Face the State

With the announcement this week that U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar will serve as President-elect Obama's Interior secretary, the Colorado political arena is abuzz with speculation about who will take over Salazar's Senate seat. Here's our prediction.

GordonState of Colo.

Because Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, picked three white guys as finalists for secretary of state, he is under pressure from the diversity crowd to appoint a woman to the Senate, leading us to believe that he'll pick U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette over other contenders, including term-limited state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.

In the spirit of liberal identity politics, he should replace a minority with a minority, right? Ritter could follow a process not unlike that employed in hiring tenure-track faculty at CU, to "expand opportunity." Salazar is Hispanic, after all. Haven't you heard?

Appointing DeGette would also open up her current seat in the 1st Congressional District. As we previously reported, an open House seat would require the state to hold a special election within 75 to 90 days of DeGette’s resignation. Each party would then use a vacancy committee to select candidates, who would campaign for the seat.

While U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter's name has also been floated, he's lower on the seniority totem pole and represents the more political vulnerable 7th Congressional District. If Ritter were to appoint him, Democrats could potentially lose the seat to a strong Republican candidate.

With DeGette in the Senate, Romanoff would be an obvious pick for the Democrats' nominee in the 1st, effectively making him a shoe-in for the seat. Republican chances in the 1st CD are slim to none. DeGette won re-election in November with 72 percent of the vote.

Tougher to predict: Under a scenario where Romanoff heads to Washington, who will Ritter appoint to replace Coffman, now off to Washington to represent Colorado's solidly GOP 6th Congressional District? The remaining two contenders are Bernie Buescher, a Grand Junction Democrat who lost his state House seat in the upset of the political season this November and term-limited Sen. Ken Gordon, a Denver Democrat, who lost his original 2006 bid against Coffman for the post.

Our prediction: The seat will go to Gordon, in spite of his 2006 loss. Buescher's defeat has been widely attributed to his close affiliation to the increasingly unpopular Ritter. To appoint him now would only give Republicans an opportunity to remind voters in the next election about why he lost his last bid in the first place. Gordon, eccentric to say the least, can at least attribute his loss to his own doing.

There you have it. One possible scenario of how the cards may fall for Colorado Democrats. Let the shuffle begin.