Memo to the voters of Senate District 31 who want their interests represented in state government: please stand by and another Democrat will be along shortly to abuse your trust.
State Sen. Chris Hansen who was reelected last week had already abandoned your interests months ago for a job on the other side of the state that will pay him upwards of a half million dollars a year.
He just didn’t tell you until after some 76,000 of you voted for his reelection against a Libertarian candidate.
It’s unfortunate dear voters that Democrats have denied you the democratic process since 2020 to elect your own Senator, having used a vacancy committee then to award that seat to Hansen.
And equally unfortunate that he squandered that time to instead run for mayor of Denver before parlaying his power on the Senate Appropriations Committee into big bucks for him now at an electric power coop in La Plata County.
Regretfully, you still won’t get to pick this replacement either, because the vacancy committee process that started this mess will pick Hansen’s replacement.
The bottom line is it sucks to be you living in a Denver Democrat district.
Meanwhile, Hansen told the Durango Herald he will likely wait until the new legislative session begins before even resigning his seat.
There was no explanation for such selfishness and giving his replacement zero time to prepare for the session.
And yet the backstabbing among Democrats to replace Hansen has already begun in earnest.
That loathsome state Rep. Steven Woodrow who currently represents Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood in House District 2 went whining to The Denver Post that Hansen is trying to tip the scales for his own pick, Sean Camacho.
“Sen. Hansen has made his support clear for … Rep.-elect Camacho,” Woodrow said. “And that kind of attempted handoff — I don’t know if that’s going to go over well.”
Camacho just defeated Elisabeth Epps to win that House seat. If either he or Woodrow is picked by the Democrat vacancy committee to replace Hansen, their empty House seat will be filled by that district’s vacancy committee or party insiders.
This vacancy committee game of roulette has become stuck on an absurd cycle for Democrat Party insiders to handpick state legislatures for far too long.
And as long as Democrats keep control of the state legislature, they’re not going to change how they’re rigged this game.
There are presently 23 Democrats and six Republicans who were first appointed by vacancy committees serving in the state legislature. When the new session begins in January, that number becomes 19 Democrats and three Republicans.
Those numbers don’t include Hansen, or his successor.