Colorado’s urban-rural divide put to the test in new 8th Congressional District
Outside Eddie Braly’s window, empty fields roll northward from the edge of Adams County into Weld County, marking the spot where Denver’s northern suburbs seem to finally fade into farmland that’s dotted with grain elevators and oil pumpjacks.
Braly, a 10-year resident of Thornton’s North Creek Farms subdivision, said he and his wife “bought the view on purpose,” but he’s under no illusion it’s going to stay this way.
Nor will Colorado’s soon-to-be-formed 8th Congressional District, a mashup of fast-growing suburban neighborhoods that ooze into prime agricultural land and high-yield oil and gas territory between Greeley and Commerce City.
“At some point, the cities will grow together in a Dallas-Fort Worth type of way,” said Braly, whose neighborhood likely will be swept into the new district.
Colorado’s newest congressional district, which will become active for the 2022 election and contain exactly 721,714 people, is being drawn up due to the state’s rapid growth over the last 10 years. The latest 8th District map was released Thursday. It still must be finalized by the state’s Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission and sent to the Colorado Supreme Court by Tuesday; the court is expected to approve it in December.
The supercharged growth north of Denver will undoubtedly stoke simmering political and cultural tensions, often highlighted in the state’s urban-rural divide, and hand Colorado’s newest member of Congress the formidable task of stitching together the 8th District’s divergent interests.
The new district will also have the heaviest concentration of Latinos — nearly four of every 10 residents — among Colorado’s congressional districts, according to 2020 Census data compiled by the redistricting commission. And that segment of the population is only projected to grow.
Long-time Weld County resident Terry Wiedeman, who farms corn and sugar beets on 650 acres outside Gilcrest, worries whether anything can stop the impending wave of development. He’s already seen farmland around him steadily overtaken by homes and shopping centers over the last 50 years.
“Eventually there won’t be any farms in this area,” Wiedeman said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Add to all of that the fact that the new district pulls together two counties — Weld and Adams — that lean away from the other on the blue-red political spectrum. Two-term Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said finding common ground will be a challenge.
“Whoever represents this 8th Congressional District has their work cut out for them,” he said.
Rapid growth
The last time Colorado added a congressional district — the 7th — was 20 years ago. It currently splits much of Adams County’s big cities with the 6th District. Once established, the 8th District will cover just about all of Adams County’s significant population centers.
Weld County is currently in the 4th Congressional District, a conservative district represented by Republican Rep. Ken Buck.
“There’s excitement to have an Adams County-anchored congressional district,” said state Sen. Faith Winter, a Democrat who represents Thornton, Northglenn, Federal Heights and a portion of Westminster. “Even if the (new congressperson) doesn’t come from Adams, they have to pay attention to the votes.”
And those votes are becoming more plentiful with every passing year.
Data from the 2020 Census showed Weld County was the No. 2 county in Colorado for growth over the last decade — trailing only Broomfield — with a more than 30% gain in residents. Projections from the state demographer’s office show both Weld and Adams counties, which make up the bulk of the 8th District, continuing their population surge.
“We are forecasting the fastest growth in Weld and Adams over the next decade,” state demographer Elizabeth Garner said.
In raw numbers, Adams County’s population will leap from nearly 520,000 to about 613,000 in 2030, while Weld County will add nearly 100,000 people to the 331,500 it has today. Most of that growth, demographers say, will happen in the new congressional district.
Starting out, the 8th Congressional District should be one of the most competitive in Colorado. Though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 12,000 voters out of nearly 430,000 total, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 1.7% in the 2016 presidential contest, according to an analysis from the redistricting commission.
However, placing populated areas of Adams and Weld counties together for the first time could make for some strange bedfellows. Even within Weld County itself, the clash of old and new is revealing itself in the 8th District’s future footprint.
Matt Boddy just moved out of a townhouse in Broomfield to a newly built single-family home in the Silverstone subdivision in Frederick, a neighborhood that sits a mile east of Interstate 25 on Colorado 52. Builders haven’t even broken ground on hundreds more planned homes in Silverstone, along with retail space.
It’s a scene that’s mushrooming along the I-25 corridor in nearby Dacono and Firestone, too.
“I just wanted to get into a house while prices are still reasonable,” Boddy said, standing on his front porch last week while construction crews framed up homes on his street. “I’m definitely not a city guy — I like it less crowded and more quiet.”
A district divided?
Just 40 miles northeast of Boddy’s house, at the likely very northern end of the new 8th District, people live a far more rural life, where center-pivot irrigation equipment soaks farm fields and cattle sun themselves on grazing land and at feedlots.
Jeff Schwartz, a retired doctor who has lived in his 120-year-old Weld County home just outside Greeley since 1993, said development along I-25 has not only brought more traffic and noise but also changed the political complexion of the long-red county.
“Look at the map and it’s all blue up and down I-25,” he said. “It’s changing the whole state and the whole attitude.”
Schwartz referenced a movement that arose earlier this year calling for a potential ballot measure to break Weld County off from Colorado and merge it with its conservative and rural northern neighbor, Wyoming. Short of that, he said, Adams and Weld counties should keep a respectful distance when it comes to politics.
“I don’t know if anyone in the northern suburbs of Denver knows at all what’s going on up in Greeley,” he said. “They need to leave me alone and I’ll leave them alone.”
Wiedeman, the Gilcrest farmer who also owns a real estate company and runs farm equipment auctions, said a Weld County secession “may not be a bad idea.”
“Our interests in Weld County are not represented by (the state) government,” he said.
He said there is too often a disconnect between the people who grow and process food and produce energy in rural parts of the state, and those who consume it in urban areas. Weld County is Colorado’s top oil and gas producing county and Thornton and other Adams County communities have a history of fighting drilling near homes.
“They gotta realize in the cities that you gotta allow production so that we can make the products you use every day,” Wiedeman said.
Whoever the new congressperson for the 8th District is, he said, he or she should be able to bridge the divide “if they have common sense.”
Weld and Adams counties have a long history of economic cooperation but “differing political philosophies do exist,” said Rich Werner, CEO of Upstate Colorado Economic Development in Greeley. He feels the redistricting commission created a map “that will perpetuate the urban-rural divide not alleviate it.”
“With all the attention and support being given to assist our rural communities, it seems counterintuitive to create a hub-and-spoke map that ensures a metro Denver urban voice in six out of eight districts,” he said. “The concern of using the urban density to fill in multiple congressional districts will perpetuate the likelihood that candidates come from the denser areas of those particular districts.”
Latinos on the rise
So far, only State Rep. Yadira Caraveo has declared her candidacy for the 8th District seat. No Republicans have jumped into the race but are likely to do so once the final boundaries of the district are established.
If Caraveo is elected, the Thornton Democrat and pediatrician would be the first Latina to represent Colorado in Congress.
“It’s a district that is driven by suburban moms and Latinos,” said statehouse colleague Winter, who backs Caraveo’s bid.
The state demographer’s office projects the Latino population in Adams County to surge nearly 30% over the next 10 years, to 284,000. In Weld County, the leap will be even more dramatic: a nearly 50% jump over the next decade.
By 2030, both counties together will account for just over a quarter of Colorado’s projected 1.7 million or so Latinos, with 436,000.
Aislin Dominguez, an 18-year-old high school student who lives in the Aristocrat Ranchettes subdivision just northeast of Fort Lupton, said she would love to see a Latino congressperson in the 8th District.
“It would be great to have someone represent us,” she said.
Dominguez’s mostly Latino neighborhood is a grid of dirt roads with no sidewalks. Many residents own horses and other livestock. Peacocks wander the streets. Last week, a man holding a stick guided sheep and goats as they ate weeds on the side of the road.
The Fort Lupton High student, who has lived in Aristocrat Ranchettes for half a dozen years, worries about new housing developments encroaching on her rural neighborhood. She wants whoever represents the new district to be “more active” in addressing Weld County’s concerns.
While Dominguez’s neighborhood may seem a world apart from Federal Heights, a dense Denver suburb 30 miles away in what would be the 8th District’s southern tier, it, too, is heavily Latino.
Juan Macias, pastor of the Creciendo Con Vigor church, said his congregation of 400 or so wants their voices heard. He started his church in Federal Heights 12 years ago, expanded to Lakewood and recently opened a third location in Commerce City.
He said his congregation of Latino worshippers in Federal Heights has struggled, especially during the pandemic. Last Thanksgiving, the drive-thru line for his church’s food bank was a quarter-mile long.
“People are losing their homes and having to live together because they can’t afford the rent,” Macias said. “Our church is across the street from all these mobile homes, and people are struggling to survive.”
For his community, he said, it’s not about Republican or Democrat.
“We don’t go left or right, we just want to be heard,” Macias said.
Back in Thornton, that’s essentially how Braly sees it. He works in Broomfield and looks “more south than north” — to the Denver metro area rather than Weld County — when it comes to what matters to him most in the new district.
While he leans Democratic, Braly’s hoping for a representative in Washington, D.C., who can deftly straddle the sometimes-polar opposite attitudes of the 8th Congressional District. He says it shouldn’t be an insurmountable task.
“They’ll vote their way, I’ll vote mine,” he said. “I don’t see it as a mortal enemy type thing.”
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