The fix is in. Reapportionment Commission Chairman "Super Partisan" Mario Carrera proved yet again that he's willing to do the bidding of the Commission's Democrats, regardless of the ethics, or lack thereof, involved. Yesterday, Carrera allowed Democrats on the Commission to submit maps four days after the deadline, and then had the gall to support the Democrats’ proposition banning any amendments to the last minute maps. He even voted to deny Republicans the right to submit a minority report to the Supreme Court. Basically, he voted to only give the Democrats a voice.

GOP Commission member Mario Nicolais explained the dirty tactics of the Democrats:

It was an absolute ambush by the Democrats. They submitted a fake map last Wednesday they had no intention of running, and they submitted the real map Sunday night. It was a midnight gerrymander.

This morning Chairman Carrera voted to approve the “politically vindictive” new Democrat maps that put Republican leadership in the state House and Senate into districts with fellow GOP legislators. It was raw strong-arming by political partisans hoping to gain in the Commission what they were unable to gain at the ballot box last year.

Any sense that Carrera hoped to project that he was independent, fair or “unaffiliated” with any political party was tossed out the window when Carrera backed the Democrats’ partisan scheme to screw the GOP for a decade with gerrymandered district lines. He proved himself to be, as Mario Nicolais said, nothing more than a “wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s been lying for six months.”

Maybe this time the media will actually find Carrera’s naked hyper-partisanship important enough to tell their readers about it.  

Reapportionment is the decennial process of redrawing Colorado's 65 state House and 35 state Senate seats to reflect the population changes identified in the US Census. The maps are drawn by an appointed commission of five Republicans, five Democrats and Mario Carrera and must be approved by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Unfortunately the only maps that were approved were those drawn by Democrat operatives with the sole purpose of improving one party’s electoral chances.

Just two weeks ago the Colorado Supreme Court rejected Carrera's submitted reapportionment maps for both the state House and state Senate, declaring them unconstitutional for their excessive splits of county lines and overuse of the constitutionally frivolous notion of "competitiveness." As Dave Diepenbrock pointed out on the Peak, virtually all of the districts that claimed to be competitive were anything but. Those rejected maps were drawn by Carrera himself after heavy lobbying from high ranking Democrats and made public at the last minute for the Commission's review. 

Today's vote approving the Democrats’ vindictive maps will send those maps to the Supreme Court for another constitutional review.

Despite being rejected by the Supreme Court in his previous partisan attempt at screwing Republicans for a decade with legislative lines favoring the state's Democrats, Carrera has seemingly thrown any care about being seen as a partisan hack out of the window.

Why should he care? The mainstream media lets him get away with his ridiculous charade.

We reported back in September that he has donated nearly $8500 to Colorado Democrats since 2008 and yet the mainstream media still only refers to him as the "Unaffiliated" Chairman, neglecting to mention his hyper-partisan political giving.  

Since then he has donated another $250, this time to Denver Democrat state Representative and CD6 Congressional candidate Joe Miklosi. Miklosi's entire campaign hinges on favorable district lines in redistricting, reapportionment's Congressional cousin. Redistricting is currently before the Colorado Supreme Court, after the state GOP appealed a lower court's decision to back the Democrat's gerrymandered map. 

Today's unethical behavior by Mario Carrera has exposed the reapportionment process to be anything but untainted by partisan hackery. It has become just as cut throat as the (failed) redistricting process was in the Legislature, only Mario Carrera gets to pretend he's everything he's not. 

Come on media, it's time Mario was forced to be seen as he is: a high dollar donor to Democrats who is only "Unaffiliated" on his voter registration card. He is a partisan shill. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It’s time the media actually reported the whole story.