A view of the Colorado Capitol on Jan. 25, 2024. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)
Denver policy director Matt Ball will replace outgoing Sen. Chris Hansen in the Colorado Senate, a vacancy committee of Denver Democrats decided Tuesday.
Ball won on the fifth round of voting with 61 votes. Democratic state Rep. Steve Woodrow also made it to that round of voting and received 37 votes.
Four other candidates — Chris Chiara, Iris Halpern, Monica VanBuskirk and Shaneis Malouff — were eliminated during earlier rounds of voting. Rep.-elect Sean Camacho, who was elected in November to represent House District 6, withdrew his candidacy after the third round.
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Ball will represent Denver’s Senate District 31 during the legislative session that begins Wednesday. He will be up for election in 2026.
“This is the honor of a lifetime for me. This is my home and this is my community. I moved back to Denver to get civically involved because I wanted to do something that made a difference in the community that I care about so much,” Ball said after his victory. “I promise I will be a state senator who listens, who is honest and who shows up.”
Hansen announced in November, a week after he won reelection to his seat, that he would resign from the Senate in order to take a job as the CEO of the La Plata Electric Association in southwestern Colorado. When a lawmaker resigns or dies during their term, a committee of members from the lawmaker’s party choose a replacement.
Ball currently works as Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s policy director and has done substantial work to stand up the city’s Road to Recovery program, which aims to divert people with mental health and drug use problems into treatment rather than the criminal justice system.
He is an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. His former interpreter, Qismat Amin, seconded Ball’s nomination during the vacancy election. Ball helped Amin obtain a visa to the United States in 2017, after Amin and his family faced threats from the Taliban.
Ball is the third lawmaker to be appointed to a legislative seat since last weekend. Republicans in Douglas County on Saturday tapped former University of Colorado Regent John Carson to replace Sen. Kevin Van Winkle in Senate District 30, according to Colorado Politics. On Monday, Arapahoe County Democrats appointed Rep. Iman Jodeh to Senate District 29 in Aurora to replace Sen. Janet Buckner.
Another vacancy committee will need to meet to replace Jodeh in the House.
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