My intention here was to shore up CO-03, CO-04, and CO-07. I was not successful with CO-03, there’s just not enough Democratic territory in that area to help Salazar, so I settled on making Markey and Perlmutter safer.
CO-01 (gray, Diana DeGette – D) – Chopped off the northeastern part of Denver and added some of the suburbs. Remains solid Dem.
CO-02 (green, Jared Polis – D) – Drops the Weld County portion of the district and extends west to take in some of the Republican rural counties and south to the Denver suburbs and Park County. Should remain a Democratic district.
CO-03 (blue, John Salazar – D) – Removed a few heavily Republican counties. Maybe slightly more Democratic now.
CO-04 (purple, Betsy Markey – D) – Removed all the heavily Republican rural counties on the eastern third of the state. Added parts of Adams and Denver. Should be significantly more friendly to the Democrats now.
CO-05 (red, Doug Lamborn – R) – Takes in some of the Republican counties from CO-04, but since they’re sparsely populated it shouldn’t shift the population base much.
CO-06 (yellow, Mike Coffman – R) – Same as above.
CO-07 (teal, Ed Perlmutter – D) – Drops most of the Adams County portion and adds part of Denver to make the district more Democratic.
This is an interesting map, but you may have weakened Polis in district 2 a bit too much. It’s not the big rural sections I’m worried about, but the Denver suburbs you gave him–which were relatively conservative suburban/exurban sections from Lamborn and Coffman’s districts, right? (kinda hard to tell on the map exactly which parts of Jeff Co. he’d have) Polis is pretty liberal and would need a pretty liberal district.
Still, I think it’s pretty solid overall. Sticking those rural eastern Colorado counties into Lamborn and Coffman’s districts was smart.
You definitely suceeded in protecting Markey, she’d win that district by 20 points going up against a conservative like Musgrave.
In a really good Dem year, I think I can get 6-1, but a 5-2 stalemate is more likely. It all depends on what the R’s would do in Colorado Springs. Nominate a wingnut (not unlikely) and it very well may be 6-1, especially if State Rep. Merrifield or State Sen. Morse wants to move up in the world. Beyond these two, a weak bench may curb our chances. In words, here the map:
District 1: Not much change. I’d like to shift it south so DeGette can absorb some of the Denver Tech Center suburban areas around Highlands Ranch, but, fundamentally, it’s a Denver district, like it always was.
District 2: Adds some more Denver suburbs and dumps the eastern half of Boulder county (possibly even a pincher’s shape to include Lyons and Nederland), not including the city itself, into the 4th. Goes west and north as in the above map for population purposes.
District 3: Loses its northern tier and ski counties to the 2nd and takes in more of Pueblo and the east end of the San Luis Valley.
District 4: Takes in East Boulder and reaps the benefit. Beyond this, it is little changed.
District 5: Shrinks considerably. I’ll have to check, but I think the central Colorado Springs area west to include Manitou Springs and south to include Fort Carson should have enough people. It has grown by leaps and bounds. It drops the northern and eastern portions of El Paso to the 6th.
District 6: The district begins in Douglas County and meanders south, taking in every blood-red precinct along I-25 from Parker all the way down to the northern reaches of the Springs around Woodman Road (including the Air Force Academy, Focus on the Family, New Life Church, the Black Forest, and other various and sundry evangelical “goodies”.
District 7: Perlmutter doesn’t need much help, contrary to the map above, and he certainly owes me no favors as Colorado’s quintessential inside-the-Capitol-building politician. No need to give him any more of Denver, especially when CO-2 might need the population after CO-1 shifts a few miles south and CO-4 takes eastern Boulder.
Ran in 2008 against Lamborn (unfortunately got pasted, ran behind Obama) is a personal friend of mine – I wonder how CO-05 could be redistricted to make it a little more friendly for him if he wanted to run again.
Of course, he recently said that he’s considering getting a job with Sen. Udall, so he may not want to run again. It’s too bad.