BY FREDA MIKLIN GOVERNMENT REPORTER
On August 4, a candidate meet-and-greet at a Greenwood Village home in the Preserve neighborhood featured Republican candidates Steve Monahan, running for Congressional District Six against two-term incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, Paul Archer, running for State House District 37 against Democrat Ruby Dickson, and Molly Lamar, running for the State Board of Education in Congressional District Six against incumbent Democrat Rebecca McClellan, who has served in that position since January 2017. All three candidates are new to elective politics.
Monahan told supporters that his race against U.S. Rep. Jason Crow is a challenge, but it is winnable because, “Everybody here is an American and Americans don’t back down from challenges.” He talked about the challenges he faced joining the U.S. Navy eleven weeks after 9-11, adding, “Challenge is what brought us over Iraq, getting shot at while we fly over to do our mission. It’s what had us chasing drug runners in South America. It’s what had us chasing Chinese and Russian submarines in their back yard and ours. Those are challenges. We don’t back down from those…So why back down now?… Challenges build character and character is what is going to save this country.”
Monahan continued, “What are the issues? Crime, kids, and inflation…Your Colorado crime crisis is a border crisis. Drug cartels run your border now. They’re starting to run your cities, especially over there in Aurora or Wheat Ridge. (A crime that had occurred in Wheat Ridge the night before had been mentioned previously.) That’s what’s driving the crime in this city. That and the soft-on-crime policies.”
Monahan moved on to, “Our children are the most important thing. No society that doesn’t value the future is no society at all.” He continued, “It’s time to have an honest conversation about the global supply chain, climate change, where it needs to start and where it can be done better. The global supply chain needs to start in America, especially for Americans.” He mentioned the supply of baby formula, antibiotics, and ball bearings, then added, on the subject of climate change, “Stop outsourcing your coal and diesel to China. Do it here. America does energy better, cleaner, and cheaper and we can do it all on our own continent.”
Archer said he’d just returned from a family reunion of 77 people in Deer Valley, Utah. Coming from a family with many teachers, he said he was very concerned about education and crime in Colorado, noting, “We’ve had more murders through June of this year in Colorado than we had all of last year—all of that because of what our current legislature did. Those things have to be reversed. People care about feeling safe in their communities.”
He continued, “Colorado is a tough place for people to afford to live and there are things we can do about that.” Pointing to the high cost of housing locally, he said, “We need to reduce the cost to dig a hole. Right now, it’s incredibly expensive just to dig a hole, adding, “I’m from Utah. You can dig holes in Utah way cheaper than you can do it here… So, you can make it way cheaper to dig holes. We need to encourage a lot more multifamily and condominium building.”
Archer also pointed to the lack of construction trade professionals available to general contractors, adding that he would, “Champion trade schools in Colorado and tell kids that being a plumber is a great job…You can have a great life being a tradesman.”
Lamar said, “I’m really concerned about the state of education here in Colorado. I think it’s time we have a parent on the board. All of the current board members right now, most of them are parents, but they don’t have kids in school… I also think my experience with classroom management and working with kids will bring an important perspective to the board. Right now, performances are dismal, 60% of third-graders in Colorado cannot read at grade level and 70% of them are not proficient in math. I think it’s time that we get focused on teaching our kids reading, writing, and math… My mom was a teacher of history and Latin. She believed if her students knew how she voted in November, she had failed them… She believed it was her duty to teach them history and facts but not bias.”
Lamar commended school districts for, “Doing a good job of creating those innovation campuses where they are trying to remove the stigma from not going to college, really encouraging kids to find what makes their heart beat.” She pointed to Cherry Creek School District’s Cherry Creek Innovation Campus, about which she said, “It’s a beautiful campus. The biggest issue is transportation, getting kids to and from.” She continued, “If we remove the stigma from going to college, and now kids can find something that really interests them and make a meaningful wage and support their families and not be sent to these universities where you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars—we’re just about to send our oldest son off to college. We went for orientation and I can’t say I was super excited.”
All three candidates will be on the ballot on November 8.