Will sprawling House District 57 stay blue? Democratic incumbent leads in polls
Residents in Colorado’s 65 legislative districts will vote in November for a candidate to represent their best interests at the state Capitol throughout the next two years. House District 57, home to politically diverse residents and a hot spot for tourists, will see incumbent Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-Glenwood Springs) run against candidate Caleb Waller (R-Silt).
House District 57 covers the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys and much of the Western portion of the Interstate 70 corridor, including Garfield and Pitkin counties and parts of Eagle County. The candidate elected to serve House District 57 will represent roughly 88,857 residents, according to 2022 census data, with a significant majority of those living in Garfield County.
Before district maps were redrawn in 2021, the district had exclusively elected Republican representatives for nearly 40 years, prompting the question of whether the district’s slight tilt toward Democrats will persist in 2024.
According to a poll conducted Aug. 25-29, Velasco holds a 12-point lead over Waller (or 52% support compared to Waller’s 40%). The poll of 500 potential voters was conducted by Keating Research and commissioned by Voces Unidas Action Fund, a progressive advocacy nonprofit organization endorsing Velasco’s reelection. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4.4%.
“I’m feeling very strong, and as the incumbent, I have a track record that I’m very proud of, that people can look back on,” she told The Aspen Times.
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The poll doesn’t specify where respondents live in the district, which Waller said could indicate the results aren’t representative of House District 57 as a whole. Still, he added that the results made him hopeful, as he had originally entered the race at a 22-point disadvantage.
“To assume that there’s not bias there would be amiss,” he told The Aspen Times. “I bet if that poll was done again today, you would see that 12-point lead maybe drop to an eight or a six.”
Of the poll respondents who identified as Democrats, 88% said they would be voting for Velasco. Meanwhile, 91% of Republicans said Waller had their vote.
Who are the candidates?
Velasco was elected to her seat in 2022 after beating former incumbent Rep. Perry Will (R) by 8%.
She is the first Mexican-born state representative in Colorado, which she said has helped her to better represent her district. House District 57 is roughly 26% Hispanic/Latino as of 2022.
“I’m definitely very proud of being able to represent our district and celebrate our diversity in the state,” she said. “Our lived experience is the experience of many people in the community, so I do believe that those experiences have really guided the work that I do.”
Before running for office, she garnered experience in the community as a business owner running a translation and interpretation firm. She was also a public information officer during the Grizzly Creek Fire to help translate and disseminate critical information for the Roaring Fork Valley’s Latino residents.
So far into her term, she has sponsored bills modifying the Mobile Home Park Act, enforcing air quality violations, creating grants for organizations supporting migrants, testing and improving water quality in mobile home parks, assisting rural communities in applying for wildfire grant funding, and pushing for emergency communication in multiple languages.
During her first term, Velasco was a prime sponsor on 33 bills that became law. If elected for a second term, she said she would continue to focus on working families and preparing the district for the realities of a changing climate. For her, supporting working families means promoting affordability projects, protecting access to health care and child care, and improving access to clean energy.
“How can we be resilient when we’re seeing higher temperatures, when we’re seeing more fire risk, when there’s smoke that comes from fires out of state, you know?” she said. “I do feel like the more I learn, the more gaps I see when it comes to all of us having access to a thriving life.”
She has served on several boards, including the Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources Committee, the Energy and Environment Committee, and the Wildfire Matters Review Committee.
Her voting history is slightly more progressive than neighboring representatives in her party. During the 2024 legislative session, Velasco voted “yes” on the final floor vote for roughly 523 bills in the Democrat-controlled House and “no” on five:
- HB24-1135 classifies certain traffic offenses as misdemeanors.
- HB24-1356 prohibits the sale of electronic smoking devices to minors.
- HB24-1394 increases and decreases appropriations related to mill levy equalization for the Charter School Institute.
- HB24-1085 (not passed) limits actions against real estate appraisers.
- HB24-1247 (not passed) adds a termination clause to agreements with digital education material providers for when content (advertisements, embedded links) are found to be harmful to students.
She has received endorsements from Gov. Jared Polis, Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, House Majority Leader Monica Duran, and several organizations, like Planned Parenthood and Voces Unidas Action Fund.
Caleb Waller — a Silt resident, business owner, and father of seven — said he came out of “right field” when he announced his candidacy to be House District 57’s next representative.
He announced his selection as the Republican nominee on March 30, one week after he lost the Republican nomination for November’s Garfield County commissioner race to Perry Will. Waller received 34 votes during the Garfield County Commissioners Republican Assembly compared to Will’s 91, leaving his name out of the primary ballot.
Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, his work experience includes working as an organic farmer in his hometown and serving farmers in Israel’s West Bank for 14 years. He moved to Garfield County in 2020 with his family and now runs a real estate business.
He identified three issues he believes are the most important for the district: housing, energy and education. He has frequently stressed his support for free-market development as opposed to government-subsidized housing, stating the latter isn’t sustainable and won’t help families build the equity they want. He is also a proponent of reducing regulations on oil and gas production, particularly due to its driving economic force in Garfield County.
A Christian, Waller said he disagrees with Christian Nationalism as a movement, which has been a hot topic in district races around Colorado. His effort to move away from polarized partisan politics has included rejecting the “MAGA” label, explaining to his fellow Republicans that if they expect him to push either movement forward, then he’s “probably not the guy you’re looking for.”
“I’ve avoided the whole Democrat-versus-Republican discussion because I believe it polarizes people,” he said. “I believe in hearing what people have to say, and then saying, ‘How can I best represent them?'”
He doesn’t list any endorsements on his website or his social media accounts. He views endorsements as “playing politics,” he said.
“I’d rather people just vote for me because they see my policies and they see who I am,” he said.
House District 57’s most contentious issues
For many voters in the district, the issues they believe will define the 2024 election revolve around affordable housing, climate change, immigration, education, abortion rights and overall democracy, according to an informal 2024 Voter Voices poll.
Here is how each candidate differs on these issues:
Housing
Garfield County, one of three counties encompassing House District 57, was ranked as the most difficult county in the United States for homebuyers, according to NBC News’ April 2024 Home Buyer Index. Both Velasco and Waller recognize that housing affordability is essential to a healthy community, though their proposed solutions show staggering differences.
Velasco has emphasized the need for more affordable housing to retain and attract the district’s workforce, for which she proposed the solution of providing increased funding for local affordable housing projects. Having grown up in a mobile home park, some of her bills have helped to support the rights of mobile homeowners, as they are the last unsubsidized affordable housing units in many communities. Of the most recent legislation proposed to increase the state’s affordable housing stock, the bills were nearly solely focused on the Front Range and barely applied to the Western Slope.
Waller, on the other hand, believes in deregulating development and leaving housing in the hands of the free market to drive developers to make their homes more affordable, as current laws make it too expensive for builders to take on affordable projects, such as the state’s 2001 Construction Defect Reform Act. Government-subsidized housing, he said, is a temporary solution that won’t succeed in bringing down costs for the next generation.
Energy
Velasco was a prime sponsor for Senate Bill SB24-230, which will increase production fees for oil and gas to be invested in clean transit. Her approach to energy has focused on creating guidelines for hydrogen energy — which are now the federal standard — emissions reductions, closing orphaned gas wells, and promoting affordable and reliable access to clean energy.
Waller called himself an “all-of-the-above guy” when it comes to energy, meaning he supports a free-market approach with fewer government regulations. He said he would aim to relieve existing tax burdens on the oil and gas industry and look into introducing energy options like nuclear and hydrogen that are not government-subsidized.
Education
Investing more funding and resources into Colorado’s public education is an issue close to Velasco’s campaign, as she has supported the state’s recent efforts to fully fund schools and create a new funding formula for rural districts.
Waller’s focus is less on funding and more on curriculum. In terms of K-12 education, he said he supports “going back to the basics,” which he identified as reading, writing and arithmetic. He criticized current policies for focusing on extracurriculars over core subjects, saying the state’s current education system introduces topics not suitable for children and that it should instead be moving toward school choice.
Immigration
Having undergone the federal immigration process herself for nearly 20 years, Velasco has voiced her opposition to the series of nonsanctuary resolutions passed in Western Slope municipalities in 2024. During her term, she helped abolish the residency requirement for driver’s licenses, allowing undocumented Coloradans to obtain identification and car insurance. She also helped secure $5 million for the Department of Public Safety in 2023 to support recent immigrant arrivals to Colorado.
While Waller believes large-scale immigration is unhealthy for the community, he said he supports legal immigration.
“The immigrant families that are coming here to work hard and build a future for themselves, and they’re contributing to society, they deserve to be here,” he said, though he made a distinction between “those who are coming here to contribute versus those who are coming for handouts.”
Abortion
During the Sept. 26 Issues & Answers Election Forum in Glenwood Springs, Velasco made clear that she would not support any restrictions on abortion. She added that she plans to fight for increased access to health and abortion in the district, which she has already demonstrated through voting for House Bill 22-1279, or the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which allows abortion at all stages of pregnancy in Colorado.
In the same forum, Waller said he would not support a statewide abortion ban, but he felt it was too extreme for a baby to be “murdered in the process of birth” — talking points that Velasco said “are not real.” Colorado is one of nine states that does not restrict abortion based on gestational duration, meaning abortion is allowed up until the moment of birth.
“I’ll say this: I’ll never put myself in a position to make a decision for someone else. I believe there’s freedom in this country,” he said. He told The Aspen Times that he’s since received ample criticism from other Republicans in the state for not taking a firmer stance on abortion.
Colorado voters will decide this November whether to approve or deny Amendment 79, which would enshrine access to abortion in the state constitution.
Voter demographics and trends
The 2022 election marked the first time in the last 40 years that a Democrat was elected to represent House District 57, as Republicans have held the seat for over the past 20 house seat elections.
Last year was the first election with the state’s newest redistricting maps, which are drawn every 10 years, suggesting these voting trends might not maintain their consistency moving forward.
In November 2021, the Colorado Supreme Court approved state legislative redistricting plans that took effect during the state’s 2022 legislative elections. The old map, before being redrawn by the Colorado Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission, covered Moffat and Rio Blanco counties in addition to Garfield County.
The redistricting plans have received criticism for seemingly favoring Republicans in helping to weaken the Democrat’s majority in the general assembly, as well as diluting the power of Latino voters. This was not the case for House District 57: The 2021 redistricting made it a more Democratic-leaning district. According to a nonpartisan staffer report, the redrawn district was ranked as having nearly 16% tilt toward Democrats.
“The redistricting process definitely changed the makeup of the district,” Velasco said, adding that the change in political makeup is also a result of new residents moving in and out of the district, many of whom are working families. “We do have a democratic advantage, and I do think that the district is changing.”
Velasco leads Waller in campaign funding, spending
Velasco launched her reelection campaign with roughly $16,300 left over from 2022. She has since raised over $75,600 for a near total of $92,000 in campaign funds, of which she has spent almost $56,000. Waller, starting from zero, has raised over $17,900 and spent over $12,000.
Velasco’s state campaign finance record lists 306 unique donors with an average of $190 per person, including contributions from residents in House District 57 municipalities, Denver, Texas, and Washington D.C. The biggest contributions to her campaign came from small donor committees including the Colorado American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations ($6,000), the Colorado Medical Society ($3,000), and the Colorado Professional Firefighter Foundation ($3,000).
Velasco has also received donations from the Pitkin County and Garfield County democratic parties, Habitat for Humanity President Gail Schwartz, and Garfield County Commissioners District Three candidate Steven Arauza.
Waller’s funding is made up of 48 unique donors, with an average contribution of $300. The four largest donations were personal contributions from himself; in total, Waller has donated $5,900 to his campaign.
Other notable contributors to his campaign include Gypsum Town Engineer Jerry Law, Glenwood Springs Ford owner Jeff Carlson, and Rifle resident Trish O’Grady, who launched a petition calling for restricted access to Japanese Manga books at the Garfield County Libraries.
Election Day is on Nov. 5. Ballots will begin mailing out to registered voters on Oct. 11. The deadline for online vote registration is Oct. 28, though Election Day voter registration is available to in-person voters.