When ballots are tallied Tuesday night, a handful of House and Senate seats will determine whether the imbalance of partisan power in Colorado reaches a level not seen since World War II.
Democrats, who already hold trifecta control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s office, stand one seat shy of a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate to mirror their current supermajority in the House — if Democrats in that chamber can keep the gains they made in 2022.
But Republicans also see an opportunity to claw their way out of the political wilderness. They need to flip only three seats that went blue by razor-thin margins to break the supermajority in the House.
An unfavorable Senate map and wide margins in the House mean that a full flip in party control in either chamber is all but impossible this time. But the millions of dollars being spent on the races, often by outside groups and party-aligned political committees, show an emphasis on strengthening, or breaking, the parties’ respective footholds in the Capitol.
More than $7 million in outside spending has poured into the Senate races, and about $4.5 million has flowed into House races, according to the most recent filings.
On the Senate side, the vast majority of that money has gone to three races: District 12, in El Paso County, and District 5 and District 6, both in the southwest part of the state. All those seats are currently occupied by Republicans.
“I might have been naive, but I didn’t expect (my race) to get that much attention from everybody,” said state Rep. Marc Catlin, a Montrose Republican who’s looking to move to the Senate in a race that’s drawn more than $3 million. “But it goes to show how much a two-thirds majority is worth.”
Advantage on rules, vetoes, amendments
A supermajority generally allows the governing party to do three things without relying on the minority party: Override vetoes, refer state constitutional amendments to voters and change floor rules on the fly. Less officially, it also typically results in strong majorities on committees — the first stop for all legislation in each chamber, where bills can live or die by a single vote.
Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Democrat who’s set to run for a second term as the House’s leader later this week, shrugged off the importance of her caucus maintaining its two-thirds grip on the chamber.
The size of their majority — 46 strong in the 65-seat chamber — means there’s typically been room for intraparty disagreements, without the need to shore up defections with Republican votes.
Colorado House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, left, and Speaker Julie McCluskie address the Appropriations Committee about property tax cut legislation during a special legislative session at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on Aug. 26, 2024. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
“I don’t know that a veto-proof majority is really that significant when you look at the diversity within the caucus,” McCluskie said. “We’ve got Democrats who show up and they vote their district, they vote …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Politics
