By Curtis Hubbard

So Dick Wadhams suddenly cares about mid-decade redistricting — hyperventilating about efforts to “hijack Colorado’s congressional map” and calling those of us involved with the effort “amazingly naive.”

Where was his outrage last year when President Donald Trump ordered his MAGA allies in Texas to take the unprecedented step of drawing a new congressional map to deliver fivemore GOP seats before the midterms? Or when Trump’s MAGA enablers in Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina followed suit?

Maybe I missed the column slamming Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ call for an April special session to gerrymander up to five more Trump-favorable seats there?

Did Dick lament the GOP attack on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that would eliminate “majority-miniority” districts and could create anywhere from 12 to 27 more GOP seats?

Given my supposed naiveté, I checked the column archives to be sure. Nary a word.

Maybe for Wadhams all politics is local — but count me among those who know politics does not stop at the state line.

With a razor-thin majority in the House, Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are doing everything in their power to rig the midterm congressional elections and steal Coloradans’ voices in the process.

Wadhams seems to think Coloradans are gullible enough to look at Colorado’s current 4-4 map and believe everything is A-OK.

But anyone with a basic grasp of math and a willingness to look at the country as a whole can see that, in fact, the playing field is far from level. Through their mid-decade redistricting scheme, Trump and his MAGA apostles could add between 12 and 15 GOP seats until the next round of redistricting in 2031 — or until Trump demands more (Democrats thus far have countered with five seats in California — and maybe four more in Virginia, depending on a special election in April).

So, when a group stepped forward with a plan to ask Colorado voters to help counter the red-state efforts with a temporary congressional map that could lead to Democrats winning three more seats for 2028 and 2030 before reverting back to independent redistricting in 2032, well, Wadhams felt compelled to start the name-calling and the adjective-hurling.

Careful readers will note he: A) conveniently left Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida off the list of mid-decade-gerrymandering red states, leaving the impression Texas is a lone bad actor; B) completely ignored the GOP attacks on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; and C) incorrectly reported Illinois “responded” to Texas.

Intentional omission, false equivalence, and incorrect information help feed Wadhams’ narrative, but Colorado voters will see through it.

After all, they have watched Trump push his “big lie” on the 2020 election — no matter how often it’s debunked — and attempt to rig future elections by pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, calling for Republicans to “take over” elections, and pushing for restrictive voter ID laws. Furthermore, they have heard Trump and his MAGA supporters publicly discuss eliminating mail ballots, stationing armed ICE agents at polling places and ensuring only the “right people” vote.

I suspect Coloradans are smart enough to know if Trump continues unchecked, his campaign of retribution against our state will continue. In the past few months, that has included denying disaster recovery funds for wildfires and flooding; relocating Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama; trying to freeze funds in Colorado for food, child care and health care; vetoing a bill to provide clean water in southeastern Colorado; cancelling more than $100 million in transportation grants; and promising to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder.

Dick and others who are unwilling to call out Trump’s election-rigging and authoritarianism will be pointing to Colorado’s adoption of independent redistricting as rationale for keeping the status quo.

But these are not normal times, and we can’t operate as if they are.

As someone who worked on the campaign that brought independent redistricting to Colorado, I will tell you that it is an ideal. But ideals cannot stand alone when a political faction is openly capitalizing on the inability of their opponents to fight fire with fire.

Trump and his MAGA allies are not constrained by rules. We’re simply asking Colorado voters if they want to continue playing by a different set (asking voters what they want is another area where our effort differs from that of Trump and his MAGA allies. In red states, all of the mid-decade redistricting has been done without voter input).

Given Trump’s unprecedented power grab elsewhere, Colorado voters this fall have an easy choice: we can sit back and do nothing, or we can take action to approve a temporary map that will help keep this country’s congressional elections on a more level playing field.

Curtis Hubbard is a Colorado political consultant and spokesman for Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, which is working to put a redistricting initiative on the November ballot.