Colorado Eastern Plains vacancy in Congress leaves district without voice

For the first time in more than 40 years, a congressional district in Colorado is without a voice in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1983, a seat sat vacant because Jack Swigert, a former astronaut on the Apollo 13 who was elected the previous November, died of cancer one week before taking office. This time around, it’s because Republican Ken Buck stepped down from Congress late last month — more than nine months before the end of his fifth term representing the 4th Congressional District.

Swigert’s death resulted in an 85-day absence in the newly formed, metro Denver-based 6th Congressional District that ended when Dan Schaefer won a special election at the end of March 1983. Schaefer, who died in 2006, went on to serve eight more terms in Congress.

Likewise, a special election on June 25 will fill Buck’s seat, but not before the roughly 750,000 Coloradans who call the 4th District home endure a 95-day vacancy in Washington, D.C.

That’s more than three months of no one in the House voting on bills, pushing for federal funding or looking out for the economic engines — farming, ranching, meatpacking, and oil and gas extraction — of the vast Eastern Plains district. The 4th abuts the border with Wyoming and Nebraska in the north and follows the Kansas state line to the Oklahoma Panhandle in the south.

“This is usually a period when there’s a lot of legislating going on in Washington,” said Ken Bickers, a political science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “The policymaking — the sausage-making — is really busy about this time through the fall.”

The next occupant will be determined when Republican Greg Lopez, a former Parker mayor and two-time gubernatorial hopeful, faces off against Democrat Trisha Calvarese in the special election in June. They were chosen through party caucuses in recent weeks.

Until then, Travis Grant, a spokesman for the Colorado Farm Bureau, said the state’s agriculture sector is keeping an eye on the nation’s capital while the 4th District’s seat sits empty.

“Given that Colorado’s 4th Congressional District is an agricultural powerhouse, it would be impossible to ignore the ramifications of the vacancy,” he said. “The most glaring of these matters is the need to get a new Farm Bill passed before the extension of the 2018 farm bill runs out on Sept. 30.”

As for the oil and gas sector, Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma said the timing of Buck’s departure was fortuitous, “since the House has done good work on energy already.”

“With no plans for more energy legislation to hit the floor in the next few months, (Buck) has already taken care of one of the most important economic drivers in his district by voting for those (industry) bills,” she said.

Sgamma expressed little hope that legislation that’s passed the House will advance any time soon in the Democratic-majority Senate.

Some local officials aren’t worried

The 4th District touches 21 counties. A couple of county commissioners contacted by The Denver Post were nonplussed by the empty House seat. It will mostly be a “non-issue” for Douglas County, by far the district’s most populous, said Commissioner George Teal.

That’s in large part because Buck eschewed earmarks, which are congressional spending measures aimed at funding particular projects in a particular district. So there are no promised infrastructure projects suddenly in danger of getting spiked because he’s gone, Teal said.

“He didn’t believe in pork-barrel politics,” he said of Buck.

Wendy Buxton-Andrade, a commissioner in Prowers County, said she and her colleagues don’t think the temporary lack of congressional representation will have a “huge impact on us right now.” Prowers County, home to Lamar and Granada, rides up against the Kansas state line in Colorado’s southeast corner.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper “will probably pick up the slack for three months and if we need to have our voices heard during the three months, we can reach out to them,” she wrote in an email.

Bennet is planning to meet with residents in the 4th District “this spring and summer,” said his deputy press secretary, Patrick Barham Quesada. Meanwhile, Hickenlooper’s office said the junior senator will look out for the interests of Buck’s former constituents during the vacancy, including “handling any casework for residents in the 4th.”

Both senators are Democrats, and the 4th is the state’s most Republican-leaning district. But not everything connected to Congress is partisan — constituent services, such as assisting residents in obtaining passports or social security cards, are some of the pedestrian tasks lawmakers do for those they represent.

Vacancies in Congress have been more common in other states. In an academic paper Tyler Ritchie, a graduate of Columbia Law School, wrote last year for the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, he noted that in the quarter century from 1997 to 2021, there were 136 vacancies in the House.

Four seats are vacant currently, according to the Cook Political Report, including that of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, who resigned Dec. 31.

Those vacancies have gotten longer in recent years, Ritchie found. The average length of an empty seat in the first five years of that period clocked in at 104 days, but in the last five years, the average absence had increased to 173 days.

The longest was 359 days — from December 2017 to November 2018 — following the resignation of Michigan U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., according to his research.

That puts Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ decision to set the special election in the 4th Congressional District for June 25, timing that’s within the guardrails set by state law, at the shorter end of the House vacancy spectrum. It will fall on the same day as the district’s party primaries for the regular election in November.

Good chance of a short-timer

With the district’s heavy Republican lean, Calvarese, a relative unknown in Colorado politics who worked as a congressional staffer and as a writer for the National Science Foundation, will have a tough battle prevailing against her Republican opponent.

Lopez has said he plans only to fill out the rest of Buck’s term and won’t run in the primary for the next term that starts in January.

Bickers, the CU professor, said Lopez’s placeholder status, if he wins, could hamper solid representation for the 4th Congressional District beyond June.

As a six-month congressman, Lopez barely would be getting started on Capitol Hill before he is out the door, Bickers said — let alone securing any influential committee assignments that can have a real impact on the creation of public policy.

“It’s hard to imagine he’s going to be fully staffed by the time he leaves,” Bickers said. “I think it means the 4th District won’t be as well represented until it has someone in there for a full term and beyond.”