Election perspective: little change at the Colorado Capitol

State senators touch briefly on energy and climate in post-election analysis

Two of Colorado’s most effective state senators substantially agreed on key takeaways about the Colorado election in a Nov. 8 postmortem sponsored by the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs.

“The (next) Legislature is looking a lot like the Legislature of the last two years,” said Sen. Chris Hansen, a Democrat from Denver and a key author of much of the state’s key energy legislation during the last five years. (Hansen the next week resigned from his seat to take a job as chief executive of La Plata Electric).

Democrats have strong majorities in both the Colorado Senate and the Colorado House of Representatives,

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican from Weld County, didn’t disagree but still found cause for optimism. “As Republicans we were able to gain a little bit of ground in the Legislature. So we stopped that slide of the last two or three elections. Stopping the slide is a good thing.”

What effect will the election have on Colorado’s decarbonization agenda?

That question was not posed to the candidates by the moderator, but Hansen had briefly touched on it when he said that he believes the Inflation Reduction Act will be safe from efforts by Donald Trump to end it.

“I don’t see the Inflation Reduction Act being overturned,” said Hansen. “The Republicans don’t have 60 votes in the Senate” (as required to overcome a filibuster).

Kirkmeyer also brought up the role of Gov. Jared Polis in killing efforts to reduce the oil and gas extraction. That deal Polis cut — to pull the legislation and in exchange for the oil and gas operators to not run a statewide ballot initiatives for their causes — was a shock and surprise on both sides of the aisle in the Senate and in the House as well, she said. It effectively killed “five or six bills that were aimed at pretty much eliminating the oil and gas industry in Colorado.”

A former county commissioner in Weld County, where approximately 90% of the state’s oil and gas extraction has occurred in the last 15 years, Kirkmeyer has also been a member of the Joint Budget Committee, attentive to how the bills get paid. Oil and gas are extremely important, she said.

“It will be interesting to see the conversation between the governor and the Democrats in the state legislature on that issue, especially as the EPA starts making changes based on what Trump wants instead of what the Biden-Harris group wanted.”

In a conversation moderated by political observer and pollster Floyd Ciruli, the two state senators also dissected the minor legislative shifts:

In northern Colorado, Republicans flipped a senate district that had previously elected a Democrat. Two Democrats were elected to the State Senate from El Paso County, long a Republican stronghold. “If you had told me that six years ago I would have been shocked,” said Hansen.

Kirkmeyer pointed to some small gains for Republicans in both Adams and Weld county voting and suggested it was a sign of the growing strength of Republicans among working-class voters.

Hansen stoutly rejected the suggestion: “I don’t think Democrats in Colorado have lost the working families.”

Can the Republican Party get back on its feet? The rancor within the party has become a spectacle. Kirkmeyer said that with Jeff Hurd, an attorney from Grand Junction who represents La Plata Electric, getting elected from the Third Congressional District to replace Rep. Lauren Boebert, and Jeff Crank elected in the Fifth Congressional District, Republicans may see some regained strength.

(The election of Gabe Evans, flipping the 8^th Congressional District to the Republicans, had not yet been confirmed when the event was held).

She also suggested that some effort will be made to quiet the combativeness of Boebert in her new Fourth Congressional District.

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