A Republican majority in the Legislature could force the governor to revisit difficult issues if the party tries to reverse Democrat-sponsored legislation like the gun-control measures passed in 2013 and new renewable energy mandates on rural cooperatives.<\/p>\n
But neither party could definitively claim victory in the House, where Democrats have a 37-28 majority, or the Senate, where they have an 18-17 advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we don\u2019t know who controls the Senate,\u201d said Democratic Senate President Morgan Carroll. Her party has controlled the chamber for 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a nail-biter,\u201d Democratic House Speaker Mark Ferrandino said of his chamber.<\/p>\n
One such race is in Denver, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Daniel Kagan was trailing Republican Candice Benge by 100 votes. Democratic Rep. Mike McLachlan of Durango was behind Republican J. Paul Brown by under 300 votes.<\/p>\n
Reps. Joe Salazar, Jenise May and Tony Exum also trailed.<\/p>\n
Democrats have controlled the House the past two legislative sessions.<\/p>\n
In the Senate, Democrats regained two seats they lost last year in recalls over the gun-control legislation.<\/p>\n
Republican Sen. George Rivera, a former deputy police chief, lost to state Rep. Leroy Garcia in Pueblo. And former state Rep. Michael Merrifield, a gun control advocate who once worked for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg\u2019s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, beat Sen. Bernie Herpin, a founder of one of southern Colorado\u2019s most active gun clubs.<\/p>\n
Merrifield said he didn\u2019t think his support for stricter gun laws hurt him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really satisfied. It\u2019s as if the recall never happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Democratic Sen. Jeanne Nicholson was behind in her contest against Republican Tim Neville, while Democratic Sen. Andy Kerr was ahead of GOP challenger Tony Sanchez.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur way of governing has always been to try and work from the middle and try to bring both sides together,\u201d said Hickenlooper, who barely won re-election himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anything, that would just accentuate that that\u2019s the appropriate way to lead,\u201d he said of the election results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Republican majority in the Legislature could force the governor to revisit difficult issues if the party tries to reverse Democrat-sponsored legislation like the gun-control measures passed in 2013 and new renewable energy mandates on rural cooperatives. But neither party could definitively claim victory in the House, where Democrats have a 37-28 majority, or the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-116712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116712"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=116712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}