Colorado Government And Politics

Like the majority of states, Colorado's current constitution provides for three branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The governor heads the state's executive branch. The Colorado Supreme Court is the highest judicial body in the state. The state legislative body is the Colorado General Assembly, which is made up of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House has 65 members and the Senate has 35. Currently, Democrats are in control of both chambers of the General Assembly. The 2005 Colorado General Assembly is the first to be controlled by the Democrats in forty years.

The current governor of Colorado is Bill Ritter (D).

Colorado is made up primarily of transplanted citizens, and this is illustrated by the fact that the state has not had a native-born governor since 1975 (when John David Vanderhoof left office) and -- until Bill Ritter's election in November 2006 -- had not elected one since 1958, in the person of Stephen L.R. McNichols. Vanderhoof ascended from the Lieutenant Governorship when John Arthur Love was given a position in Richard Nixon's administration in 1973.) Bill Ritter (D), a humanitarian missionary worker in Africa and former Denver District Attorney, defeated former congressman and banker Bob Beauprez (R) in the 2006 gubernatorial election.

The two U.S. Senators from Colorado are Wayne Allard (R), and Ken Salazar (D). The state has seven U.S. Congressional districts, based on the 2000 Census.

Colorado is considered a very independent state politically in both state and federal elections. Coloradans elected 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans to the governorship in the last 100 years. In presidential politics, Colorado supported Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, and the Republican presidential nominee Robert J. Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. Recently, the state appears to be going more towards the center. George W. Bush won the state's 9 electoral votes in 2004 by a margin of 5 percentage points with 51.7% of the vote, considerably less than the 9% margin Bush won by in 2000. However this can be largely attributed to the 5% of the vote Ralph Nader won in 2000. Nearly all of these votes went to Democrat John Kerry in 2004. [8]. Democrats also gained in every open seat race in the state, picking up a seat in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats are strongest in metropolitan Denver, the college towns of Fort Collins, and Boulder, southern Colorado (including Pueblo), and a few western ski resort counties. Republicans are strongest in the Eastern Plains, Colorado Springs, the Western Slope (including Grand Junction), and some of the Denver suburbs, especially south and west of Denver City-County. The fastest growing parts of the state, particularly Douglas, Elbert, and Weld counties in the Denver metropolitan area, are strongly Republican.

Colorado State Capitol in Denver