Happy Leap Year Day!

The 2019 legislative session was lauded as the year of the woman. The 2018 general election, for the very first time, meant there were more women in the Colorado House than men, a 34-31 split.

In the Senate, with the addition of five first-year senators, women also held 12 seats in the 19-member Democratic caucus. The Republican caucus had just one woman out of its 16 members.

That put Colorado at 47% women to men, the highest ever and second only to Nevada, where 52.4% of their lawmakers in 2019 were women. (In case you’re curious about how to have 0.4 percent of a person, Nevada in 2019 had 63 lawmakers, including 33 women.)

Fast forward to 2020. Rep. Kimmi Lewis, R-Kim, passed away and Rep. Susan Beckman, R-Littleton, quit to go work for a federal office, and both were replaced by men. And that magical female majority in the House went from 34 women and 31 men to 32 women and 33 men.

In the Senate, longtime lawmaker Sen. Lois Court, D-Denver, was replaced by now-Sen. Chris Hansen, and that 13-22 women-to-men ratio dropped to 12-23.

Out of 100 lawmakers, it’s now 44 women and 56 men.

Four for four…Ya think the Democrats are a little nervous about hanging on to the House District 47 seat held by Rep. Bri Buentello? She’s not exactly been 100% in line with her caucus on a lot of issues, including oil and gas reform in 2019, the prison gerrymandering bill and renaming Columbus Day in this session, and on a long list of amendments brought forward by Republicans on the bill last week legalizing collective bargaining by state employees (she did vote to approve the bill itself).

But on Feb. 21, four bills with Buentello’s sponsorship won House approval, either with final votes or on preliminary approval, and the House comms office made hay over it. 

It probably helped that two bills were on military issues: granting disabled veterans a free state parks pass and allowing in-state tuition for the dependents and/or spouses of active duty military. (No one dares votes against the military or veterans, especially disabled veterans.) The other two bills that day were on requiring that public school educators, including principals and administrators, take 10 hours of special education-related professional development prior to license renewal, and the second, a scholarship fund for rural communities to pay for police officer academy training. All four have now won final votes in the House.

Buentello is facing a challenge in November from Republican Stephanie Luck. Buentello won her 2018 race, the closest for a statewide elected office, by 321 votes over Republican Don Bendell. The district, which includes parts of Pueblo County as well as Otero and Fremont counties, had been represented by Republicans since 2010.

Just getting warmed up: During a debate on a bill to prohibit the use of exotic animals on traveling shows, the always affable (and frankly, the funniest lawmaker in the Capitol) Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, got into a tizzy on Tuesday over whether dogs from Oklahoma should be imported to Colorado. “I got up too early probably, the morning of the committee hearing … turned the news on, and they were talking about adoptions from a shelter.” What bothered him was that the dogs came from Oklahoma. “My family is from Oklahoma! I don’t want their dogs!” He also asked why Colorado importing dogs from Oklahoma when there are plenty in rural Colorado that need homes.

The Senate chair that day, Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, told him he was ahead of himself and that his comments applied to the next bill on the agenda. “I was just practicing, Madam Chair,” he said, to howls of laughter in the chamber. “We look forward to your rehearsed and well-practiced testimony,” Zenzinger said.

Note to Sage Naumann (the spox for the Senate GOP and creator of pretty darn funny bumper stickers): On that same bill – the exotic animals one, not the one on dogs and cats – Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said the bill doesn’t apply to the use of an “animal,” which he said isn’t defined in the bill. “I guess that excludes me.”

Capitol M sees another bumper sticker in the making on this one.