When La Plata County voters went to cast a ballot in this year’s general election, many of them opted not to vote a straight ticket, but chose candidates across the political spectrum.
That should not necessarily come as a surprise, given the old adage that all politics is local and that just over half the county’s voters are not affiliated with any political party.
Slightly less than half the voters belong to one of the two major political parties, and are split between the Democrats and Republicans roughly evenly.
Although Democratic candidates received more votes within the county than their Republican opponents in every contested race, Tuesday’s results show that allegiance to Democrats is slightly stronger in big-ticket races.
“There were a lot of voters who may have voted, in La Plata County, Harris at the top of the ticket – for the Democrat – and maybe (Republican Cleave Simpson) for state senator,” said Fort Lewis College Associate Professor of Political Science Paul DeBell.
In the marquee races of national importance – the presidential contest and battle to replace Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Congressional District 3 seat in Congress – Democratic candidates maintained a healthy 19% point lead.
But at a regional and local level, the party’s lead softened.
La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka, a Democrat, won reelection over his Republican opponent by a margin of 12%.
Democrat Katie Stewart, who was narrowly elected to represent House District 59 in the General Assembly, had the same 12% margin of support among the county’s voters over her Republican opponent, Clark Craig.
In less politicized races, such as those for seats on the University of Colorado Board of Regents and the state Board of Education, Democratic candidates won over La Plata County voters by margins ranging from 8% to 16%.
And in the race for Senate District 6, where Republican Sen. Cleave Simpson beat out Democratic challenger Vivian Smotherman, the Democrat had only a 5% lead within the county over Simpson.
Local idiosyncrasies and personal connections with candidates complicate the national trends, DeBell said.
The smaller gap in the Senate District 6 could be attributed to a number of factors, including Simpson’s reputation as a moderate, the fact that Smotherman moved to Durango in 2021 and the $135,000 spent by a conservative state super PAC to defeat Smotherman.
Democrat Stewart picked up a smaller portion of the vote in La Plata County this year than Rep. Barbara McLachlan received in 2022. McLachlan, a Democrat who was an incumbent at the time, faced Republican Shelli Shaw, a political outsider who was relatively new to the community.
Stewart, in contrast, squared off against Craig, the mayor of Ignacio who has deep ties to the community. Her campaign also benefited from $150,000 in outside PAC spending.
Despite Democratic victories in local elections and the party’s advantage locally in national elections, DeBell says the county is still no monolith.
“I think that there's still great ideological diversity here,” he said.
The results for Republicans were “as expected” Shaw, former District 59 candidate and former chair of the La Plata County Republican Central Committee said.
Former county commissioner Brad Blake, who in 2014 was the last Republican elected to the board, said the margins by which GOP candidates lost in the county were more significant than he expected.
Although from a broad perspective DeBell says the personal nature of politics may sway some voters to diversify their picks on the ballot, Blake applies a simple ruler: which party won the race.
“I think it’s very apparent that La Plata County has become reliably blue,” Blake said.
Blake’s 2022 campaign for county commissioner was focused largely on the need to deregulate land use. The issue was central, if not defining, to the campaign of Republican Paul Black, who unsuccessfully challenged Salka this year.
Blake blames the fact that commissioners are elected at large rather than by district. Precinct-level data, which will provide a clearer picture of how county residents voted by region, will not be available for several more weeks.
“I don’t see how we have a path forward when we’re elected at large,” Blake said. “With the electorate at large and the college and other factors, I just don’t know. It’s going to be awfully tough.”
Lawmakers have tried several times to change the way commissioner are or could be elected, but legislation has failed each time.
Shaw points out that the land-use code, while frustrating to some, only applies to a small subset of people who both live outside Durango and are seeking approval for development.
“How many people … are really having to deal with that on a daily basis?” she said. “So I think do we need to address land code? Absolutely. I think anybody elected needs to look at our land use and make it effective and efficient for everybody. But what else? What else reaches people?”
Those local issues that reach people can be enormous motivators and function as the catalyst that causes people to vote across party lines. And they might be the thing that turns around the GOP’s lackluster performance in local races.
“When you see people in the grocery store, you know who they are, they’ve come to your town halls, I think you vote on the person rather than the party,” said McLachlan, the term-limited Democratic lawmaker who will be replaced by Stewart in January.
Even if Democrats are routinely sweeping up victories in local elections, the blue coat that blankets La Plata County is not fully representative of the diversity underneath.
“I think that there’s a need for compassion and complexity in the way that we look at the world,” DeBell said. “And there is, after elections, always a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking and big generalizations … and I think that can lead us just to more division and less pragmatic problem-solving, and more othering and less community building.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
