Gonzales takes on Hickenlooper with plans she says will resonate from ski towns to farm towns

Thirty-one years of age and centrist vs. progressive politics certainly do define the parameters of the June 30 Democratic primary for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat currently held by moderate John Hickenlooper, 74. The winner takes on Republican state Sen. Mark Baisley on Nov. 3.

But an even bigger gulf between the incumbent and challenger Julie Gonzales, a 43-year-old longtime community organizer and state lawmaker from Denver may be the Continental Divide, raising the question, can a progressive Democrat from the Front Range earn enough votes on the state’s far more rural and conservative Western Slope?

Gonzales, in an interview last week, argued she absolutely feels the pain of residents across the state and knows what they’re dealing with in terms of the lack affordability, the rural healthcare crisis, and the omnipresent threat of drought and wildfire.

In 2018, land that’s been in her family for generations was nearly scorched by the Spring Creek Fire in Costilla and Huerfano counties in southern Colorado. The fire turned away, but several summers later a mudslide in the fire zone took out the ditch that provides water for their land.

Gonzales said that living in Denver has not removed her from the reality of knowing where the water comes from and the steps that need to be taken to protect public lands, conserve Western Slope water and mitigate against the worst impacts of climate change. She knows how reliant Eagle County is on natural resources, from its ski towns to its ranches.

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She points to Eagle County’s ongoing legal battle against an increase in Utah oil trains along the remote canyons of the upper Colorado River, which could spark wildfires or cause catastrophic oil spills into the headwaters of the endangered river.

“That to me is an indication of corporations who are trying to extract the last bit of profit that they possibly can, while they still can, before the climate crisis comes for us all,” Gonzales said. “It is clear that we need to incentivize and speed the transition to a green economy and to green energy in order to preserve and protect all of our natural resources, but particularly in Colorado, as a headwater state, our water.”

As for the vast majority of Eagle County and the rest of the Western Slope composed of federally owned land, Gonzales has a simple reply: “First and foremost, our public lands are not for sale, full stop. And the idea that there are extremist Republicans who would seek the sale of those public lands, our public lands, I think speaks to the moral emptiness of the MAGA movement and their willingness to sell their own souls in order to make a buck.”

Hickenlooper, a former oil and gas industry geologist turned brewpub owner turned Denver mayor, governor of Colorado and now U.S. senator, has long opposed the Uinta Basin Railway project that would quintuple the amount of heated waxy crude oil traveling by train through Eagle County, and he has been a strong proponent of renewable energy and protecting public lands.

“There’s no question that we’re facing the most extreme drought in 1,200 years,” Hickenlooper said in an email statement last week. “This year’s horrible snowpack will only make things worse. The only way that we address the Colorado River crisis is together. Communities across the state depend on the Colorado River, and smart management of that resource benefits all of us. We’ve helped secure $12 billion in federal funding to help the West attack the issue and are working on legislation to better measure, predict, and conserve our water.”

But at a listening tour stop in Eagle last summer, Hickenlooper raised a few eyebrows by saying he tries as much as possible to work with Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who has repeatedly and thus far unsuccessfully attempted to sell off federally owned public lands. Hickenlooper opposes such sales but says the Senate has to work across the aisle.

Gonzales said Hickenlooper’s vision of the Senate is from a bygone era.

“It died the moment of (President Barack) Obama’s first year of his first term in that August recess, when the tea party descended in town halls across the country,” Gonzales said. “That’s when that version of decorum and collegiality died, and we haven’t been able to return to that since.”

Gonzales wants to target the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision with legislation to get dark money out of politics, and is in favor of getting rid of the Senate filibuster that requires a minimum of 60 of 100 votes on all but a handful of fiscal and executive nomination issues.

According to a Hickenlooper campaign spokesperson, “The Senator supports reforming the filibuster to protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms and already voted to reform the filibuster to protect Americans’ right to vote and for women to make their own health care decisions.” 

Finally, Gonzales favors abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which in Eagle County and other ski and tourism communities on the Western Slope has been accused of terrorizing Latino communities vital to sustaining economic prosperity on the Western Slope.

“My family goes back generations in southern Colorado,” Gonzales said. “We’re the kind of Chicanos where we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. And yet I have had conversations with folks like me who are U.S. citizens and who are also afraid of this administration’s secret police force, ICE agents, going and racially profiling folks like me because of the color of our skin or because of the language that we speak. That fear is palpable.”

If elected, Gonzales said she would get rid of ICE and start over with an agency that adequately funds enough immigration judges, creates a pathway to citizenship and strips away the economic incentives of mass deportation embedded in private detention facilities such as the one in Aurora.

“Immigrants power our economy and make our community stronger, and the cruelty that ICE has inflicted upon communities across this state, certainly there in Eagle County, but everywhere (must end),” Gonzales said. Hickenlooper agrees.

“The president’s extreme and violent immigration crackdown is terrorizing our communities. Families are scared to go out in public. Kids with no criminal records have been detained and held for months. We refuse to accept ICE’s lawlessness — and we’re doing everything to stop them,” Hickenlooper wrote in a statement.

“We’ve voted against giving ICE another penny …,” he added. “We’re fighting to require ICE agents take off their masks, turn on body cameras, and stop targeting schools, hospitals, polling places, and places of worship. They need to end their roving patrols and get judicial warrants for any arrests. But we also need to actually fix our broken immigration system. That means a real pathway to citizenship for DREAMers, TPS recipients, and essential workers.”

To vote in Eagle County’s primary election, go to the county clerk’s website. For more information on the candidates, go to the Vail Daily’s election section.