Here I am at PCCC Training!
Some time ago, I announced my candidacy for Colorado State Senate District 30. Some commenters asked that I keep you apprised about my campaign. I had expected to be able to write about the campaign on a regular basis. HA! Ever since I decided to run, I have been running all over the area, meeting people, trying to gain Union endorsements, and attending functions. I got the opportunity to speak at our Never Again gun rally in one US House district and attended another. Life has been crazy.
In early February, I got the opportunity to meet with the man in charge of State Senate races for the state Democratic party. He sent me to a man who totally redid my website, which you can see here. I love what he did. Tell me what you think? My web designer sent me to a wonderful man who worked with me on my messaging. I had been using the slogan “the state is our last defense against what is happening in Washington.” He said that was too long and negative. So our own beloved 1864 House suggested “Good government starts at home.” So that is my slogan.
Elizabeth Warren speaks at PCCC
At some point, somebody, I have no idea who, recommended me for a scholarship to Progressive Change Candidate Committee (PCCC) training. I filled out the questionnaire, did a telephone interview, and by some miracle I got elected. It meant missing out on state assembly, but the training was unbelievable. Joel Silberman and Elizabeth Warren were the highlight for me, just as I am sure Keith Ellison and Bernie Sanders were the highlights for others. I just got back Sunday and now I am reporting in.
One of the most important things I took from the training was telling my story and relating it to my candidacy. I have been working on that since I got home. My story is still too long (I am always open to edit suggestions), but I thought I would share it with you. Here it is:
“I am running for State Senate because good government begins at home. Home means community. My understanding of community was shaped at the feet of two strong women – my great aunt and my grandmother. Both were the children and grandchildren of pioneers who settled Colorado.
My great aunt Isabel was the granddaughter of a woman, Martha Cowan, who was widowed, and brought two of her small children with her by covered wagon to Denver, and then Leadville, in the late 1870s. Martha’s daughter married David Abner Mills, a man who walked from Laceyville to establish a silver mine in Leadville some time after the Civil War. He helped organize a union of miners, who elected him to the state senate in 1892. In 1900, he was elected Secretary of State of Colorado on the Populist ticket.
My grandmother Frances was the granddaughter of a farmer, John Pring, who immigrated to the US in 1871 and homesteaded Colorado in the 1880s. John’s daughter married William McConnell, a farmer and medical doctor in 1898 in Colorado Springs. Frances was one of the first two women to graduate from the DU Medical School, now CU Medical School.
Isabel and Frances were children as Colorado was being settled, and they told me many stories of life at that time. Their stories illustrated that community was a requirement for survival. As my great aunt once told me, “The idea that the early settler was a rugged individualist is a myth popularized to give John Wayne an audience. The west was not settled by rugged individualists. Rugged individualists tended to not have descendants.”
I heard about how when newcomers came to town, the community would together help build a new house for them to live in and offered provisions until the new people got on their feet. It was difficult for a farmer to harvest his crops alone, but many farmers took on one farm at a time until the crops were all in. When the crops were in, they threw a big party, called a hoe down. It was called a hoe down because growing season was over, you could put your hoe down.
I heard about how in Denver, congregations together helped build houses of worship. Together, they built the synagogue, the Catholic church, the Methodist church, the Episcopalian church, the Presbyterian church, because everybody deserved a place to worship. Together, they built roads to get the crops to market and to get ore down from the hills.
In Colorado, water was the most precious commodity. I heard about how some donated their water rights to fund a proper school system, because educating children was a priority. It was considered good government.
In the late 1940s, my Dad came to Denver. As an adopted son of Denver, he devoted himself to community work. In addition to his work on bringing sports franchises to Denver, he worked on the bond drive to develop the Convention Center, on the drive to have a Metropolitan Transportation district, and the Arts and Culture tax. He worked with school districts and on infrastructure projects. Because communities need more than banks and law offices.
My husband arrived in 1974. We had a son. We moved to California for 10 years, but we came home and had another son. Because we loved our community.
And this is how community is built. As new people come in, they add their time and talent to create a rich mixture of backgrounds and traditions. They love, they stay, we all benefit.
Good government meant – and I think it still means – doing the work of the community. It means serving the people who live there. I have served the community. In the 90s, I worked with homeless children in an afterschool program, and it changed me. I worked with victims of domestic violence, and it changed me. I have also benefitted from the community. I got a bachelor’s Degree in Economics, a master’s degree in Computer Science and a PhD in Computer Science Systems Engineering. I worked in Aerospace and Defense most of my career, but I also took time away while my younger son was young, working real estate and mortgage lending while he was little. Now I am retired. It is time to give back, and that is why I am running for state senator.”
It is exciting to be meeting all these people and to be running for something I believe in. I have a platform that my messaging manager and I worked really hard on. It is something like this:
Good government is government that represents the community. We need to protect good government. Money in politics has broken our system. This is one area where we must restructure. Let me be an example of how to run for office with spending limits. I am the only person in the race who has accepted the state’s voluntary spending limits. Big money from a few, high end donors, has hijacked our democracy. When politicians can turn to a few deep pockets to fund their elections, they no longer are obligated to the community, they are obligated to the deep pockets. Citizens United has not only given these deep pockets free reign, it has made it impossible to know who our politicians are obligated to.
Good government means offering our children a good education. Public education is the cornerstone of a free and vibrant democracy. The vast majority of our children are educated in public schools. There was a time when the neighborhood school was the pride of the community. I will help restore that pride by promoting funding of neighborhood schools first. The public has an enormous investment already in our public schools. It is unacceptable to hand over our public assets, including schools, to private entities to profiteer off of our investment. Beneficiaries of our investment should be the public. Teachers are the core of our educational efforts, and they need to be paid attractive wages and have all the tools they need to educate our children.
Good government means taking care of our environment. Everyone wants to breathe clean air. The benefits to moving away from fossil fuels is clear. We already have a brown cloud. But the invisible particulate caused by fossil fuels is far more dangerous. Renewables do not cause harm to the environment once deployed, and companies like Tesla have figured out how to even manufacture them without harming the environment.
Good government also means providing access to public transportation. We need more light rail and it needs to be accessible to the largest number of people.
And Good government means protecting your private data. While there is no proof that it affected the election, we know that our voting system was hacked. There is increasing evidence that Russians influenced the 2016 election. My background in cybersecurity will allow me to review all of our computer systems, not just the election systems, because the state has many computer systems in addition to our voting system. Many of them under contract are, or have been, overrun and under-performing (i.e. DMV and food stamps). My background is well suited to examine these systems as well as any under consideration, to ensure that the systems we have or procure are able to perform as expected.
One of the hard parts of running, however, is putting together the funds. I am running in a district that has been so owned by the Koch Brothers that the Democrats have no infrastructure. We need to develop the infrastructure as we are running. If you happen to have a few loose bills lying around the house, it would be a huge help. Right now, I am trying to design literature to hand out at several events coming up. If you’d like to help out, my Act Blue account is here.
Thank you for reading, and for any edits you would recommend for my story. And any other comments as well. This is an adventure I never thought I would be undertaking.
