Brief by Central Staff
Politics – June 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
We weren’t happy when Chaffee and Lake counties were put into the Fifth Congressional District (Colorado Springs) when the lines were redrawn after the 2000 Census. Now we’re back in the Third (Western Slope and San Luis Valley), where we were before and where we fit better. But we’re not entirely thrilled about that, either.
That’s because of how and why it was done — during the last three days of its 2003 session, our Republican-controlled state legislature redrew the lines in hope of getting a partisan advantage.
The advantage would come in Colorado’s seventh district in the Denver suburbs. It was so competitive that in the 2002 election, Republican candidate Bob Beauprez won by only 121 votes over Democrat Mike Feeley.
The GOP wanted to make Beauprez’s seat safer, so the General Assembly adjusted the boundaries so that party registration went from 32.75% Republican and 32.8% Democrat to 36.86% and 29.3%, with the remainder unaffiliated.
Making those adjustments, though, required changes in other boundaries to uphold the federal requirement that congressional-district populations be as equal as possible. And there were the political futures of Ken Chlouber and Scott McInnis to consider.
Both are Republicans. Chlouber is a state senator from Leadville who hits term limits next year. McInnis is the U.S. Congressman from Colorado’s Third District — which could be fairly competitive, at least in theory, whenever there’s no incumbent.
It’s no secret that McInnis would like to climb the political ladder and run for U.S. Senate (although incumbent Republican Ben Campbell appears likely to run again in 2004) or governor (incumbent Republican Bill Owens hits his term limit in 2006).
Chlouber would be a likely candidate for the Third District House seat when it’s open — except that Leadville had been in the Fifth District. Chlouber had already tried a move, changing his address to Denver, to run for Congress from the First District in 2002. No matter how much he wants to run for Congress, he’s not going to run as a Republican in the Fifth, where the seat has been held since 1987 by Republican Joel Hefley.
Put Chaffee and Lake counties back in the Third, and have Chlouber resume his Leadville residency, and there’s a Third-District GOP candidate for Congress whenever Mc Innis decides to run for something else.
As for running for Congress from Denver, as he did last year, Chlouber said that he learned a lesson: “I’d be waving signs out on a street corner and people would drive around the block twice to cuss me because I was a Republican.”