DENVER For the next nine days, Denver District Courtroom 209 will serve as Colorados political Thunderdome: Six contestants will enter, but only one will leave.
The stakes are life or death for the careers of several members of Congress and their challengers.
The fight itself is about drawing seven new districts for the states Congressional delegation.
Denver Chief Judge Robert Hyatt will hear evidence for the next two weeks about the districts, which need to be redrawn every 10 years to equalize their populations. Hyatt will pick from a variety of rival plans.
In addition to the top Democratic and Republican lawyers in the state, attorneys for two Denver-area governments, Hispanic groups and the Pueblo district attorney also were on hand for opening arguments Tuesday.
Republicans, who have a 4-3 advantage in the delegation, want to stick as closely as possible to the current map. Republican lawyer Richard Westfall said the Democrats preferred map would put 1.5 million voters in a different Congressional district.
The lines youre being asked to move affect real people and real communities, Westfall said.
Democratic lawyer Mark Grueskin said the current map, drawn in 2001, should not be deified.
This is 2011, and things have changed, Grueskin said.
Most of the maps propose only small changes for GOP Rep. Scott Tiptons Western Slope district, except for the plan by the Colorado Latino Forum, which would remove Pueblo and the San Luis Valley from his district.
The Democrats main target seems to be Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, who currently enjoys a safe Republican district in Denvers southern suburbs. The Democratic map would make his district winnable for either party by splitting away conservative Douglas County and adding the whole city of Aurora.
Douglas Countys lawyer, Kelly Dunnaway, said the county joined the lawsuit to preserve its current district.
My position here is to try and protect the 6th Congressional District from being carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey, Dunaway said.
But Auroras Republican-dominated city council has voted to support the Democratic map, because it squeezes Aurora into a single district, Aurora lawyer Hubert Farbes said.
But the Democrats find themselves at odds with some of their traditional allies.
State Senate President Brandon Shaffer, a Longmont Democrat, has weighed in with a friend-of-the-court brief that opposes the main Democratic map. Shaffer is running for Congress on the Eastern Plains, but the Democratic map moved Longmont out of the plains district and paired it with Boulder.
And two Hispanic groups the Colorado Latino Forum and Colorado Hispanic Bar Association have irritated Democrats by submitting a map that strips Pueblo and the San Luis Valley out of the Western Slope district in a bid to increase Hispanic clout on the Eastern Plains.
The move would mean trouble for Tiptons likely challenger, Democrat Sal Pace, whose hometown is Pueblo.
Hispanics have been the fastest-growing demographic group in Colorado, yet they are not close to a majority in any Congressional district, lawyer Gina Rodriguez said.
Hispanics in the state remain under-served, underrepresented and marginalized, Rodriguez said.
A pair of Democratic former legislators also have joined the case and are positioning their plan as a middle way.
Former state Senate President Stan Matsunaka is the lawyer for Bill Thiebaut, the Pueblo district attorney. Thiebaut submitted two maps that can be seen as a compromise plan between Republicans and Democrats, Matsunaka said. Thiebaut will testify near the end of the trial.
The matter landed in court because the Legislature, which is supposed to draw new maps every 10 years, failed because of divided partisan control of the House and Senate.
Hyatt has scheduled a nine-day trial. His ultimate decision on a map can be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Reach Joe Hanel at [email protected].
