Election Day on Tuesday produced, nationally and statewide, painful if anticipated results. Democrats suffered big losses in Congress, while Republicans took control of the Senate, and held several key statewide offices. It was not necessarily the shellacking of 2010, but Tuesday’s outcomes were decisive: Voters want a change. In La Plata County, though, that looks quite a bit different than it does on the national landscape. Voters here appear to have considered each race and the choices wherein carefully, delivering results to match. At the county level, it was an interesting night with telling conclusions.
In an election cycle where local voters were most concerned about the county treasurer and sheriff races – using the number and content of letters to the editor as a metric – the results warrant examining. Democrat Allison Morrissey, a relative newcomer to the region and a political neophyte, soundly defeated Republican Bobby Lieb, who forewent a bid to retain his seat on the La Plata County Board of Commissioners to seek the treasurer’s office. Lieb, who is a longtime Durango resident, businessman and community leader, is the son of Bob Lieb, a former county commissioner and a well-known personality. Lieb had the power of incumbency and local ties on his side; Morrissey had the résumé, dogged determination and tireless campaign strategy to convince voters that she was the better candidate. She was rewarded with a 53 percent victory over Lieb’s 47 percent. That suggests voters felt she was more qualified for the post – a case Morrissey and her supporters made with vigor – particularly when considered against other county outcomes.
The contest for the District 1 open county commissioner seat Lieb vacated was between two quiet candidates: Republican Brad Blake and Democrat Cynthia Roebuck. Neither ran a particularly visible campaign, and it was not until the Herald endorsed Blake (Oct. 9) that there was much public conversation about either candidate. Blake, a “lifelong conservative” concerned about property rights and road closures was positioned as a tea party sympathizer and Roebuck, a land-use and development expert with no political background, rallied her supporters.
The volume was low, though, and the votes prove it: At this writing, Roebuck and Blake are in a statistical tie, with 49.67 percent and 50.33 percent, respectively. Just 144 votes separate them, though their political positions are far more widely spread. The margins in the race, as well as the fact that fewer voters weighed in on the commission contest underscores just how little voters knew about the two candidates. A total of 21,572 votes were cast in the commissioners’ race, while 22,172 votes were cast in the sheriff race and 22,019 in that for treasurer. The outcome, and the forthcoming dynamic at the county hangs in the balance.
Not so in the sheriff race. Democrat Sean Smith trounced Republican incumbent Duke Schirard, 55 percent to 45 percent: a decisive victory that suggests voters are not compelled by the argument that things have been going fine for 20 years, so there is no need to make a change. Such reasoning cannot outweigh the political and professional divisiveness that Schirard engenders and voters did not stutter in choosing the more tempered and forward-looking Smith.
Taken together with county voters’ selection of Republican state treasurer, attorney general and board of education candidates, along with Democratic gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and secretary of state contenders, La Plata County on the whole has revealed itself to be solidly purple. An interesting election indeed.
