Commentary: How Redistricting Impacted Denver’s District 9 City Council Race

On July 17, the new Denver City Council will be sworn in. Among the new members will be Darrell Watson, who defeated incumbent Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca in the District 9 runoff election. When the final ballots were tallied, Watson received 63 percent of the vote, handing CdeBaca a resounding defeat.

For a local council race, the District 9 contest received an unusual amount of national attention. In the weeks leading up to the election, CdeBaca was criticized by national right-wing media outlets, such as the New York Post and the infamous Libs of TikTok account, as reported by Westword. According to Axios Denver, Watson had significant support from outside the Mile High City, with approximately $600,000 donated to his campaign from external super PACs and special interests. When the results were announced, CdeBaca’s defeat was hailed as a stern rebuke of her left-leaning, progressive politics. “Colorado councilwoman who advocated for reparations blown out in reelection contest,” wrote the Washington Examiner. Axios claimed Denver voters had “rejected a leftward shift of the city council.”

While this is a plausible interpretation of the results, where this framing falls short is in its failure to account for the 2022 redistricting process, which severely reshaped District 9 just a year before the election. While numerous factors lead to the result of any political contest, the impact of redistricting must be taken into account when evaluating Watson’s victory.

The 2022 Redistricting Process

Following the 2020 U.S. Census, it was revealed that Denver’s population had increased to 715,500, up from about 600,000 in 2010. As the city charter dictates, council districts are supposed to be within 10 percent of 65,000 residents, as compact as possible and continuous; the census results triggered a redistricting process. That process immediately turned contentious, as it was the councilmembers themselves — not an independent redistricting board, as is common in other major American cities — who drew and voted on the new district maps. When fellow Latina councilmembers didn’t support CdeBaca’s chosen map, she posted a graphic on social media calling them the derogatory term “Malinche,” igniting a controversy.

As the now-adopted district map, dubbed “Map D,” was put to the vote, CdeBaca was the only councilperson to vote against it, citing the drastic changes to her home district as the reason for her opposition. And, as an examination of past and present iterations of District 9 shows, CdeBaca’s concerns were not without merit.
The Impacts of Redistricting

The map above shows how District 9 was altered by the 2022 redistricting process. The areas highlighted in red were removed from District 9 and replaced with the area highlighted in yellow.

Large swaths of downtown Denver, specifically the Union Station and Central Business District neighborhoods, were cut from District 9, as were City Park West and City Park South (the smaller red zone). Their replacement came in the block of the North Park Hill and South Park Hill neighborhoods, which lie just east of City Park.

While the gross change in the number of District 9 residents was not drastic (the redistricting added approximately 1,500 voters to District 9), the demographic alterations were quite significant. According to 2020 census data, the neighborhoods removed from District 9 consist of about 16,500 voters who are younger, less affluent and more likely to rent than they are to own a home. The Central Business District consists of 3,648 residents with an annual income of $57,000. The Union Station neighborhood holds about 4,348 residents with an average income of $80,000 a year. Both of these neighborhoods have a plurality of younger residents who are in their twenties and thirties. (The Auraria neighborhood was also removed from District 9, though it largely consists of Ball Arena, Elitch Gardens, and their respective parking lots; only 700 people reside there, making its electoral impact minute.)

The neighborhoods of City Park West and City Park South consist of approximately 7,751 residents who have an average yearly income of $41,000. This is a historically working-class neighborhood, with over three-fourths of its residents renting their residences.

While a mass of young, renting, less-affluent voters was removed from District 9, the group that replaced it was the opposite demographically. The North and South Park Hill residents that were added to District 9 are older, wealthier and more likely to own a home than they are to rent. The plurality of Park Hill residents are in their fifties and sixties and have much higher annual incomes than their downtown counterparts. Households in North Park Hill average about $93k annually, while South Park Hill households are even wealthier, accruing over six figures ($104,000) annually. Most of these Denverites own homes: 84 percent of North Park Hill residents are homeowners, a high ownership rate only slightly outdone by the 85 percent ownership rate in South Park Hill.

It is no surprise to see why CdeBaca was so sternly opposed to the now-adopted Map D. The changes removed approximately 16,500 younger, less-affluent Denverites from her constituency and replaced them with approximately 18,000 older, wealthier homeowners. This is a significant divergence from the voting demographic that elected CdeBaca in 2019, especially considering the District 9 race collected just over 16,500 votes in the 2023 runoff.

"There are many factors that play into an election outcome — opposition spending totaling nearly $900,000 is a big one — but I certainly knew from the beginning that the new District 9 map would determine how heavy of a lift re-election would be," CdeBaca says. "During the 2022 redistricting process, I was the only councilmember raising concerns about gerrymandering and the lack of clear equity criteria in the creation of the map that was eventually adopted by council. From the start of the process, I had told my constituents that redistricting is too often an insider's game that would have big consequences for their representation and daily lives over the next ten years."

Watson did not respond to a request for comment.

During her four-year term, CdeBaca advocated for policies more likely to be favored by the working-class, renting voters that were removed from her district. She co-sponsored an anti-wage theft bill supported by multiple local unions (and opposed by the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce) as well as Ordinance 305, which would have provided free legal counsel for any Denverite facing eviction. These policies were favored more by the renter-heavy Denver residents who were removed from District 9 than the homeowners who replaced them.

It’s impossible to say what the result of the District 9 race would have been had the district not been changed so drastically, or if a different map had been adopted. But what is known is that the impacts of the redistricting were significant and should be taken into account when evaluating the outcome of the race.

Joe Mayall is a Denver-based writer and labor activist. You can find his work at JoeWrote.com.

Westword.com frequently publishes commentaries on matters of interest to the community on the weekend. Have one you'd like to submit? Send it to [email protected], where you can also comment on this piece.