Law and Government of Colorado
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Like the majority of the states, Colorado's current constitution provides for three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
The governor heads the state's executive branch. The current Governor of Colorado is Bill Ritter (D). Colorado's other elected executive offices are Lieutenant Governor of Colorado (elected on a ticket with the Governor), Secretary of State of Colorado, Colorado State Treasurer, and Attorney General of Colorado, all of which serve four-year terms. Members of the Colorado State Board of Education and the Regents of the Universities of Colorado are elected from seven districts coterminous with Colorado's US House districts, plus one seat elected by voters statewide, each of whom serve six-year terms.
The legislative body is the General Assembly made up of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives has 65 members and the Senate has 35. Currently, Democrats are in control of both chambers of the General Assembly. The 64th Colorado General Assembly is the first to be controlled by the Democrats in forty years. The current Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives is Andrew Romanoff (D-Denver), and the current President of the Colorado Senate is Joan Fitz-Gerald (D-Boulder).
The judicial branch is headed by the Colorado Supreme Court, whose rulings can only be overturned by a federal court. As well as the Colorado Supreme Court, the State judicial branch is made up of the Colorado Court of Appeals, which hears cases brought to it by municipal courts. State judges and justices are appointed by the Governor, then elected to ten-year terms. The current Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court is Mary Mullarkey.
Colorado is considered a very independent state politically, having elected 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans to the governorship in the last 100 years. The state supported Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, and the Republican presidential nominees in 1996 and 2000. Recently, the state appears to be going more towards the center. George W. Bush won the state's 9 electoral votes in 2004 by a margin of 5 percentage points with 51.7% of the vote, considerably less than the 9% margin Bush won by in 2000, however this can be largely attributed to the 5% of the vote Ralph Nader won in 2000. Nearly all of these votes went to Democrat John Kerry in 2004. [1]. Democrats also gained in every open seat race in the state, picking up a seat in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Democrats are strongest in metropolitan Denver, Boulder, and southern Colorado (including Pueblo, and a few western ski resort counties). Republicans are strongest in the rural plains region, Colorado Springs, the Western Slope (including Grand Junction), and some of the Denver suburbs. The fastest growing parts of the state, particularly Douglas, Elbert and Weld counties in metro Denver, are strongly Republican.
The two U.S. Senators from Colorado are Wayne Allard (R), and Ken Salazar (D). The state is represented by three Democrats and four Republicans in the United States House of Representatives.
Colorado is made up primarily of transplanted citizens, and this is illustrated by the fact that Governor Ritter is the first native-born Coloradan to hold the post since 1975 when John David Vanderhoof left office. Ritter is also the first native Coloradan to be elected to the Governorship in nearly fifty years, with the last being fellow Democrat Stephen L.R. McNichols in 1958 (Vanderhoof ascended from the Lieutenant Governorship when John Arthur Love was given a position in Richard Nixon's administration in 1973.)
