{"id":42249,"date":"2022-02-10T13:06:13","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T20:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/steve-fenberg-selected-as-next-president-of-the-colorado-senate\/"},"modified":"2022-02-10T20:06:13","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T20:06:13","slug":"steve-fenberg-selected-as-next-president-of-the-colorado-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/steve-fenberg-selected-as-next-president-of-the-colorado-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Fenberg selected as next president of the Colorado Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Democrats chose state Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, to be the chamber's next president on Wednesday. (Daniel Ducassi\/The Colorado Sun)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Senate Democrats on Wednesday selected Sen. Steve Fenberg to be the chamber\u2019s next president, a position in which the Boulder lawmaker will help steer the direction of the entire Legislature.<\/p>\n

Fenberg had been serving as the Senate majority leader, the No. 2 position in the chamber. He was elected president by acclamation, without a formal vote, of his 20-member caucus, and was the only candidate nominated.<\/p>\n

Fenberg\u2019s selection must be approved by the full Senate, meaning Republicans will get a chance to weigh in on whether he should be president, though they don\u2019t have the votes to stop it. He is poised to replace outgoing President Leroy Garcia, a Pueblo Democrat who is resigning later this month to take a job at the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to be the next president because I want to do everything I can to help harness the power of this caucus and the presidency to create a better Colorado,\u201d Fenberg said in a speech accepting the nomination.<\/p>\n

Fenberg promised to be \u201ca worthy caretaker\u201d of the chamber as an institution while also moving forward with \u201cchanges that are necessary to modernize this institution so that we can be a more just, more accessible, and therefore more effective institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fenberg said he\u2019s poised to do not what\u2019s best for his own political ambitions, but for the caucus as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe obviously have some big challenges ahead,\u201d Fenberg told his Democratic Senate colleagues. \u201cHundreds of bills still to pass, an historic and monumental budget to get across the finish line, an unprecedented opportunity to transform the state of Colorado on so many issues. And, of course, we have an election to win in November. There\u2019s too much at stake for us to slow down or retreat or get distracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia decided not to endorse a successor publicly or privately \u2013 instead opting to let \u201cthe caucus decide for itself\u201d who should be the next president, said Andy Bixler, a spokesman for Garcia.<\/p>\n

Sen. Kerry Donovan, a Vail Democrat who was seen as a potential contender for the position, was absent from the caucus meeting Wednesday because of a death in her family.<\/p>\n

Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat who sits on the Legislature\u2019s powerful Joint Budget Committee, was selected as the chamber\u2019s new majority leader.<\/p>\n

Moreno recalled an anecdote from his earlier days in the Capitol.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a long day, at the Capitol, I would go home, pop up with a pint of ice cream and watch our proceedings on the Colorado channel \u2013 and then I was surprised that I was still single,\u201d Moreno said. \u201cFast forward eight years, and I\u2019m still single, which probably explains why I fell asleep rereading the Senate rules last night in preparation for this nomination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreno vowed \u201cto spend every minute that I have looking for ways to make improvements to make us better and stronger as a caucus \u2026 even if it means I fall asleep, reading the rules every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters after the caucus meeting, Fenberg addressed Moreno\u2019s history as a policy critic of the governor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my intentions will be to ensure that we\u2019re having healthy conversations with the first floor (the governor\u2019s office) where we disagree, hopefully to navigate those conflicts in a way that everybody can win,\u201d Fenberg said.<\/p>\n

Disagreements that Moreno has had with the governor while serving as the top ranking senator on the JBC, \u201care good ones to work through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he will still absolutely have opinions about budget and work closely with the Joint Budget Committee given his experience, but his role is going to be different, and we\u2019re going to have to figure it out together and navigate it to make sure it\u2019s one that\u2019s, at the end of the day, successful and productive for our caucus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate Democratic caucus chose Sen. Rachel Zenzinger to replace Moreno on the Joint Budget Committee after Moreno nominated her for the position. Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat, previously served on the JBC, but was replaced by Sen. Chris Hansen of Denver in 2020.<\/p>\n

Zenzinger said she was glad to find herself useful to the body given her budget experience and Garcia\u2019s unexpected departure that led to a domino effect of leadership changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Budget Committee has begun with figure setting and right in the middle of one of the most wonky, masochistic juggling acts of our state Legislature, we\u2019re losing one of our best jugglers in Sen. Moreno,\u201d Zenzinger said. \u201cThere are a lot of balls in the air. Things are moving fast. And I\u2019m happy to be of service during this period of transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia will continue to serve in his position until Feb. 23, meaning the leadership changes will take effect on Feb. 24.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boulder lawmaker will help steer the direction of the entire Legislature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,394,94,2336,15,233,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-colorado-state-officials","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42249"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}