Sal "The Fist" Pace's tirades against his own party's budget deals and redistricting commission work have now come back to bite him in the ass.
In his attempt to run hard left in preparation for a potential CD 3 primary with Senator Gail Schwartz, Pace has recently publicly attacked his own party's budget deal as full of corporate give-aways and said the data the redistricting panel was using was "skewed in Republican's favor."
Turns out that the panel's work wasn't skewed towards Republicans, but rather skewed against Pace.
All six maps released by the Democrats today leave CD 3 a virtually impossible district for Pace to win. Pueblo still remains in CD3, but as Lynn Bartels points out, "with so many more Republicans in the district, Democrats wouldn’t stand a chance."
It's not that Democrats forgot to draw lines advantageous to members of the Legislature with higher political ambitions, just that they decided to stick it to Pace.
Senate President Brandon Shaffer and Senator Morgan Carroll, both ambitious pols looking towards Congress got sweet deals out of the Democrat maps, with lines drawn to place them in competitive districts.
It smacks of more than a little conflict of interest that Senator Carroll sits on the commission drawing the lines for CD6, which she hopes to run in someday. And all-but-declared Congressional candidate, Senate President Shaffer, clearly got his wishes with his home in Longmont drawn in CD4.
But Shaffer and Carroll have played well with others in the Caucus, whereas Pace's recent tenure has been defined more by his self-aggrandizement.
Pace's public posturing apparently got real old, real quick with fellow Democrats telling him today that his Fist would not be going to Congress.
Things are just not looking up for the Salazar clan, with Pace's old mentor John sent home by voters last year, Ken failing and flailing at Interior, and Pace himself looking at a quick end to what he once thought would be a long and storied career.