Redistricting As new legislative lines are drawn

Redistricting
As new legislative lines are drawn, rural representation is at stake

Sept 8, 2001

A state commission is hard at work on redrawing state House and Senate districts, including those in the southwestern part of the state. The various legislators now representing those districts have weighed in about the best way to draw the lines so that each district has its fair allotment of constituents, some 66,000 for House districts and 123,000 for Senate districts.

The buzz-phrase lately has been "communities of interest," shorthand for the way people will be sorted into legislative districts. To whom are we most closely related? With whom do we want to band so that our representation in Denver is most effective?

To residents of the densely populated Front Range, we all look like outlanders. That may seem unfair, but it’s a distinction that we need to recognize because it illustrates the politics of the General Assembly. Rural residents are outnumbered considerably, and rural residents who don’t live within an easy drive of Denver are even rarer.

To complicate matters even further, rural Coloradoans aren’t all alike. Durango might seem rural to a Denverite, but it looks like the big city to many of us. We share some issues, particularly those that stem from the allocation of state funds to projects far from here, but we have differences too. Economic development in Durango is a different concept than survival in the drylands. Mountain villages differ from desert towns. Education in affluent communities is not the same as education in those with a different population mix.

We are a minority in Denver; there’s no way around that. For that reason, the composition of our legislative districts, and the local majorities those compositions create, will determine the face we present in the legislature: a mountain resort, an agricultural region, a college town, a reservation community.

The way legislative districts are divided will make the difference between having a voice in Denver (albeit an often-soft one amidst the cacophony of urban issues) or little representation at all. That’s not to say that our representatives and senators do not and will not represent us well. They do, and we have faith that the populace of southwestern Colorado will continue to elect those who will. The fact of the matter, though, is that politics is a numbers game, and we need to play it carefully.

Pay attention to the redistricting process. Contact your state legislators. Attend the meetings in this area. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves marginalized to the point of invisibility, and the legislation that comes out of Denver will be largely irrelevant.

Participate. Otherwise, when the lines are drawn, some rural Coloradoans could find themselves effectively fenced out of politics.