About 5 percent of active voters in La Plata County switched between major party affiliations during the last year.

Of those, 10 percent crossed the political spectrum, going from Democrat to Republican (5 percent) or just the opposite, Republican to Democrat (5 percent).

About 26 percent defected from one of the major parties – 12 percent dropped their Republican affiliation and 14 percent gave up their Democrat affiliation – to become unaffiliated.

But most of those on the move were unaffiliated voters who chose to identify with one of the major parties: 21 percent went from unaffiliated to Republican and 43 percent went from unaffiliated to Democrat, according to voter records from December 2015 to January 2017.

(An additional 1 percent of active voters switched to or from third parties, including the Green Party and Libertarian Party.)

Residents had myriad reasons for changing parties: Some wanted to participate in caucuses, in which members of a political party can register their preference for a candidate; some grew frustrated with their chosen party and needed a change; and some sought to take a more neutral stance by becoming unaffiliated.

Here are a few stories from the approximately 2,000 voters who switched between major parties last year in La Plata County:

Craig Butler, 62, is no fan of Donald Trump. But he likes Hillary Clinton even less.

“I’m still just dumbfounded that he got elected,” Butler said of President Trump. “I voted for him because it was the better of the two, in my mind. But I don’t like the guy. I think he’s kind of a buffoon. He’s not very presidential. He’s not presidential at all.”

He’s also no fan of Clinton or the Democratic Party, which, he said, turns a blind eye to illegal immigration and has a blank check ready for anyone seeking handouts.

“It’s just too much,” he said. “I don’t think we can afford it, and I don’t think it’s sustainable.”

Butler, who voted for Barack Obama, switched from being a Democrat to a Republican during the last presidential election. He still likes Obama, but he prefers Trump over Clinton.

Butler said he grew up in the 1970s, and the world was a different place back then. There was Vietnam, but terrorism wasn’t what it is today. Now, mass killings are almost common, and he worries about the day someone tries to explode a bomb in a football stadium. Trump and the Republicans, he said, are more likely to ensure America’s safety.

“I’m older now, and you change views as you get older,” Butler said. “You just evolve, you change, and that’s what’s going on for me.”

Butler said he detests politics, and one of the things he likes about Trump is that he’s not a politician. But he hopes Trump will settle down in the next year, find a filter for the things he says and tweets and become a good president.

“He spews out some of the most ridiculous statements,” Butler said. “On the other hand, that’s why I like him, because most politicians, they just glaze things over. You can’t please all the people all the time, and I think Hillary was trying to do that.”

Loretta Bronson of Durango said she doesn’t vote often, but this year she felt compelled to weigh in – enough so that she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Her main motivation was to ensure the security of her 13 grandchildren, ages 6 to 16, and she felt Trump was the best presidential candidate to do that.

“If it would have been someone else running, it may have been totally different,” she said of Clinton. “I just didn’t agree with a lot of stuff she was doing or saying. ... I just didn’t feel in my gut that Hillary was the right person for that (protecting the safety of her grandchildren).”

Bronson, who identified as a Latino born in Durango, said people who come to America illegally should leave or begin the process for legal immigration.

“If you want to be in America, do what everybody else does to get into America, you know? Go through the process. I’m sure way back in time, my ancestors had to do that. I don’t know, I’m a Durango native. I just want America to be OK. I want our children to be OK. I don’t want people coming in and hurting our children, and a lot of that is happening. ... I think that’s the most important thing, to keep America great, make America great again.”

Julie Andersen, 58, has been registered as a Republican for as long has she has been old enough to vote. But she switched party affiliations during the most recent election to Democrat.

She wasn’t motivated by the presidential election; rather, she wanted to vote in a local Democratic primary for Ben Lammons, who was running for district attorney.

Making the switch wasn’t that big of a deal, she said, because she has always voted for the person, not the party.

“I’ve always leaned and voted more Democratic,” she said.

The only reason she registered as a Republican decades ago is because her father was a Republican, she said.

“It was just one of those things: ‘I need to register to vote. OK, my dad is Republican, whatever,’” she said. “Party affiliation to me means nothing the way I vote, so it doesn’t make any difference necessarily.”

Roger Bower said he switched political parties last year, from being a registered Republican to a registered Democrat, “to make a statement to the Republicans.”

He grew tired of the way congressional Republicans acted during President Barack Obama’s term, including obstructing legislation and threatening to defund the government, he said.

It’s not the first time Bower has switched political affiliation. He used to be an independent, or unaffiliated voter, and became a Republican about eight years “to send a message to the Democrats,” he said.

Bower, who has lived in Durango for 20 years, said he’s a “pro-woman voter.”

“I do believe Congress and the House of Representatives should be made up exclusively of grandmothers, and perhaps the administration be headed by an idealistic young girl or something,” he said. “It sounds strange, but they have better morals, and men have a poor track record.”

Durango resident Jacob Dunlop, 40, grew up in a Republican household and adopted that outlook when it came time for him to register to vote. He has been Republican ever since. But last year, he switched to unaffiliated.

Politics have grown too polarizing, Dunlop said, and he doesn’t consider himself a very political person.

“I always just kind of stuck with that Republican affiliation throughout the years,” he said. “But as the political scene has gotten so polarized, I finally made the decision ... that I’m going to switch to unaffiliated because I’m really not supporting either side in what’s going on right now.”

He’s been feeling that way for a while, he said, but he stuck with his Republican affiliation so he could participate in the caucus or primaries. He’s glad Colorado voters approved propositions 107 and 108 in November that will restore the presidential primary and open primaries to unaffiliated voters.

“I really like the thought of being able to sit down and pick a candidate that I feel is best going to represent my needs and not having to do it within the constraints of a party affiliation,” he said.

Jim Altree said he is fed up with the Democrats and can’t stand the Republicans.

He’s an unaffiliated voter who briefly flirted with the Democratic Party last year just to support Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Altree, 66, and his wife, Barbara Altree, went from unaffiliated to Democrats, and back to unaffiliated, he said.

“We both ended up voting for Jill Stein,” he said, referring to the Green Party candidate.

If he were going to pick a major political party, it would be the Democrats, he said. But it doesn’t really fit his political outlook.

“I’m so liberal that I’m radical,” he said. “The Democrats are usually too conservative for me. I’m an old hippie, so that’s where I come from.”

Democrats further alienated Altree last year when the Democratic National Committee tried to prevent Sanders from becoming a candidate, he said.

“I go back to the Nixon era, and I thought we had reached the bottom then,” he said. “It just amazes me how America is turning into 1984. It’s just very scary.”

Kent Baxstrom said he’s always been conservative, but he wanted to make that stance more pronounced during the last election, in which he had several Republican friends running for local elections.

So in late May, he changed his voter registration from unaffiliated to Republican.

“I felt like I needed to be a little more involved,” he said. “I went unaffiliated for several years because I didn’t feel like I had a lot of support for anybody.”

Baxstrom, 54, a lifelong resident of Archuleta and La Plata counties, said he hasn’t been happy with the direction of the country for the past eight years, including on immigration, security and the federal deficit.

“I just felt like I needed to get my support behind the Republicans because I didn’t want to have the Democrats in office anymore, if I could help it,” he said. “There’s a lot going on.”

But mostly, he wanted to help elect local Republicans.

“It was not enough, I guess, because I didn’t get any of them elected,” he said.

Durango resident Jeanette Abella has always leaned left politically, but for the most part, she has been registered as an unaffiliated voter.

That changed last year, when she put a “D” behind her name.

Part of her rational was to participate in caucuses. But she also was moved by the volunteers who worked on behalf of Democratic causes and candidates, and she decided it was time to lend her support – at least on paper.

She also was repulsed by the opposition party.

More voters switched from being unaffiliated to Democrat than any other shift seen last year in La Plata County. Abella said that might be because left-leaning voters and unaffiliated voters looked at the opposition party’s offerings and found it “unfathomable.”

“Something uniquely un-American was taking place, and they perhaps didn’t want it to,” she said.

Abella hopes elected politicians – regardless of political stripe – will do what’s right for the future versus immediate gain. People don’t think anything too bad will happen in America, she said, but bad things happen every day in other countries, and “we’re certainly not immune.”

shane@durangoherald.com