November 29, 2011 08:49 PM UTC

Reapportionment: All Over But The Whining?

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: It may be a “done deal” constitutionally (see below), but as FOX 31’s Eli Stokols reports, there are some seriously hacked off Republicans in Greenwood Village tonight.

Republicans are crying foul after the lone independent on the 11-member reapportionment commission again cast the deciding vote in favor of new maps proposed by Democrats to re-draw state legislative districts…

“I’m stunned,” said Rob Witwer, a former state representative from Evergreen and one of the five Republicans on the commission. “I can’t believe it happened like that, and it happened in broad daylight…”

“Democrats again are trying to circumvent the rules of the legislative reapportionment process by submitting maps after the agreed-upon deadline and without public knowledge,” [Colorado GOP chairman Ryan] Call said in a statement. “The Democrats’ Monday morning gerrymander is aimed at using back-door, partisan tactics to avoid public review.”

…Democrats have maintainted that they’re trying to follow the Supreme Court’s order to minimize county splits, the main reason cited by the Colorado Supreme Court in rejecting the original map submitted for its approval. The court ruled that too many counties were split in an effort to make one-third of the Legislature’s 100 districts competitive.

Republicans’ decision to challenge that initial map now appears to have backfired… [Pols emphasis]

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UPDATE #2: Speaking to reporter John Schroyer of the Colorado Springs paper today, Republican reapportionment commission member Bob Loevy calls the new map “a done deal,” and says there is very little constitutional grounds for further legal challenges.

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UPDATE: As resubmitted to the Colorado Supreme Court today:

House Resubmitted Plan F–details here

Senate Resubmitted Plan E–details here

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As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Patrick Malone reports:

Republicans accused Democrats of opportunistic gerrymandering Monday when the Colorado Reapportionment Commission resumed its work redrawing boundaries for seats in the Colorado General Assembly.

The Colorado Supreme Court rejected the commission’s original plan in a ruling that said the commission did not pay sufficient heed to keeping counties whole in a single district…

So, they did:

Commissioner Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, said the first plan was drawn with incumbents in mind, but the Democratic alternative looked first to minimizing county splits as the high court had instructed.

“Some of the prior county splits we had to try and avoid pairing incumbents together,” she said.

The Democratic map for the House contains 14 county splits, while the Republican House plan contains 19. [Pols emphasis] Both parties’ plans for the Senate contain an equal number of splits.

Commission Chairman Mario Carrera, the only unaffiliated member of the 11-person bipartisan body, cast a deciding vote that slammed the door to potential compromise solutions.

Bottom line: as instructed by the Colorado Supreme Court when the originally-approved maps were remanded to the committee for redrafting, the new maps reduce the number of counties with split legislative representation. The approved Democratic map in fact reduces the number of county splits more than the Republican-proposed map. It’s important to remember that the stated reason for the Supreme Court’s rejection of the original maps, too many county splits, had the complete support of Republicans. As state GOP chairman Ryan Call said at the time:

“The State Supreme Court’s decision today validates what Colorado Republicans have been arguing all along – that the Reapportionment Commission must first look to keeping counties boundaries whole [Pols emphasis] before looking to non-constitutional criteria in drawing district boundaries.”

So, they did.

As for the strained accusations of politics–yes, politics!–playing a role? You know, folks, we’re pretty much sick of hearing about it. Yes, Pollyanna. Okay? You bet. It’s political. We think at this point, all of the voters paying even casual attention to any of this–a large percentage of whom read this blog–are aware that the process reflects political considerations on both sides.

In politics, somebody has to win, and somebody has to lose.