Weiser wants Colorado off sidelines in redistricting wars
Attorney General Phil Weiser — who’s also a 2026 candidate for governor — made a semi-bold move last week when calling for Colorado to join the midterm redistricting wars.
Which would have been a lot bolder, and more helpful, if it could apply to the 2026 midterms, which it can’t. According to the pesky state constitution, redistricting rules couldn’t change in Colorado without a constitutional amendment, meaning nothing changes until at least the 2028 election.
For me, that seems light years away. I’m having trouble predicting what tomorrow might look like.
Still, Weiser is right. Colorado can’t afford to just stand by in what you could call the most important midterm election in our lifetimes. (Fact-check: I have no idea when the second most important midterms might have been.)
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But what to do?
Midcycle redistricting has turned into a fever spreading across the country, and we all know that Donald Trump is where the contagion began and that he remains both the infection and inflection point.
In the beginning, Texas got the order to redistrict straight from Trump and, like the good sycophants they are, immediately redrew lines that could give Texas Republicans — who already had a 25-13 advantage — as many as five more congressional seats. The score would then be 30-8.
That led to a major response by California, which will try to pass a state constitutional amendment this November, meaning the redistricting would be in place for 2026. Dems could win back seats.
And so it began, and it’s hard to see where it will end.
Weiser, a big fan of Colorado’s redistricting commission, understands that in normal times, he would never call for this. But these, he noted, are not normal times and that “Colorado can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.” Even if we couldn’t actually get into the game until 2028.
“This is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” moment, Weiser said in an interview with 9News’ Kyle Clark. The emergency is here. Weiser noted that blue Colorado is now a 4-4 state by congressional districts, and that North Carolina, a purplish state, used to be a 7-7 state and is now pushing to give the GOP there an 11-3 advantage.
Election “norms” are being “shattered,” Weiser said, adding that he’d love to keep the norms in place. “But that ship is sailing,” he said. “We have to be prepared to do our part. Ideally these efforts (for Colorado to have the power to redistrict) will stop them and we won’t have to do it. But we can’t assume that.”
We can assume the opposite, in fact. The Trump gerrymander is bad for democracy, of course. But Trump is hardly interested in maintaining democracy. He seems to be more interested in tearing it down, which is why as many as 7 million Americans marched in the recent No Kings rally.
(Question: Is it ironic, or is it something worse, that on Trump’s trip to Asia, the South Korean president gifted him with a foot-tall replica of an ancient golden crown from the time of Korea’s “Golden Kingdom”? Maybe when Trump isn’t wearing the crown around the house — I’m sure there’s a mirror in every room — he will display it in his new garishly gilded ballroom.)
The reason for the Trump gerrymander campaign is that the party in power traditionally loses bigly in the congressional midterms — you could look it up, if we’re still doing history in this country — and Dems, even in abnormal times, would be favored to take back the House of Representatives, thereby giving the Trump opposition an actual foothold in D.C.
So the gerrymander is Trump’s way to rig the elections and make sure of keeping the House in GOP hands. For anyone else other than Trump, the push for a midcycle rewriting of the rules would be a radical plan. For Trump, it’s Friday. Or whatever day you read this.
Which is where Weiser comes in.
At this point, Weiser needs to be at least semi-bold. I know it’s early, but I keep waiting for issues that separate Weiser from Michael Bennet in their Democratic primary race for governor.
This would be a really good issue, except that Weiser’s plan — by constitutional rule — could not take effect before 2028, which might be too late. Meanwhile, it would be on the ballot in 2026, which could be a problem.
In blue Colorado, there’s an even 4-4 split as drawn by the redistricting commission. But it would be easy enough for the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to redraw the lines temporarily, until the 2030 election — as a proposed state constitutional amendment would allow — to give the blue state a likely 6-2 edge in 2028.
Meanwhile, Dems are desperately trying to win back the 50-50 8th Congressional District in 2026. Whichever Democrat is nominated would take on GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, who could use the amendment — which would appear on the 2026 ballot — to warn that Democrats don’t trust voters in the 8th CD. And if the voters vote the “wrong way,” Democrats want to take over the district by fiat.
But if the anti-Trump wave is big enough in 2026, Democrats could not only win Colorado’s 8th CD but maybe even the 3rd CD, which would give Dems the 6-2 margin they’re hoping for.
This puts Bennet in something of a bind. He has, as nearly all Democrats have, endorsed California’s redistricting plan for 2026 to counter Texas’s plan.
But what about Colorado?
When I asked his office about it Friday, Bennet put out a statement saying, in part, that “all options should be on the table to defend our democracy, but changing the maps in 2028 is too late. Every Democrat in Colorado needs to be focused on flipping the House of Representatives in 2026 so we can put a real check on Donald Trump.”
He added, “If we want to make a difference sooner rather than later, we have to win elections and win back the majority in 2026.”
The focus does need to be on 2026. I’m sure Weiser agrees. But would his plan for a midcycle redistricting in 2028 help or hurt or hardly matter at all? Will there even be a 2028 election?
The 2026 election will be about Trump’s sluggish economy, his tariff diplomacy, his thuggish anti-immigrant policies, his assault on Democratic-run cities, his assault on colleges and universities and the First Amendment, his assault on science and vaccines, his use of the military as his private militia and his strong lean into authoritarianism, and the absolute need to have a check on him.
Mostly, it will be about the future of the country, which desperately needs a midcourse correction as soon as it can happen. That could be in 2026 — if, that is, there can be reasonably unrigged elections.
Who among us can guarantee that?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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