It’s a dark and gloomy Sunday afternoon, and with a number of errands to run tomorrow, now is the time to write my Tuesday column. The Broncos just lost, but my Michigan Wolverines won and are now the No. 1 team in the nation heading into the playoffs. So, there’s that.

Oh, and a hunk of my fence blew down overnight and last week I had yet another crown pop off a tooth. TMI? (Editor: yes, likely).

And so, I sat down to review the current edition of Colorado Politics and as always, too many interesting stories caught my eye, so I’m going to ramble, yet again, through some items that should get more attention in the political world.

The first story that leapt from the screen was the announcement by state Rep. Ruby Dickson that she intends to resign her relatively new seat in the state legislature due to the vitriolic political environment. Before I go further, let me say, I feel your pain. During my own quixotic run for the U.S. Congress in 2008, I was subjected, for months on end, to irritating attacks on my character, let alone my political positions. I had one guy who called the house more than 50 times and showed up at my events to protest my failure to accept his judgement that then-President George W. Bush was actually behind the September 11th attacks.

That was stressful.

And it was also quite galling to have my patriotism questioned, as a 25-plus year active-duty military veteran, when I was running against an incumbent who never served a day in uniform. But I’ve let that go… mostly… somewhat… a bit.

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Believe me, those comments got further under my skin than they should have. That said, perhaps it is a good thing that Rep. Dickson has decided to step down next week. Politics, especially in the era of Trumpism, far too often is a nasty and vile endeavor. I get that. But we need elected officials with sufficiently thick skins to press on through that morass in hopes of getting real legislation done. We need look no further than my 2008 campaign buddy and current governor of Colorado, Jared Polis. If I thought I got it tough, believe me, our governor has gotten it much worse and on a far baser level.

Yet Polis shows up for work every day and has been, in my view, a truly superb governor after having been a terrific representative in the U.S. Congress. He, like basically all the more senior elected officials, has found a way to let the nonsense attacks and tribal venom spilling from the far-right just run off his back.

Certainly, some elected have thinner skin and are irked by the nastiness, but if one wishes to do battle in the political arena, especially these days, one must either have thick skin or a short memory for being offended. The only other place where a person is subject to this level of vileness, in my view, is being a high school football official, which I did for eight years. I did quit that for my mental health after eight seasons, but I did put in those eight years.

By all accounts, Dickson is a brilliant mind and a kind and generous person. Sadly, that isn’t enough in a business where a horrifyingly large number of people think an insurrection is an OK idea. So, I wish Rep. Dickson the very best in the future, although not likely in elected office.

And as I always try to do, I turned to the Out West Roundup section of Colorado Politics for a bit of regional edification. I learned about a remarkable lone Mexican gray wolf, a female who has wandered far away from where the wildlife management people would like her to hang out. Her GPS tag tells us she has meandered, likely looking for food or a boyfriend, outside the area wherein the wolves are explicitly protected. But the folks who know best are going to leave her be. I’m sure there is a political metaphor in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that to my regular reader (Hi Jeff!) to figure out.

Lastly, I want to turn to perhaps the most important story in the Roundup this week, but I worry far too few people will pay attention. When I reflect back on my time as the chair of the El Paso County Democratic Party, back in 2010, I remember one of our goals was to make voting as easy as possible for the greatest number of qualified people, while secure, of course. The Democratic Party, at all levels, has generally been committed to broadening the vote and making everyone’s vote count. The GOP, on the other hand, knows that, given their decline in popularity, must rely on gerrymandering and voter suppression and/or control to win. And that’s a sad and enraging thing.

The most recent example of such deeply hypocritical behavior comes to us from North Dakota (or as my friend Clay calls his home state: Baja Manitoba) where a judge once again ruled against the Republican Party up there for trying to draw voting maps that eliminate competition and squeeze likely non-GOP votes into tiny areas or split them up across a number of districts.

In North Dakota, they tried both, targeting the Native American populations up there. I’ll let you read the story for the details, but the judge in the case noted the GOP plan “prevents Native American voters from having an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.” That is against the law. I’d accuse the GOP of being ruthless pursuers of political power at all costs, but in the current Trumpian world, I suspect most of them would see that as a compliment.

So, there you have it, my random brain cells firing off in ongoing outrage. Sadly, I doubt that will change any time in the reasonably near future.

I hope the wolf finds a boyfriend.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.