Seven votes now separate Colorado Democrats from holding on to their supermajority within the state Home.
That’s the margin in Colorado Springs’ Home District 16, the place Republican challenger Rebecca Keltie seems to have narrowly unseated Democratic Rep. Stephanie Vigil, in response to remaining vote totals launched Thursday evening. Given the razor-thin margin, out of greater than 41,000 votes solid, that race will now head to a recount over the approaching weeks.
Heading into the Nov. 5 election, Republicans wanted to flip three seats in Home Democrats’ seismic 46-seat caucus to interrupt their supermajority management of the chamber, which Democrats gained — passing the two-thirds threshold — within the blue wave 2022 election.
GOP candidates have now taken two seats, and barring a shock shift in District 16’s recount, Keltie’s victory will likely be sufficient to nudge Democrats down a peg.
Democratic Rep. Mary Younger misplaced her seat final week in Greeley-based District 50. The race in Home District 19, which straddles Boulder and Weld counties’ border, additionally settled in recount territory in Thursday evening’s outcomes, with former Republican Rep. Dan Woog main Democrat Jillaire McMillan by 123 votes.
However on Friday afternoon, McMillan conceded the race to Woog, who will now return to the legislature after shedding the seat in 2022. McMillan had entered the race fewer than 100 days in the past after the district’s present consultant, Democrat Jennifer Parenti, introduced she wouldn’t search reelection.
Minority Chief Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican and the celebration’s prime Home official, celebrated the outcomes Thursday evening.
“Colorado voters spoke loudly, supporting two common sense leaders in Dan Woog and Rebecca Keltie,” she stated in a press release. “After we noticed the individuals of Colorado defeat Prop HH final 12 months and now three Home districts flipping again to Republicans, the message is obvious: Coloradans need a decrease value of residing and a thriving financial system. The Democratic insurance policies pushing greater taxes and charges are usually not the best way ahead for Coloradans throughout the state.”
To make sure, Democrats nonetheless maintain the lion’s share of energy within the Capitol. Even when they lose three seats within the Home, the chamber will nonetheless have 43 Democrats to 22 Republicans. Within the Senate, Democrats are equally one seat away from a supermajority: Democrats and Republicans every flipped one seat final week to take care of the 23-12 establishment within the chamber.
“Whereas we’ll miss our colleagues who labored tirelessly for his or her constituents, let’s be clear: the priorities of the MAGA-wing of the GOP will likely be stopped lifeless of their tracks by voters who elected an awesome majority of legislative Democrats, the second largest Democratic majority because the Sixties,” Home Speaker Julie McCluskie stated in a press release Friday. She added that Republicans’ “self congratulations ring hole when they’re nonetheless strolling into the Capitol and not using a shred of voter assist for his or her excessive agenda.”
She stated her door “will all the time be open to members of the minority celebration to collaborate the place we agree.”
In a press release, Vigil, the incumbent trailing in District 16, stated she is going to honor the ultimate outcomes of the recount.
“I’ve proudly run a optimistic, people-centered marketing campaign, and even when we in the end fall just a few votes brief, we did it battling an onslaught of darkish cash assaults, and opposition that relied on conspiracy theories, concern, and division,” she stated.
Home Democrats additionally defended different at-risk seats final week, together with Rep. Bob Marshall in Douglas County and Rep. Tammy Story in a rural district southwest of metro Denver. Each gained tight races.
Nonetheless, selecting up three Home seats was Republicans’ purpose heading into Election Day after years of regular declines. They might nonetheless be removed from a majority, however the flips give Republicans a lift in a Capitol — and state — that has turned bluer for a decade.
Reaching two-thirds management within the Home or Senate theoretically makes it simpler for a celebration to override a governor’s veto — although that requires layers of unlikely political maneuvering. The margin additionally permits for simpler passage of constitutional amendments on to voters.
Final 12 months, Senate Republicans had been in a position to block a constitutional modification that will’ve been step one towards permitting victims of years-old sexual abuse to file lawsuits.
Maybe most critically for a Democratic caucus with energetic left and average wings, the size of the Democrats’ majority has allowed for debates on a greater variety of insurance policies — although it’s additionally, at occasions, confirmed a problem for management to corral a caucus that has stretched the seams of the celebration’s big-tent philosophy.
The dimensions of Democrats’ management over the previous two years has additionally given legislators area to lose votes with out fully sinking extra controversial payments. And committees had been extra closely tilted towards Democrats, giving its members’ payments a neater path to the ground.
Amid shifts within the Home, the Senate — at occasions a backstop to a progressive Home — is ready for its personal change.
A bunch of Home Democrats gained strikes to the Senate final week, and all of them are typically to the left of the term-limited Democrats they’re changing. They embody Reps. Judy Amabile of Boulder and Mike Weissman of Aurora. Amabile has been among the many most progressive lawmakers on legal justice and psychological well being reforms, and Weissman — who fended off an costly, darkish money-fueled major problem — has been notably influential on client safety laws.
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