[/media-credit]Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, with Miss Loveland Valentine, Mary Askham, right, today on the House floor.
Another Republican incumbent is bowing out of a race with a fellow GOP lawmaker.
This time it’s Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, who announced today she would not run against Rep. Brian DelGrosso, also a Loveland Republican, avoiding a primary later this year.
Her decision is the result of new, Democrat-drawn legislative districts approved by the Colorado Reapportionment Commission last year.
“While I am disappointed that Democrats on the Reapportionment Commission gerrymandered Brian and me into the same district, I am very proud of what we have accomplished in the state House,” Nikkel said in a statement. “This year, I look forward to continuing to serve my constituents and the people of Colorado by building a better Colorado for them.”
Nikkel had represented House District 49 since 2009, but new maps put her house just inside the edge of House District 51, where DelGrosso lives. Nikkel complained that Democrats went to absurd lengths to put her home in DelGrosso’s district, actually cutting a small lake in two and drawing her home just 1600 feet away from her old district.
DelGrosso called Nikkel, the House majority whip, an effective leader and a friend.
Rep. Brian DelGrosso
“I will miss working with her in the legislature,” he said, “but I know we will remain good friends and will continue to work together to move our state forward.”
Nikkel’s abdication follows similar towel-throwing by Sen. Keith King, who said he would not run against fellow Colorado Springs Republican Sen. Bill Cadman, and Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, who bowed out of a primary with Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling. In both cases, newly drawn legislative districts put the Republican incumbents together, though in the Becker-Sonnenberg example, even Republican maps had the two drawn together as the Eastern Plains lost a House seat in the face of sluggish population growth.