Colorado’s new supermajority: Six legislators say neither party is united

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Democrats hold two-thirds of both chambers of the Colorado legislature, enough to put constitutional amendments on the ballot and override a governor’s veto without a single Republican vote.

Asked what they intend to do with it, two of the three Democrats who answered RMV said the caucus is not going to vote as one. Asked the same questions, two Republicans said the same thing about theirs.

RMV sent the same questions to every returning legislator and to the incoming members who already have legislative email addresses. Rep. Naquetta Ricks, Sen. Tom Sullivan and Rep. Lisa Feret answered by email or written statement. House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell answered through his communications director. Sen. Lisa Frizell and Rep. Brandi Bradley sat for phone interviews.

The numbers, and the one with no room in it

Article XIX of the Colorado Constitution lets the legislature refer a constitutional amendment to the ballot on a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house. Article IV sets the same bar for overriding a veto. In the Senate that is 24 of 35. In the House it is 44 of 65.

The Associated Press has called all 21 Senate seats that were on the ballot, 16 for Democrats and five for Republicans. With the 14 holdovers, the chamber comes in at 24 Democrats and 11 Republicans. It sits exactly on the line.

In the House, AP has called 47 seats for Democrats and 15 for Republicans, with three still out. The House cleared the threshold days ago and the outstanding races cannot take it away. If the current leaders hold, the chamber is 49-16.

All of it is unofficial. Counties send official abstracts to the Secretary of State by Nov. 25, any mandatory recounts have to be finished by Dec. 4, and certification comes after that, under the state’s election calendar.

The House has three seats to spare. The Senate has none. Every Senate Democrat has to be present and vote yes for a referral or an override to pass. One absence ends it.

Democrats say they are not voting as a bloc

Feret, who represents House District 24, said she wants the majority arguing with itself. “While most bills are well intentioned, the real challenge is the nuts and bolts of the policy,” she said. She wants Democrats “comfortable debating, critiquing, and iterating our own party’s policy and not simply voting yes because it is a bill introduced by a fellow democrat.”

Democrats in both chambers chose new leaders on Nov. 5 and Nov. 6. Sullivan, of Senate District 27, said those elections told him the same thing.

“Leadership elections, in both chambers have shown me that we will not be voting in a block. I believe that some of the most important conversations will be in caucus meetings rather than on chamber floors or in committee meetings.”

Ricks, of House District 40, sent a statement through her office naming four priorities. She said she is bringing legislation “to strengthen enforcement on oil and gas operations near people’s homes,” a bill ending the use of credit scores to set homeowners insurance rates, and a measure to give homeowners “a real way to resolve disputes with their HOAs.” She also said she would keep fighting to “hold ICE and the federal government accountable to Colorado’s values.”

Feret wants to revive a bill that died last session, her “large employer bill that holds large companies accountable for their overuse of programs like Medicaid and SNAP within their employee base.” It “failed last year and there was a strong desire to bring it back,” she said.

Republicans did not kill that bill. House Bill 26-1327 would have charged large employers a fee for each worker on Medicaid. It did not touch SNAP.

It passed the House 35-30 in May of this year, with every Republican and eight Democrats voting no. Two days later the Senate Finance Committee postponed it indefinitely.

What changed for Republicans

Frizell, the assistant Senate Republican leader, put it most plainly. What the two-thirds costs her side has nothing to do with amendments or vetoes.

Under Article V of the state constitution, no bill becomes law without a majority of all the members elected to each house. That is 33 votes in the House and 18 in the Senate, whatever the attendance. To stop a bill, the minority does not need a majority of the room. It needs to hold the yes votes below that number.

“We have for a long time really counted on our more moderate colleagues across the aisle to kill bills. So, for example, in the Senate, we were able to kill three bills on the floor last session because we had enough moderate Democrats come across and vote with us. We needed six and we were able to do that three times. … Now we need seven and I don’t know that that’s going to be — I think that’s going to be a heavier lift.”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Frizell said. “It’s going to be challenging. This is going to be a very, very challenging session and two years actually.”

She said the majority can also rewrite the chamber’s rules “without any input from us whatsoever,” and that House Republicans are worse off than she is because they lost more seats.

The same math runs steeper there. House Republicans needed 11 Democrats to break ranks when the majority was 43. At 49 they need 17.

Caldwell, who was reelected House minority leader on Nov. 6, said the same from his side. “In reality, we won’t have the votes to stop them, which means it will be on the moderate Democrats to help us hold the line,” he said. “However, what remains to be seen is whether they will have the backbone to do what’s right for Colorado.”

Where the minority says it still has leverage

Bradley, of House District 39, was straightforward about what is left.

“The only power we still have will be running amendments and running the clock.”

She said the majority would rather the public not hear it. “They don’t want the public to understand why bills are so bad,” she said.

She expects the new leadership to move faster to shut that down, and named two House rules that do it. Rule 14 lets the chamber vote to close debate, though it cannot take effect for at least an hour. Rule 16 ends debate immediately and sends each pending amendment straight to a vote, in the reverse order it was offered. Both take 33 votes, the same majority it takes to pass a bill.

Committee rosters are the other thing at stake. Six House committees of reference seat 13 members and four seat 11. Republicans hold four or five seats on the large ones and three or four on the small ones, and the ratios follow no formula.

“The committee ratios are definitely they’re going down. We lost six seats,” Bradley said. “So that’s essentially another Republican off of almost all committees.”

Frizell said the same from the Senate side and added the part neither of them controls. “That’s really going to be up to the majority party’s leadership and how they decide to apportion the seats out,” she said. Frizell said the numbers have not been disclosed.

Caldwell said the count of seats is only half of it. “It very much depends on if the new speaker-designate Jennifer Bacon decides to put reasonable Democrats on committees,” he said. If only progressives are seated, he said, Republicans’ “ability to stop their radical legislation will be nearly impossible.” If “reasonable members sit in committee, we might have the opportunity to kill harmful legislation.”

Bacon did not respond to RMV’s questions.

What Republicans can still pass, Frizell said, is what they have always passed. “Republicans since I’ve been in the legislature have only been able to run bipartisan bills,” she said. “And that’s the only way we can get policy through.”

Republicans see division on both sides

Caldwell said Democrats are “in a civil war with each other between the progressives and the more moderate members.” He said Republicans in heavily Republican districts who worked as though they were 20 points behind came out safe.

Bradley turned it on her own party. “I honestly don’t know how the Republicans unite,” she said. She will vote against Republican bills she considers a betrayal of the party’s own positions. “When we push bills that go against the taxpayers’ bill of rights as Republicans, when we push bills that go against Second Amendment rights of our constituents, I am not going to be a part of that,” she said.

Frizell’s answer was an argument for unity. “Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon Republicans to support one another,” she said. “And be organized. And very strategic in how we conduct ourselves during the 120 days that we’re in session.”

Senate Republicans have not yet held their own leadership election for the coming session. They vote Saturday.

The two sides do not agree on why it happened

Frizell and Bradley both put the losses on turnout.

“What people really have got to understand is when conservatives allow this to happen in our state, this imbalance of power, we have no power,” Frizell said. “Everybody needs to get out and vote. And they didn’t.”

Bradley said the same and went further, faulting her party for spending against its own conservatives in the primaries while seats it assumed were safe went unguarded. She said the consultants responsible should be replaced, called for closing Colorado’s primaries and said the party needs a stronger state chair.

“There’s no safe seats. The safe seats are gone,” she said. “Our state has flipped blue. So, no, I’m not in a safe seat.”

Sullivan does not think turnout explains it. “I think first off this speaks more to the voters of Colorado and their dissatisfaction with the Republican Party,” he said. “It also speaks to the quality of their candidates. I believe if that continues the number will continue to rise.”

Regardless of fault, Democrats hold a supermajority in both chambers. What they do with it, and what Republicans can achieve despite it, will show in the session that convenes in January.