Election 2022 is basically over, though as usual there have been items that lingered post-November 8, including recounts and a few charming demonstrations. I’m writing to chronicle my thoughts and experiences regarding this year’s election cycle, and feel like I have legitimate stories to tell about my own involvement, but this piece to follow is by no means just about me.
However, I was involved at some level through most of this calendar year. I worked on get-out-the-vote efforts as a precinct captain for one of Boulder’s largest precincts, participated in a number of small groups, got my views out through traditional and social media, and wrote a roughly 60,000-word Election Guide covering every ballot measure and candidate race on the Boulder ballot that earned about 8,000 page views. Many people did more than me, and many people did less than me, but together we got through another cycle with some assortment of hits and misses, depending on one’s perspective. Here are a few of my highlights and lowlights.
U.S. House and Senate: Smells Like Mean Gridlock
Sen. Raphael Warnock won a highly contested runoff election in Georgia to give Democrats their 51st seat in the U.S. Senate.
The biggest big-picture prizes in this American election cycle were control of the U.S. House and Senate. With all races decided, the Democrats will maintain control of the Senate with a 51-49 advantage, since Sen. Raphael Warnock won a December runoff election in Georgia against football star Herschel Walker, who had no more business running for the Senate than I have playing football. Republicans will have a majority in the House, and as of early December CNN projected a 222-213 GOP edge.
Conventional wisdom says the sitting President’s party often takes pretty big losses in mid-terms, at least when it comes to the number of Congressional seats. But 2022 presented a unique situation in which the abhorrent behavior of the former President Donald Trump remained very fresh in peoples’ minds, plus no small number of voters may have based decisions on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. In essence, this election could have been a referendum on both Trump (or Trumpism) and President Joe Biden, which might have minimized the damage typically done to the majority party.
As a Democrat, I was overjoyed to learn of the 50th Democratic Senate seat when Nevada returns were announced in mid-November. Control of the Senate at least makes it possible for Biden to get a Supreme Court Justice approved if a vacancy should occur, and it should make success more likely for other closely-contested federal judge nominations. Since these are lifetime judicial appointments, winning this Senate majority gave Democrats a type of legitimate political power – power that will carry over beyond the next two years.
Unfortunately, loss of the House majority means loss of “power of the purse.” This more than likely means we’ll see House Republicans seek their type of spending austerity, after a period of time in which the nation allocated trillions of dollars toward pandemic relief and other programs. We could reasonably guess a new austerity won’t be favorable for the social welfare-type programs that kept some individuals and families afloat during difficult economic times. We can also expect legislative gridlock, since bills with any sort of heavy partisan leaning that pass one chamber will probably be defeated or delayed interminably in the other chamber. But these represent some of the relatively normal shifts we see whenever there is a change in power.
Well, Rep. Lauren Boebert is in your U.S. House majority now (pending recount results). Her bills can pass the House next year, though there’s little chance they’ll pass the Senate.
What worries me about the new House majority is the potential for actions that we really don’t need as a nation at this dicey point in history. Or less politely, I’ve seen people write that they expect a shit-show moving forward. I wish I could argue with that, but don’t think I can.
I hope we don’t see the House try to impeach Biden without good reason, just to get revenge on the two well-deserved Trump impeachments. Unfortunately, it’s reasonable to expect head-scratching Congressional investigations, an obsessive focus on Hunter Biden, partisan messaging bills with no chance of success, and a fundamental lack of legislative progress on the top challenges of our times. I get no satisfaction out of thinking “well, the midterms could have been worse,” because I fully expect some regrettable developments over the next two years.
As a Coloradan from the 2nd Congressional District. any excitement I might have felt over this year’s federal races came from elsewhere. U.S. Representative Joe Neguse was not seriously challenged, and the Senate campaign between Sen. Michael Bennet and Joe O’Dea never seemed suspenseful to me, even when questionable polls and partisan pundits tried to claim the race was competitive. Like many, I watched with great interest to see if Adam Frisch might overtake Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, and he nearly pulled it off – down just 550 votes out of 327,000 cast, though they’re doing a recount – despite Boebert’s formidable advantage in partisan registration. I celebrated when state Rep. Yadira Caraveo won Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District, though Democrats had better take seriously that a Libertarian took more votes in this race than Caraveo’s margin of victory.
Obviously, every election cycle is different, but we can expect tough battles for control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency in 2024. I would recommend that people pay attention to what goes on in the House and take notes, because it should provide juicy fodder for voters who might be on the political fence about the consequences of handing levers of power to the modern GOP.
Small-Batch Politics: Where One Person Can Really Matter
Switching from the biggest levels to the smallest – a great deal of my involvement in this year’s election cycle included participation in very small groups and processes.
Personally, I attended our March precinct caucus like I always do, and was among a disappointingly small percentage of eligible residents in attendance. By attending caucus, I also for all practical purposes automatically became a voting delegate for our Boulder County Assembly, which in turn led to becoming a voting delegate in my congressional district and state assemblies.
The Boulder County Dems used approval voting for the HD10 vacancy committee process, which was kind of fun to experience. We went through three rounds of voting, eliminating candidates that didn’t meet threshold, and in the end Junie Joseph won by six votes!
In August, State Rep. Edie Hooton decided to end her campaign for re-election in state House District 10. This triggered a vacancy committee – made up of HD10 County Assembly delegates – and I was one of just 62 people voting in a contest between six candidates for a new Democratic nominee. The winner turned out to be Boulder City Council member Junie Joseph, who basically won the HD10 seat that night because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic – with 34 total vacancy committee votes! For perspective, HD10 has about 57,000 registered voters.
Shortly thereafter, I got involved in the Boulder County Democratic Party’s (BCDP) process to evaluate state and local ballot measures. I worked on a large share of what became the party’s online ballot measure information document, and then participated with about 50 members of the BCDP Executive Committee in deciding whether or not the party would take a position on a myriad of state and local ballot measures. I also attended and spoke during the Colorado Democratic Party’s Central Committee process regarding taking positions on the 11 state ballot measures.
My main point here is not to brag about what I did, but to remind folks that the smaller the group, the more one single person’s participation might matter. On top of that, I wasn’t all that impressed with certain levels of involvement this year.
Literally any registered HD10 Democrat could have participated in caucus and the County Assembly, and therefore could have voted in the vacancy committee. One of my neighbors participated from Europe, which actually was impressive, but so many didn’t even take the time to do a super-low stress 90-minute Zoom call for caucus on a Saturday morning. I was also awfully disappointed by the predictable anti-caucus sentiments on social media shortly thereafter. I will always remember being lectured by former County Commissioner Paul Danish, who once lost a primary by four votes, about participation in caucuses and low-volume elections – and whatever anyone might think about Danish you’d remember if you were on the receiving end of his opinion! But he was right, and I saw the results of small-batch participation or lack of participation a number of times this year.
Politics make strange bedfellows, but our local Sierra Club chapter is now endorsing basically the same candidates and ballot measures as the business community – screenshot above taken from the website of “The Coalition.”
The other small-batch point I’d like to make is the oversized influence of local political groups and members of the media.
Remember, when people say the Sierra Club endorsed a ballot measure (Boulder Question 2E) on moving City Council elections to even years, they weren’t talking about an endorsement meeting at Sierra’s national headquarters in California or a vote involving Sierra’s million members. Instead, it was a small-batch process involving the local Indian Peaks Group (IPG). In case you’re wondering why a local election process measure was among a very few local endorsements the local Sierra Club made, you might wish to ponder how IPG has recently been endorsing more or less in line with the City of Boulder-based “Coalition,” a confederation of local organizations generally aligned in support of more development. Sierra IPG might not technically be “in” the Coalition, but as of early December 2022 I’ll be darned if they didn’t have their own special mention on the Coalition website (screenshot at right in case it goes away).
By all means and in fairness, read IPG’s endorsement explanations here, but decades of experience has told me that traditional Boulder odd-year voters already staunchly support environmental measures and candidates, unless one views all environmental and housing values through the lens of Bedrooms Are For People, a flawed ballot measure that locals saw through and defeated. In 2019, odd-year voters gave 85% support to an Open Space and land preservation measure, and 70% for a middle-income housing program. Personally, the Boulder County Worthy Cause tax program that I’ve supported multiple times along with large majorities of local voters (almost 80% support in the odd-year 2017 election) has put millions of actual dollars into affordable housing and shelter. So, sorry but I didn’t buy IPG’s spin on this one.
Sierra Club founder John Muir probably would not have said during this encounter “Don’t worry, President Roosevelt, 2.1 million square feet of hard development in a riparian area will be good for the environment.”
This year’s local Sierra Club chapter also endorsed ripping up and paving over a whole bunch of undeveloped land in a riparian area at CU-South by opposing Boulder Question 2F, again like all of the Coalition organizations that made endorsements. I guess those who still believe Sierra’s mission was rooted in land conservation need to get with the times, because defeating 2F enabled about 2.1 million square feet of new hard development on undeveloped land in the South Boulder Creek drainage zone. I’m not necessarily saying IPG went through a YIMBY takeover of its small-batch executive committee, but I am saying such an effort wouldn’t be unprecedented, since YIMBYs have launched several attempts to take over the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Chapter.
Meanwhile, if the Daily Camera or Boulder Weekly endorse any measure or candidate, it’s really the product of just a few people on an editorial board, and one hire can make a big difference in editorial direction. For example, the Weekly’s 2021 endorsements, made with a board including a new editor who didn’t last long, were straight in line with the Coalition’s endorsements for both City Council candidates and local ballot measures. The Camera’s editorial page editor in 2022 had been with the paper for about three months at the time of writing this year’s endorsements.
And yes, the BCDP Executive Committee is a small-batch subset of the 104,000-ish registered Dems in Boulder County. There were fundamentally very different results for BCDP ballot measure endorsements between 2021 and 2022, and outcomes were based to a significant extent on who decided to take leadership roles or get involved. It’s reasonable to expect battles for control over endorsements from all of these groups and outlets into the future, but people who care about outcomes must take it to heart that it is literally “just politics,” and those who don’t play in a numbers game will lose.
In all cases I mentioned above, the endorsements themselves might get made by a relative small batch of people, but the messages go out as the voice of an organization to thousands or even tens of thousands who might make their voting decisions based on as little as one set of recommendations. It takes a bit of work and time to get involved in small-batch politics, but remember – if you don’t get involved, someone else will be happy to use their influence to sway endorsements and perhaps thousands of voters – and you might disagree completely with their positions or choices of candidates.
State-Level Blue Avalanche Of Historic Volume
I’ve lived in Colorado for nearly 40 years now, and I’ve never seen anything like the 2022 Democratic blowout range of victories for State of Colorado-level races. That includes my time living under a Republican double-trifecta – GOP Governor, House and Senate at the state level, and GOP President, House and Senate at the federal level. Certain isolated races were bigger blowouts for Republicans during that time, but I cannot recall across-the-board dominance like we saw in 2022.
The 2022 State of Colorado results were a triumph of Democratic actions and policy, as well as a failure of Republican actions and policy. Read the wonderful book “The Blueprint” by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer if you can, but part of the story is that shortly after the turn of the century Democrats started putting serious money and organizational effort into state-level races.
The money and organization helped deliver electoral victories, but despite what some folks might say, Democrats in Colorado have also delivered major policy advances during their time(s) in power. I might write about this in more detail on another day, but for now, just remember that the Democratic-controlled legislature has passed an average of about 450 bills per year – mostly sponsored by Democrats – over the past four years, and it might have been a larger number but the 2020 session was shortened due to COVID. And this chart below might help explain why many voters believe Democratic values are more likely to lead to better policy solutions when it comes to top issues of the day:
Secretary of State Jena Griswold stood up for democracy during her first term, and voters rewarded her with a second term in 2022.
Meanwhile, I am overjoyed that we’ll once again have a Democratic Secretary of State during this time of conservative nationwide election weirdness, ranging from sketchy messaging to dishonest dealings to outright intimidation. With a Democratic majority, our State Board of Education won’t be focusing on the latest objectives coming from nationwide conservative think tanks. And the General Assembly should be able to pass legislation to protect our environment, bolster health care, protect human rights, and more. The state legislature can probably count on Democratic majorities for at least four years, and can definitely count on a Governor who isn’t likely to veto reasonable bills and an Attorney General who will defend challenges to this legislation in court.
One issue moving forward might be what Democrats will do with overwhelming majorities at the statehouse (46-19 in the House, 23-12 in the Senate). And for one specific question – how left will they go? It will be interesting to see how some of the new legislators from the farther left function within a larger group, for example Denver Representative-elects Elisabeth Epps and Javier Mabrey. There should be enough of a critical mass in the next General Assembly to provide a more favorable environment for proposing and considering leftist legislation. On the other hand, bill proposals always go out to many sets of eyes belonging to politicians, staffers, and lobbyists representing organizations with equally strong opinions, which tends to temper legislation through amendments or deal-making to garner support.
So, here are some rhetorical questions for now. Will some leftist bills die in committee, get heavily amended, or face a veto from Gov. Jared Polis? Will the probable federal House GOP austerity have an impact on the State of Colorado fiscal outlook, and therefore limit the feasibility of heavy state spending? Will the media and the public wind up believing Democrats are best serving the majority of Coloradans? Will progressives lose enthusiasm for Democrats if they don’t go left enough, or will moderates in swing districts lose enthusiasm for Democrats if the legislature goes too far leftward? We’ll start to see answers in a few short months, so stay tuned.
GOP Overreach: Consequences, But They Live To Play Another Game
Joe O’Dea was a first-time political candidate who was never going to beat U.S. Senator Michael Bennet this year, but he might have given Colorado GOP officials a hint as to how candidates can be conservative yet somewhat open-minded.
I’m frankly disappointed that today’s Republicans were competitive anywhere in the U.S. at all, especially given that we all ought to have fresh memories of the violent and tragic Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that came directly from extremists in the American right wing. But I’ve also lived in conservative, rural or semi-rural areas, and I know that many of these areas are typically quite traditionally and reliably Republican. I don’t enjoy painting any group of people with a broad brush, and I know that holding moderate conservative values doesn’t make moderate conservatives into insurrectionists.
Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say nationwide results might have been better for Republicans and worse for Democrats without a few recent examples of conservative overreach. The conservative U.S. Supreme court majority ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, which certainly mobilized gigantic numbers of pro-choice supporters to get out the vote. The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, to me, was also a form of overreach (I have vastly stronger words but I’m trying to make a conceptual point). It showed the nation in no uncertain terms that certain factions are willing to use violence or intimidation, but this specific overreach in turn exposed those groups to additional scrutiny in the media, disapproval from the public including voters, legal consequences for those who committed or organized acts of violence or intimidation, and heightened surveillance.
I’m not here to give advice to the GOP, but will guarantee that the vast majority of Coloradans want at least somewhat of a return toward normalcy. Most people do not want to live their everyday lives in fear of unregulated militia action, and nor should they. Most people want to maintain civil rights, including rights to reproductive health care, equity and fairness for people of all racial and sexual categories, and secure election systems that include freedom from physical threats to voters and officials. Most Coloradans understand the ravages of climate change, and want reasonably clean air and water. I believe most people want at least a humane system of social safety nets, to keep more people from freezing, starving, or going without health care. To me, none of what I’ve mentioned in this paragraph is all that crazy.
I can’t imagine more Republicans won’t come to understand why they lost so severely in the Colorado elections, but will they act on it? O’Dea in particular tried to get centrist messaging out during his campaign, but it wasn’t horribly persuasive, and messaging isn’t going to cut it on its own. It’s completely predictable that putting Republicans in power will yield bills and policy actions that would be objectionable to large numbers of Coloradans, and I saw this happen up-close very recently when they regained power in the state Senate from 2014-18. Until there are fundamental changes in what most people understand GOP dominance will do on the policy and social levels, Republican victories in Colorado outside of safe red districts will be few and far between. And that’s nobody’s fault but theirs.
The Boulder Taxman Taketh
The very real modern threat of wildfire made it tough to oppose new taxation for mitigation and emergency services. Boulder City and County voters passed three tax measures with some connection to wildfire response in 2022. {Photo from Dave Dugdale.}
I joked a few times this fall that “whoever really runs Boulder” should’ve thought a little harder about the number of local taxes proposed in 2022 before everything went to the ballot. I’m generally pretty tax-friendly, and I’ve co-sponsored a $3 billion statewide tax measure of my own, but six local taxes on one ballot was excessive even for Boulder.
In fairness, of the six Boulder County 1C was just an extension of an existing tax, and City of Boulder 1A was only an incremental increase to existing taxation for most residential utility ratepayers. However, there were two sizeable property tax increases on the same ballot, at a time when people on limited or fixed incomes who already have serious property tax burdens did not need a tax hike. This more than likely hurt the Library District measure 6C, which still passed but only by single-digit percentages.
There are definitely wealthy Boulderites for whom the new taxation won’t matter much, and even though I’m not wealthy I endorsed most of the measures because they were for worthy causes. But some folks out there were awfully insensitive during this election cycle to people of limited income, especially those who won’t be happy when they see their next property tax bill. No matter whether a type of tax is considered progressive or regressive, this year’s increases will wind up being equal to the cost of a few family bills or lots of groceries, and most of them will last for decades if not longer.
I have always maintained that taxation, properly done, can create real benefits for people of lesser means – for example, it will be great to have a better-funded library system and public school infrastructure because people can use these resources no matter their financial status. But that doesn’t mean I support limitless taxation, and some local taxpayers might have to sacrifice a few basics to pay for what we passed with this year’s ballot measures.
Nonetheless, the voters spoke and all six proposals passed. I just hope this means Boulder can take a break on new tax proposals for a while.
2E: Perpetuating Local-Partisan Power
I was extremely disappointed with the passage of Boulder Question 2E, moving City Council elections to even-numbered years beginning in 2026, but was equally proud of the points made against it. I made a fair number of these points myself, through this linked blog post and a letter to the Daily Camera. Yet despite “losing,” the election results did not change my mind about the fundamental problems we’re likely to see into the future with this course of action.
I started gleaning that something like 2E would be on the ballot shortly after the 2021 election, when people posted on social media saying the Bedrooms Are For People ballot measure that failed in the odd-year election would have won in an even-year election. That might even be true, but I’ll maintain that the general likelihood of one side winning is also a morally questionable reason to change the election system. This year’s pro-2E campaign had very heavy “Coalition” support when it came to publicity and funding, and I believe I saw assumptions in print and on social media that 2E might benefit Coalition interests (or hurt Coalition opponents) in future City Council races plus future ballot measure campaigns.
Proponents based much of their campaign on how even-year elections would bring higher turnout for Council and Mayoral races, and the new Daily Camera editorial page editor bemoaned that we were missing out on participation from “30,000 unheard voices” in his 2E endorsement editorial. But in 2022, only 41,117 of 65,395 City of Boulder active registered voters actually voted on 2E – during an even-year election – or 24,278 unheard voices! Even the Boulder ballot measure with the highest turnout, Ballot Issue 2A for a Climate Tax, only had 45,347 votes, meaning 20,048 active registered voters did not weigh in on this measure. (In addition to the 65,395 active voters, there are also 14,949 inactive registrations in Boulder, but this isn’t a clinically accurate measuring stick to show who didn’t vote in 2022.)
It’s ridiculously easy to vote in Boulder – I’ve done it by bike – and every registered voter gets a ballot mailed to the address on their registration, no matter the year of the election. For the most part, those who don’t vote in odd-year elections have no physical excuse for their inaction.
I don’t really want to harp too much on the “30,000 unheard voices” thing, but it really sounded like the Camera editorialist bought and shared with his new community the proponent campaign’s messaging. And that’s unfortunate, because most of these “unheard voices” have always been people who got ballots in the mail but made a conscious decision not to act on it. Plus, not every even-year election moving forward will be a hotly-contested Presidential contest like in 2020, when (using some artistic license) the future of the free world might have depended on ending the Trump Presidency. It wasn’t right for anyone but campaigners trying to sell 2E to the public to compare turnout for odd-year elections with the record turnout year of 2020, and 2022 might have provided a solid example that big turnout isn’t automatic in even-year midterms. In reality, vote totals for the 2022 Question 2E were only about 8,000 votes higher than for the 2021 Bedrooms measure – better for sure, but hardly earth-shaking.
My point in opposing 2E never was that the number of votes cast on City races and measures wouldn’t be higher in even years – it was the question of “at what cost?” Opponents of 2E, myself included, pointed out repeatedly that the City Council campaigns will get buried beneath higher-level races and the volume of other ballot measures, and the campaigns are where voters ought to learn the finer points about candidates and the organizations behind them before voting. The notion of “voter fatigue” really isn’t about people not having the wrist endurance to be able to fill in the little ovals on longer ballots – it’s more about the mental overload of multiple ballot measures, advertisements, being contacted by multiple campaigns, and learning the details of issues for those who actually care about what might happen when an initiative passes or fails. It’s just a principle of physics to say that the more issues there are on a ballot, the more likely it is that voters with finite time will miss key details on some number of candidate races or ballot measures.
I still have zero doubt that a significant number of voters in 2026 will not give real time or thought to the personalities running for Council, or to the possible consequences of putting them in office. It’s a recipe for poor decisions, and for turning over what traditionally has been a thoughtful community vetting of candidates to election by yard sign, social media, or small-batch local-partisan endorsements.
I normally say “hats off” to proponents of a victorious campaign, but in this case I feel like they foisted a mistake on the people of Boulder for the wrong reasons. We won’t have our first even-year Council election under 2E until 2026 (a mid-term like this year’s election), but I hope people will pay attention to the campaigns, results, and what happens in the aftermath. The city of High Pointe, North Carolina actually repealed their switch to even-year elections after a period of time because local campaigns got buried beneath bigger stuff, and while I’m not necessarily proposing a repeal of 2E I hope Boulder residents and media will evaluate the actual impacts with open minds.
Random Thoughts On Other Ballot Measures
Income Tax Reduction – Guess It Seemed Good At The Time: I was disappointed that Colorado voters passed Proposition 121, creating a permanent income tax rate reduction that could at some point threaten the state General Fund budget and the state’s ability to provide services. But elections are to some extent popularity contests, so it’s normally not that difficult to win in Colorado if you’re offering a tax giveaway, and 121 won by a big margin. I have long maintained that “budgeting by citizen initiative” is a bad approach because it’s not based on any kind of comprehensive fiscal analysis – including what might happen if another ballot measure impacts the same component of a budget.
And that’s what happened. Coloradans also passed Prop 123 in 2022, which will devote 0.1% of all income tax revenue to affordable housing programs. This means we passed two initiatives this year that could limit the amount of income tax revenue available to the state for core departments and programs other than affordable housing. This double-whammy could certainly bind the fiscal hands of legislators in inevitable down economic years of the future. I get no satisfaction out of saying “I told you so,” but I did and it’s on the record!
You’ll soon be able to get wine at your supermarket, but I’ll ask again and again for people to support local wine merchants instead!
Big-Business Booze Can Lose: Big corporations spent millions of dollars in campaign finance trying to pass Propositions 124, 125, and 126 to change Colorado liquor laws. Despite this spending, Props 124 and 126 failed, while 125 won by only a very narrow margin. I was pleased to see many Colorado voters recognize that mega-corporations from out-of-state were trying to buy Colorado elections, and we almost shot down all three proposals.
But Prop 125 will allow grocery and convenience stores with beer licenses to sell wine. This means multi-billion-dollar corporations – like whatever behemoth we’ll see if the Safeway-Kroger mega-merger pans out – will be able to take some level of sales volume away from small businesses struggling to survive. Seriously, please consider supporting your local wine merchants moving forward, even if it means poor old Jeff Bezos, owner of Whole Foods and like half the rest of the economic world, will have to find another way to pay for another vanity flight into space.
CU-South: Bulldozers Aweigh!: I was not at all surprised that Boulder Question 2F, an attempt at repealing the CU-South annexation agreement, was defeated. However, the roughly 7.5% margin of defeat was actually smaller than I expected, and results were closer than last year’s roughly 13.5% defeat of Question 302, also about the CU-South annexation. And remember, 302 was held in an odd-year, when old-guard Boulder ballot measures are supposed to fare worse.
So, what happened? Primarily, my observations suggest a lot more information about the possible impact of a gigantic project on undeveloped land with floodplain implications got out into the public in 2022 than in 2021. The annexation agreement was actually only approved about six weeks before the 2021 election, giving people who weren’t yet familiar with CU-South very little time to really learn a complex issue with lots of history.
Say “adios” to views like this at CU-South while you still can, because the heavy machinery’s a-coming!
This year, word got out in spades about the actual size of the potential development, the questionable effectiveness of the flood mitigation plans in case there’s a serious storm or a repeat of 2013, and the likely impact to existing neighborhoods in terms of noise and traffic. It wasn’t enough to pull out a victory, but I for one learned a ton of new stuff on top of the ton of old stuff I already knew, and wound up endorsing 2F – even though it might have been better for my long-term interests to just stay quiet.
In the simplest possible terms, I still believe the project envisioned will be destructive to a nice part of what’s left of Front Range Colorado, and I’m definitely not looking forward to watching the destruction commence. Still, congrats to southeastern Boulderites who live in the floodplain for getting one step closer to flood mitigation (assuming regulators approve a project), and I never denied that CU was unlikely to approve using their land for this mitigation without the annexation and the green light for development – even if 2F passed. So, rip it up. Yay.
One Final Point on Mega-Ballot-Volume: This year’s ballot in Boulder filled up four entire sheets of ballot paper. We voted on 10 contested candidate races and 22 ballot measures – 11 from the State of Colorado, 6 City of Boulder, 3 Boulder County, 1 Library District, and 1 Boulder Valley School District. It was a heck of a lot of work to try learning about all of them to any level of detail, but worth it for me. I fully understand that most people won’t try to do what I’ve done to learn every issue on a ballot in detail for about the past 20 years. But it’s really easy to make a long-lasting mistake by voting without detailed knowledge of complex issues, so I believe very strongly in voting based on more than snap judgments.
I tried to write my Election Guide in a way that gave readers enough information to cover the basics, without making everything “tldr” (too long, didn’t read). I know plenty of other folks and organizations did some semblance of the same thing. Thanks to everyone who took this election cycle seriously, and with the few exceptions I covered above I’m actually upbeat about most of the results!
