, known as reapportionment, could include moving the western edge of Larson’s district a few miles east, meaning the third-year lawmaker may no longer live in the district he now represents, as the law requires.

"I don’t plan on moving into La Plata County, so there’s not much I can do about this," Larson said. "If I can’t run, then I’ll just go fishing."

The population in Larson’s House district — which includes La Plata, San Juan and Archuleta counties and the lower half of Montezuma County — has increased to 69,090 people. While that may not seem like much, it means the district now includes 3,917 more people than it should.

Under the redistricting, Larson may find himself living in District 58, currently represented by Kay Alexander, R-Montrose. Alexander may run in 2002 for the Senate, leaving the District 58 seat open, but Larson has not decided whether he would vie for the spot.

Alexander’s 58th District currently includes northern Montezuma County through most of Delta County.

That district, too, has grown in the past decade and, after reapportionment, may not even include Alexander’s home town of Montrose. According to the census, Alexander’s district has 72,293 people – 6,120 more than the ideal.

That means that she, like Larson, may be forced out of her House seat, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Thiebaut, R-Pueblo, who will serve on the 11-member Colorado Reapportionment Commission. The commission will convene starting next month to decide where the district lines will be drawn based on the results of the 2000 U.S. Census.

Larson said it is possible for both Alexander and him to represent their current districts after the next election.

"Whether or not they (the commission) make Montezuma County whole and put it in the 59th, or whether they make Montezuma whole and put it in the 58th, or indeed if they leave Montezuma split and just take one of the precincts to satisfy the 2,900 votes that I have to give up in the 59th, that’ll be interesting," explained Larson.

"Now they could conceivably take the 6th precinct (Towaoc) and add it into Kay’s precinct, carve out Delta, and she would have the numbers and I would have the numbers. But I don’t know if that would be feasible," speculated Larson.

The entire state has increased in population by more than 1 million people since 1990. The commission will be looking at where those increases are and how they affect current House and Senate district boundaries.

Under the Colorado Constitution, the Legislature is limited to 65 representatives and 35 senators. Populations in each district must be as equal as possible.

In other words, based on the state’s new total population of about 4.3 million, all House districts must have about 66,173 people and Senate districts must have about 122,893. The Constitution allows for a 2.5 percent deviation up or down from those "ideal" population figures.

Additionally, the Constitution requires the commission to favor natural and existing governmental boundaries when redrawing districts: county lines and geologic formations, such as rivers and mountain ranges.

"The Constitution also requires the commission to take into account racial and ethnic populations and communities that have much in common," said Rebecca Lennahan, the commission’s legal advisor. "All these criteria certainly can conflict with each other at times, which makes it a difficult process to work out."

Although the commission has not yet been appointed, Lennahan and select members of the Legislative Legal Services Office, which provides legal assistance to the General Assembly, are gathering the data that the panel will need.

That includes numerous computer databases from the U.S. Census Bureau, including information on population counts and detailed maps of each House and Senate district and individual voting precincts in all 63 counties, she said.

Senate District 6, now held by Jim Dyer, D-Durango, also saw an increase in population. The district has 134,129 people, or 9.1 percent more than the ideal.

The district includes Archuleta, La Plata, Montezuma, San Juan, Dolores, San Miguel, Ouray and Montrose counties and part of Delta County. The Senate district will also have to be shrunk because of the 11,236 more people living in the district than the ideal.

That trimming, however, is expected to be done on the district’s northern end: the Delta County portion of the district and part of Montrose County, said Thiebaut.

By law, both the majority and minority leaders in the Senate and the speaker and minority leader in the House can name themselves or someone else to serve on the commission. The governor gets to name three others and the chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court names the remaining four.

At least one member of the commission needs to be from the Western Slope, and there can be no more than six members from any one political party.

While neither Gov. Bill Owens nor Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey have said who they plan to appoint to the commission, Thiebaut, Sen. Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, Rep. Mark Paschall, R-Arvada, and House Minority Leader Dan Grossman, D-Denver, each said this week they will be its legislative members.

The commission has until Dec. 7 to finalize its plan and submit it to the high court for review. The Supreme Court then has until Feb. 13 to file it with the Secretary of State’s Office. Public hearings on reapportionment will be held in the fall.

Redrawing U.S. congressional district boundaries will be done by the Legislature during a special session expected to be convened in the fall. Because of the population boom in the state, Colorado will get a seventh congressional district.

Thiebaut said the Democratic Party is particularly interested in how Dyer’s district is redrawn, in part because the popular senator won’t be running for re-election next year.

Last month, Dyer accepted an appointment from Owens to serve on the three-member Public Utilities Commission effective May 9, the last day of this year’s legislative session. A vacancy committee in the district is considering a replacement.

Who that person turns out to be could be pivotal in determining whether the Democratic Party retains its majority in the Senate after next year’s elections, Thiebaut said.

That becomes particularly important in a district such as Senate District 6, which includes far more registered Republican voters than Democrats, he said.

"People need to understand that this whole business of reapportionment is purely a partisan political process," Thiebaut said. "Most of the population growth has been on the Front Range, but my first concern is that we maintain some (political) balance in the rural areas, which, except for Dyer’s district, the Republicans now control."

Larson predicted the Republicans would wait to announce their candidates until after the Democrats have chosen Dyer’s replacement.

"I don’t think anybody will announce until we find out who the Democratic opponent will be," said Larson.

Trimming the Senate district on its northern border may prove to be helpful to the Democratic candidate who replaces Dyer because the northern part of the district is more heavily dominated by the GOP than the Durango area, he said.

Such a cut would also takes votes away from Alexander, the likely Republican challenger for Dyer’s seat, particularly in an area where she’s more well-known, Thiebaut said.

"We’ll have to be very careful in drawing these lines," he said. "It’s a very deliberative process that is riddled with legal parameters as well. It’s quite a job to plan this for the entire state of Colorado."