During the past 30 years, La Plata County voters have gone from reliably red to dependably blue, a shift that held true during this year’s presidential election.
But political divides remained entrenched when looking at election results precinct by precinct – the 32 subdistricts that make up La Plata County.
As of last week, voter turnout among active voters was 85 percent in La Plata County, with 31,982 ballots cast, said Clerk & Recorder Tiffany Lee Parker. Colorado had the fifth highest voter turnout among states as of Tuesday, she said.
She attributed the high turnout to mail ballots, doing away with voter registration deadlines, establishment of numerous voter service centers and it being a contentious presidential election.
In general, Durango burns a deep blue and extends its flame of political influence north up the Animas Valley and outward in both directions – west toward the La Plata Mountains and east up Florida Road (County Road 240) past Lemon Reservoir.
According to unofficial results, Democratic candidates won every race on a county level, with the exception of one – Joyce Rankin for state Board of Education. Her Democratic opponent, Christine Pacheco-Koveleski, did little campaigning or fundraising.
Precinct 29, a rural district mostly north of Hermosa that extends to the San Juan County (Colorado) line, bucked the Democratic trend and voted for two Republican candidates: U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton and county commissioner candidate Lyle McKnight.
Precinct 24, which encompasses Ignacio, one of the county’s three municipalities, also was split between blue and red candidates. Voters there went for Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton (president), Gail Schwartz (U.S. House) and Julie Westendorff (county commissioner), but voted for Republicans J. Paul Brown (state House) and Lyle McKnight (county commissioner).
Locally, neither Democratic nor Republican party leaders were particularly pleased with this year’s election results. Democrats were having a hard time looking past the presidential election, which went to Donald Trump – someone they view as a misogynist and anti-Semitic. Republicans were dismayed more local elections didn’t go their way, including two races for county commission seats.
“This is a very difficult county for the Republican Party,” said Travis Oliger, chairman of the La Plata County Republican Central Committee. “It’s a blue county, for sure, no doubt about it. ... It’s very disappointing, but we’ll keep our heads up and keep working forward.”
He commended everyone who participated in the political process, saying both parties have more in common than what is portrayed.
“We all have the same goals: We all want people to prosper, succeed and be healthy,” Oliger said. “We just don’t all agree on how to get there. I sure would like to see people come together as people, not as parties.”
La Plata County Democrats had more than 200 volunteers who did registration drives, hosted candidate events and worked the phones to drum up support for candidates, said Jean Walter, party chairwoman.
“I’m so proud and so happy with them, and so grateful for everything they did,” she said.
Walter was pleased with local election results, but she kept returning to the presidential election and what local Democrats can do to stymie the rhetoric and policies Trump peddled during the campaign, including deporting millions of immigrants.
“Unfortunately, our amazing and wonderful accomplishments in La Plata County have been overshadowed by what we consider to be a very unfortunate result at the top of the ticket,” Walter said.
As for ballot initiatives, county residents, for the most part, split along typical ideological lines: Democrats supported tax increases more so than their Republican counterparts.
One of the most interesting examples of this can be seen with the county’s road and bridge question, which would have raised annual property taxes $76 on a $400,000 home. Most of the proposed road improvements would have occurred in rural precincts, where voters rejected the mill levy. Yet a majority of Durango city residents approved the tax increase, even though they were least likely to benefit.
Voters in Durango and Bayfield school districts approved tax increases, but Durango’s passed by a larger margin than Bayfield’s.
One ballot question that most successfully united county voters was a proposal to fund a $40 million airport terminal, which was rejected by every precinct except for one – a neighborhood in downtown Durango north of 10th Street to about 15th Street, and east of Narrow Gauge Avenue to about East Sixth Avenue.
County voters used to be a third Democratic, a third Republican and a third unaffiliated. While the balance has shifted to unaffiliated and Democratic voters, Walter said she thinks it will always remain a close split, within a few percentage points.
Even though La Plata County voters have shifted from red to blue in the past 30 years, Walter said she thinks of the county as “rurban,” a combination of rural and urban. It has a college with well-educated residents who think globally and act locally, she said. It also has a “wonderful rural population” that is well-grounded and knows what it wants for La Plata County.
shane@durangoherald.com
View precinct result maps (PDF)
