DENVER — Election season is over, but Colorado will have to wait to see how our state legislature will look next session.
Three state senators announced they will be resigning at the start of the 2025 legislative session. Democratic Senators Janet Buckner and Chris Hansen, along with Republican Senator Kevin Van Winkle, are leaving three open seats in the Colorado Senate. Vacancy committees will decide who fills those spots.
“When a legislator resigns or retires or leaves office before the end of their term, the vacancy committee is the committee that decides who will replace them, and vacancy committees share the same party affiliation," Robert Preuhs, the political science chair at Metropolitan State University, explained. "They are members of the party, Republican or Democratic Party, respectively, depending on the affiliation of the representative. They're elected by members of the party within the local community, the precincts.”
Preuhs said there are pros and cons to the vacancy committee system.
"It doesn't cost the county or local governments the time and resources to run a special election. Those special elections tend to be pretty low turnout in any case. That's the big one, and it's also a little bit more expedient," Preuhs said. “The downside is that the voters themselves don't have a direct impact on that decision. It's really indirect."
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An analysis by Denver7 shows nearly one-third of current state lawmakers were selected by a vacancy committee at some point in their legislative careers.
“To have it happen right after you've spent the time and resources and effort to win an election, particularly in some of these cases where there is really overwhelming support for, you know, one party or the other, that is rare," Preuhs said.
Chris Hansen has spent eight years in Colorado's State Capitol — three years in the state House of Representatives, and five years in the state Senate. Most recently, Hansen saw a landslide victory over his Libertarian opponent in November, with Denver ready to send him back to the Senate.
Days after that victory, Hansen announced he would be resigning. He has a new job as CEO of La Plata Electric Association in Durango.
“This was an opportunity that came my way really late in this process, certainly nothing that I planned ahead of time," Hansen said. “I found out about the job around Labor Day. Early September, went through a process with La Plata in September, and early October, looked at a final contract right around the time of the election, and ended up signing that contract on November ninth.”
Hansen said it was an incredibly difficult decision to make, and acknowledged that the timing was not ideal.
"The ballot had been finalized on September the fifth, and so all of this happened after that deadline," Hansen said. “Really agonized over the decision, because I really put my heart and soul into my service at the capitol. I loved serving east Denver at the state capitol, but this was an opportunity that ultimately was just incredible for me and my family and I decided to accept the job offer.”
Hansen explained how the vacancy committee will pick his replacement.
“In my case, that's more than 150 people who were elected at the neighborhood-by-neighborhood level to be precinct officers. They form the vacancy committee," Hansen said. "They represent their neighborhoods. They've been elected by their neighbors to do that job, and they each get a vote to decide who will fill the seat.”
Hansen's vacancy committee will meet on Jan. 7, 2025 — two days before his resignation becomes effective.
"The district will be represented nonstop. There will be no break in that representation," Hansen said. “I think that's one of the strengths of our current vacancy process, is that vacancies can be filled relatively quickly compared to a 90 or 120 day election that some states do.”
Whoever is appointed out of a vacancy committee serves for two years, with an open election coming in 2026.
“The voters will continue to have their say as they should. And so, I think you know, this is a process that has generally worked for the state. Should we consider reform? Absolutely, and I leave that to the current legislature to do that," Hansen said.
Watch State Sen. Hansen's full interview in the video player below:
Out of the seven people currently listed as contenders for Hansen's senate seat, he supports Representative-Elect Sean Camacho taking his place.
“I've been campaigning for the people of House District 6, which makes up the majority of Senate District 31 and this is another opportunity to serve my community," Camacho said. “A vacancy committee is a group of, depending on how many people, very active Democrats or Republicans that are community members from different neighborhoods around the district, that are selected to get out the word, get out the vote, be informed citizens about what's going on the state legislature.”
Camacho said he and Hansen spoke about his new job a few days before it was announced.
“He talked to me about it a few days before the election, saying he hadn't made a decision and he didn't know what he was going to do, and as his friend, I respected that," Camacho said.
"Sean's a friend of mine. I asked for his advice, as I do my friends when I'm making big life decisions. So I did talk to him shortly before the election," Hansen said.
State Representative Steven Woodrow is also hoping to secure Hansen's senate seat. He was first appointed to the legislature in 2020 through a vacancy committee.
“These are the folks who organize their neighborhoods down to the block. They're the ones who distribute literature at election time. They are point people who their neighbors call and ask questions about what's going on, especially on this year's ballot, when we had something like 26 initiatives to choose from these folks," Woodrow said about the individuals who are on a vacancy committee. “They go to caucus. They get elected from their neighbors. Sometimes, they just raise their hand because no one else wants to do it, and they spend most of their time organizing, just grassroots advocacy.”
Woodrow explained the differences between a vacancy committee and a standard election process from a candidates point of view.
“In a vacancy election you are solely focused on these electors and what they want and what they need and what they're interested in. That doesn't mean you're going to find agreement with everyone, but it's their voices that are going to matter, and they represent their neighborhoods, and they're pretty smart folks, and so in a lot of ways, it's more difficult because it's a lot of one-on-one in a more perfect system," Woodrow said.
Special elections or governor appointments to fill vacant seats also have their pitfalls, according to Woodrow.
“We're a part-time legislature. We meet for 120 days. If we were to have special elections, that would take 60, 90 days if someone were to fall ill during session. That could mean that an entire district doesn't have any representation," Woodrow said. “Other states, they use governor appointments. I don't think that's that would necessarily work here. In fact, I think what we've done is we've taken that power that would be vested in a governor appointment, and immersed it amongst folks who are the volunteers, the grassroots base.”
Woodrow hopes to expand his career into the state Senate in 2025.
“I'm an effective legislator, and to be able to do that in a room of 35 as opposed to 65 would be an incredible opportunity to be even more influential and effective," Woodrow said. “To be able to hit the ground running in the senate and continue working with the folks that I've considered my close colleagues for the past several years, I don't want to miss that.”
Vacancy committees for all three departing state senators will occur in early January.
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