La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka won reelection last month by a healthy 11-point margin among the 34,000 voters in the county who weighed in on the race.

But among voters in District 3, from which Salka hails, the Democratic commissioner was no favorite compared to his Republican opponent, Paul Black. Salka took just 38% of the District 3 votes to Black’s 62%.

It is for this reason that Republicans in La Plata County have been calling for a change in the way county commissioners are elected. The party and its members would like to see commissioners elected not at-large as they are now, but by the voters of the district they represent.

“I hand it to him, he (Black) campaigned hard in District 3, and those numbers definitely show,” Salka said, acknowledging that the district is “definitely” red.

Black did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Republicans feel that the concentration of Democrats, who reside largely in Durango and the outlying region, have an outsized sway in county politics and can, in effect, control the board.

“I don’t see how we have a path forward when we’re elected at-large,” said Brad Blake in a November interview shortly after the election.

Blake was elected to the Board of County Commissioners for a four-year term representing District 1 in 2014. He was narrowly ousted by Commissioner Clyde Church in 2018 and was the most recent Republican to serve on the board.

Voting by district would likely mean that District 3, which is anchored in Bayfield and spans the eastern half of La Plata County, would be represented by Black come January, rather than Salka.

In 2020, unaffiliated candidate Charly Minkler would have beat Salka by a 20-point margin, rather than the 10-point margin by which Salka defeated Minkler county-wide in that race.

The manner in which commissioners are elected is dictated by state law. And despite several attempts in recent years, legislators do not appear poised to make a change.

“I think there is such a toxic attitude, a toxic environment in the Legislature. … I think it'd be a very heavy lift,” said Don Coram, a former Republican state senator who represented Southwest Colorado from 2011 to 2023.

Coram in 2018 sponsored one of the more recent pushes to reform county elections and have voters elected commissioners by district in counties with a population of less than 70,000. The bill passed the state Senate with bipartisan support but was killed in a House committee.

Under current law, the county will have the option to increase the size of its board from three commissioners to five once the population hits 70,000. But that won’t happen for a while. According to the state demographer, the county population will break 57,000 in 2025 but is barely expected to break 66,000 by 2050.

Perhaps the one thing that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that partisan politics has infiltrated local races, and not for the better.

“I think at the county level, we just really got to get rid of the whole partisan politics stuff,” said Dave Peters, chairman of the La Plata County Republican Central Committee.

Although the party has taken a divisive posture on social issues, the matters of the BOCC – particularly land use – need not be considered on partisan terms, Peters said.

Black made land-use code reform the centerpiece of his campaign.

However, the issue only directly applies to voters seeking approval for development or changes on their land outside of municipal city limits. In District 2, which contains most of Durango, Black faltered to Salka by a margin of 50%.

According to critics, the code is a cumbersome document which prescribes onerous approval procedures and is the single greatest obstruction to growing revenue and housing stock in the county.

“You really need some people from the rural area that have the experience, and they can push back on staff,” Peters said. “… Nothing's going to change until they totally change the land-use code.”

And the key to rural representation is by district voting, he said.

However, Salka sees flaws of such a system – and so do some Republicans, he pointed out. (A 2023 attempt to require a five-commissioner board, with at least three elected by district in counties with a population of over 70,000 was killed in committee by a bipartisan vote).

Commissioners elected by district would jockey to direct capital project funding to their constituents, he argued. The fact that tax revenue from one district might be directed to benefit, say, roads in another district could test the magnetic north of an elected’s allegiances and lead to conflict.

“There'd be a lot of infighting,” he said, stressing that he serves all of La Plata County, and is pleased to do so.

Neither Peters nor Coram fully share that concern.

Given the bipartisan defeat previous bills have suffered and the intensely divided nature of the political atmosphere, there is little to suggest that commissioner voting will change in the way La Plata County Republicans would like.

The county’s two elected representatives in Denver – Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican, and Rep.-elect Katie Stewart, a Democrat – both say they are not familiar with the matter and don’t have a strong position one way or the other.

“There might be something to it,” Simpson acknowledged, but said the issue had not crossed his desk and so had not received proper consideration.

rschafir@durangoherald.com