Seven votes now prevent Colorado Democrats from retaining their supermajority in the state House.
That’s the margin in House District 16 in Colorado Springs, where Republican challenger Rebecca Keltie defeated Democratic Rep. Stephanie seems to have narrowly dethroned Vigil. according to final voting totals released Thursday evening. Given the razor-thin margin of the more than 41,000 votes cast, that race will head to a recount in the coming weeks.
Heading into the Nov. 5 election, Republicans needed to flip three seats in House Democrats’ seismic 46-seat caucus to break their supermajority control of the chamber, which Democrats won — crossing the two-thirds threshold — in the blue wave from 2022.
Republican candidates now hold two seats, and barring a surprise change in the District 16 recount, Keltie’s win will be enough to push Democrats down the ballot.
Democratic Rep. Mary Young lost her seat in District 50 in Greeley last week. The race in House District 19, which straddles the border of Boulder and Weld counties, also entered recount territory in Thursday night’s results, with former Republican Rep. Dan Woog in the lead. leading Democrat Jillaire McMillan with 123 votes.
But on Friday afternoon, McMillan conceded the race to Woog, who will now return to the Legislature after losing the seat in 2022. McMillan had entered the race less than 100 days ago after the district’s current representative, Democrat Jennifer Parenti, announced she would not. seeking re-election.
Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Republican from Colorado Springs and the party’s top House official, celebrated the results Thursday evening.
“Colorado voters spoke loudly and supported two common-sense leaders, Dan Woog and Rebecca Keltie,” she said in a statement. “After seeing the people of Colorado defeat Prop HH last year and now three House of Representatives districts flip back to Republicans, the message is clear: Coloradans want a lower cost of living and a thriving economy. Democratic policies that encourage higher taxes and fees are not the way forward for Coloradans across the state.”
It’s fair to say that Democrats still hold the lion’s share of power in the Capitol. Even if they lose three seats in the House of Representatives, the chamber will still have 43 Democrats to 22 Republicans. In the Senate, Democrats are also one seat away from a supermajority: Democrats and Republicans each flipped one seat last week to maintain the 23-12 status quo in the House.
“While we will miss our colleagues who worked tirelessly for their constituents, let us be clear: the priorities of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party will be held back by voters who overwhelmingly elected legislative Democrats, the number one second largest Democratic Party. majority since the 1960s,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie said in a statement Friday. She added that Republicans’ “self-congratulations ring hollow when they still walk into the Capitol without an ounce of voter support for their extreme agenda.”
She said her door “will always be open for minority party members to work together where we agree.”
In a statement, Vigil, the incumbent in District 16, said she will honor the final results of the recount.
“I proudly ran a positive, people-centered campaign, and even if we ultimately fell a few votes short, we did so against an onslaught of dark money attacks and opposition based on conspiracy theories, fear and division” , she says. said.
House Democrats also defended other at-risk seats last week, including Rep. Bob Marshall in Douglas County and Rep. Tammy Story in a rural district southwest of metro Denver. Both won tight races.
Still, gaining three seats in the House of Representatives was Republicans’ goal heading into Election Day after years of steady declines. They may still be far from a majority, but the swings give Republicans a boost in a Capitol — and state — that has been turning bluer for a decade.
Achieving two-thirds control of the House of Representatives or the Senate theoretically makes it easier for a party to override a governor’s veto — though that requires layers of unlikely political maneuvering. The margin also makes it easier to pass constitutional changes directly to voters.
Last year, Senate Republicans were able to block a constitutional amendment that would have been the first step in giving victims of years of sexual abuse the ability to file lawsuits.
Perhaps most crucially for a Democratic party with active left and moderate wings, the size of the Democrats’ majority has allowed for debates on a wider variety of policies — though it has also sometimes proven challenging for leaders to find a solution. party that stretched the seams of the party’s big tent philosophy.
The extent of Democrats’ control over the past two years has also given lawmakers room to lose votes without completely sinking more controversial bills. And the committees were more heavily Democratic-leaning, making it easier for members’ bills to come to the table.
Amid shifts in the House of Representatives, the Senate — sometimes a safety net for a progressive House — is ready for its own change.
A group of House Democrats won a seat in the Senate last week, and they are all generally to the left of the term-limited Democrats they replace. They include Reps. Judy Amabile of Boulder and Mike Weissman of Aurora. Amabile has been one of the most progressive lawmakers on criminal justice and mental health reforms, and Weissman — who fended off an expensive, dark-money fueled primary challenge — has been particularly influential on consumer protection legislation.
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