Colorado General Assembly: SD18, HD10, and HD49

Members of the Colorado General Assembly spend tons of time debating bills at the State Capitol, but they’re also elected to represent their geographic districts.

Colorado’s General Assembly is also known as the state legislature. There are two chambers in the bicameral General Assembly – the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are 65 geographic House districts, and voters in these districts elect one Representative per district. There are 35 Senate districts, and voters in these districts elect one Senator per district.

Briefly, the largest role of a legislator is to deal with state laws. Each legislator sponsors bills of their own, while the entire General Assembly typically sees give or take 600 bills per year. Legislators debate bills in committees or in their chambers, and they can support, amend, or defeat the bills. They also “represent” their district, and good legislators should take input from people living in their district plus provide outreach to their constituents.

Representatives are elected to two-year terms, and can only serve four two-year terms before being term-limited. Senators are elected to four-year terms, and can only serve two four-year terms before being term limited. However, it is possible for legislators to serve in both chambers, and a legislator might serve up to 16 years in the General Assembly if they keep winning House and Senate elections.

All races below are decided by “plurality” voting, but since there are only two candidates in each race mentioned below, the top vote-getter will get 50% or more. For this guide, I only wrote about the three 2024 races in districts that include part or all of the City of Boulder.

Colorado Senate District 18

Senate District 18 includes the City of Boulder, parts of unincorporated Boulder County, Gunbarrel, Niwot, Louisville, and Superior. The voter registration split was about 48.9% Democratic, 41.3% unaffiliated, 8.6% Republican, and 1.3% minor party in 2021, according to the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission.

Rep. Judy Amabile, Democratic

Rep. Judy Amabile

Judy Amabile is making her first run for the Colorado Senate in 2024, after having served two two-year terms in the state House of Representatives, currently representing House District 49. She would replace the term-limited Senate President Steve Fenberg as the SD-18 Senator (but not necessarily as President) if she wins this election. Amabile won a Democratic primary election against Jovita Schiffer to earn the party’s nomination in June 2024. She has a master’s in business administration from CU-Boulder, and co-founded the Polar Bottle water bottle company about 25 years ago.

Currently, Amabile is the chair of the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee, and a member of House Judiciary, House Appropriations, and the Legislative Council Committee.

During her time in the House, Amabile has been a leader on mental health issues, a pursuit that might be seen as both broad-based and personal, since one of her sons has what she describes as a “serious mental illness.” She has also worked on significant issues including climate and energy; insurance; housing; criminal justice; and public safety, among others. A few of her top bills that she sponsored included:

HB 22-1303: Part of the state’s problem with treating people experiencing behavioral health issues is a lack of facilities. This bill required the creation of at least 16 inpatient beds at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan, and at least 125 beds statewide.
HB 24-1103: In 2019, Elijah McLain was killed by a lethal injection of ketamine, given to him after believing he exhibited characteristics of “excited delirium.” This bill prohibits the term “excited delirium” in first responder trainings, in peace officer incident reports, and as the cause of death in death certificates.
HB 24-1152: This bill requires local governments to allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) wherever single-family homes are allowed, and devoted money to a grant program to incent or defray the costs on creating ADUs.
HB 22-1111: How to deal with insurance and insurers was a big challenge for many families (probably all located in SD-18) after the Marshall Fire. This bill required insurers to provide additional time and flexibility in rebuilding or replacing an insured residence and its contents, additional living expense coverage, building code upgrade costs, and a way to directly contact the insurer.
HB 21-1298: Under the so-called “Charleston loophole,” people might have been able to get a gun without passing a background check if the check took too long. This bill closed the loophole in Colorado, and says the Colorado Bureau of Investigation must deny a gun purchase if the purchaser had been convicted for certain criminal offenses.

Campaign Website: https://www.judyforcolorado.com/

Gary Swing, Unity Party

Gary Swing has run a number of times for elected office, but has yet to win. He finished fifth in the race for Colorado Secretary of State in 2022; close to last in the U.S. Presidential race in 2020 with the “Boiling Frog” party; fourth in the race for CD-2 in 2020; second in the general election for Arizona CD-7 in 2018; third in the Arizona U.S. Senate race in 2016; fourth in the 2016 Colorado CD-6 general election; and fourth in the 2012 Colorado CD-1 general election.

Swing has been active over the years in discussions about alternative systems of governance and elections. For a few excerpts on his recent positions:

Better voting methods should be implemented to secure fair representation for a politically diverse population.
Ninety-four nations use proportional representation to secure fair, inclusive representation for diverse populations in their parliaments. Political authority should be decentralized in the hands of state and federal legislators who are elected by an open party list system of proportional representation.
In a single transferable vote system, voters rank individual candidates. If your first choice doesn’t have enough support to win, your ballot is transferred to your highest ranked candidate who can be helped by your ballot. In a district with nine seats to be elected, a candidate needs one-tenth of the vote to be elected.

Swing’s most recent website for his SD-18 candidacy included criticisms of current Senate President Fenberg for sponsoring two elections-related bills that Swing claims will make it tougher for independent candidates to qualify for ballots. The bills were HB 19-1278 and SB 21-250, linked here, though interested readers should know both bills are more than 50 pages long and not by any means just about independent candidates.

Campaign Website: https://theswingvote.wixsite.com/unity

Richard’s Take

Vote Amabile. She was a devoted and effective legislator in the House, and I have no doubt she’ll continue her good work in the Senate. I personally met her long before she was elected to office, when she came to the Capitol on her own time to testify on a bill designed to ensure equal pay for women. With four years in the House, she’s sponsored many bills on her own, but also probably voted on around 2,000 bills total and served on topical committees. This alone means her experience in Colorado legislative issues is quite deep, and I’ll keep this section short because there’s really no need to vote for her opponent as this district’s Senator.

I respect Swing for running for office often, but he’s never come close to winning and nothing I’ve seen suggests he should win this race. His two most recent websites to me painted him as largely sort of a single-main-issue candidate, concerned with minor-party or independent candidacies. While I’m sure he has opinions on other issues, this is how he’s using his prime messaging tool right now. I might actually agree that there’s no good reason why only Democrats and Republicans should be competitive candidates, but it’s still up to the people running independently or as minor-party candidates to make themselves competitive if that’s what they actually want.

Colorado House District 10

Colorado House District 10 is almost completely within City of Boulder boundaries, for the most part east of Broadway, but it extends west of Broadway in the University Hill and Newlands areas. The voter registration breakdown when the new district was formed in 2021 was 51.4% Democratic, 40.8% unaffiliated, 6.3% Republican, and 1.5% minor party, according to the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission.

Junie Joseph, Democratic

Rep. Junie Joseph

Junie Joseph, the incumbent House District 10 Representative, served four years as a Boulder City Council member and has served almost all of one full two-year term in the House. She made her first run for elected office in 2019, winning a four-year term on Boulder City Council and earning more than 17,000 votes. She served for a year as Boulder’s Mayor Pro Tem. Joseph became the HD10 Representative by winning an August 2022 Boulder County Democratic Party vacancy committee election for the party’s HD10 nomination, and then winning the November general election by about 88%-12%. She won a Democratic primary election challenge from Tina Mueh in June 2024, and became the Democratic nominee on this year’s ballot.

Joseph immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti in her teens, eventually earning a law degree from the University of Colorado and working in private practice as a family law attorney. She’s worked or interned in national and international positions, including: South Africa with the indigenous Khoe-San; the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva; the Council on Native American Affairs in the Obama administration; and the UN in the Central African Republic helping to protect the rights of women and children.

Joseph is currently Vice Chair of the House Finance Committee and a member of the House Energy and Environment Committee. During her time in the House, she has given focus to issues of equity, family law, climate and environment, and protecting the rights of underprivileged or disadvantaged communities. Some of her top sponsored bills of which she was a primary driving force include:

HB 24-1009: In brief, the bill requires the state to provide resources to help Spanish-speaking applicants for child care provider licenses complete the legal paperwork needed for licensure.
HB 24-1170: This 10-page bill established a fairly lengthy “bill of rights” for Colorado youth who are detained in youth services facilities. The list of rights includes: access to health care services and/or behavioral health services as needed; the right to refuse pharmaceuticals; gender-affirming care; access to legal representation and ombudsman services; freedom of expression and appearance; and access to education and/or vocational coursework.
HB 23-1027: The bill creates standards designed to increase “family time” for kids placed in foster care so they can spend more time with family members, unless there are safety risks involved with spending time together.
HB 23-1134: The bill requires insurers that cover replacing gas appliances to also cover electric appliances, but only up to the cost of the original gas appliance. Homeowners have to cover the rest, including new wiring or breakers if needed.

Bill DeOreo, Republican

Bill DeOreo is making his second run for House District 10 in 2024, after losing to Joseph by about 88% to 12% in 2022. He is an engineer who has lived in Boulder since 1976. After graduating from Boston University with a Biology degree, he moved to Colorado in 1972. He lived and worked on the West Slope as a surveyor and engineer, including having surveyed the route for I-70 over Vail Pass. In 1974 and 1978 he received engineering degrees from the University of Colorado-Boulder in Civil/Environmental Engineering, and since then has worked mainly on water and energy problems in Colorado, the U.S., and internationally. He recently visited India on behalf of the U. S. State Department as part of its visiting expert program to discuss water problems with Indian colleagues.

He has served a five-year term with two different City of Boulder citizen advisory boards: the Open Space Board of Trustees and the Water Resources Advisory Board.

According to his 2022 website, he was “registered as a Democrat until the response of the Democratic Party to the COVID crisis forced him to rethink his affiliation.”

Some of his top issues, largely taken either from his YouTube channel, his 2022 website, or a 2024 Boulder Weekly questionnaire, include:

Promoting advanced nuclear technology to generate electricity, while also using existing gas, electrical, wind, and solar sources of generation.
Opposition to state control over land use decisions and policies regarding housing that have historically been left to local control. The state proposed a giant land use bill in SB 23-213 last year but it did not pass, and in 2024 a series of bills made up of components proposed in the 2023 bill did pass, such as one requiring rezoning to eventually allow dense housing in areas near transit centers.
Supports eliminating what he calls “unnecessary” state spending, and in turn reducing taxes.
Opposes completely disallowing natural gas in residential buildings, but supports reducing reliance on natural gas in electrical generation.
Opposes elimination of cash bail
He told the Weekly that he used to believe CO2 concentrations were a major threat to the ecology, but has since become a “carbon skeptic.”
Nullify the Colorado Reproductive Health Equity Act (HB 22-1279)
Criminalize teachers or medical providers who encourage or give information to any minor about gender modification, unless it’s at the request of the parents based on an incontrovertible medical condition.
Ensuring that only living citizens, residing in the State, vote, and that no one is allowed to harvest ballots. Would prefer paper ballot voting on Election Day over our current system of all-mail elections.
Supporting the right of law abiding citizens to have concealed carry permits, and local sheriffs providing firearms training to citizens.

Campaign Website: DeOreo did not appear to have a campaign website as of early September. You can learn more by watching/listening to videos on @Bill4HD10 on YouTube, and those who just want to read can check out the Boulder Weekly’s questionnaire at https://boulderweekly.com/content-archives/voters-guide/william-deoreo-colorado-district-11/

Richard’s Take

Vote Joseph. She is the incumbent, with about five total years as a local elected official and two full sessions in the state legislature, and she reflects the prevailing values of HD10 more accurately than does DeOreo. She’s got worldly life experience and a record of accomplishment at the statehouse, with much of her best work involving protections and benefits for the underprivileged.

Full disclosure: I was the campaign manager for Tina Mueh, who ran a Democratic primary election campaign against Joseph in 2024 but was defeated. While I definitely supported Mueh, now that the primaries are over I feel I have to set the past aside and consider what’s best for the various districts I live in.

I’m already on the record as having been critical of Joseph during the primary campaign for a few things, including staying on City Council during the first year of her HD-10 term. I also thought she took too much personal credit in her literature and campaign forums for bills where she was one of the up-to-four sponsors, but the largest share of the impetus really came from other legislators or offices. Still, she deserves full credit for the bills for which she truly was the prime driving force, and a few of them are mentioned in the section above.

More importantly than individual bill sponsorship, legislators deal with plus-or-minus 600 bills per year, not just the bills they sponsor. Joseph’s across-the-board voting record has been mostly acceptable to me, and the Democratic-dominated legislature was able to pass a lot of bills over the course of two years that most of Boulder would appreciate. Majorities matter, at times more than the individual officeholders – which have been changing pretty rapidly in the state legislature lately!

Unfortunately for DeOreo, he is running as a Republican in a district with about 6% Republican registration, per the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission in 2021. He is a former Democrat, but is now willing to challenge a fair number of local Democratic prevailing beliefs, and I do believe it’s good to have a fair exchange of competing ideas in an election. Examples include not believing we’re likely to run a modern economy on 100% wind/solar energy sources, favoring use of “advanced nuclear technology” to meet electrical demand, supporting gun ownership to a greater extent than many Boulder-area Democrats (with exceptions for criminal offenders and non-citizens), and criticizing some of the recent housing policies supported by Gov. Polis and a majority of the legislature because they ran contrary to traditional local land use control.

DeOreo has recently attacked Joseph in his videos for being politically too far left, but in HD10 candidates are far more likely to lose when they veer too far right. DeOreo’s 2022 statement criticizing Colorado’s great system of mail voting, and calling for us to go back to the old system of voting in person on Election Day, was by itself probably enough to lose my support. But I also checked out his Twitter page and found him calling President Biden a “baby killer” for supporting reproductive rights, and calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “Marxist/Communist.” I’ll pass. And judging by the district’s voter registration balance and the 2022 election results, it’s just not likely he’ll pose much of a challenge to the incumbent anyway.

Colorado House District 49

Colorado House District 49 basically spans Clear Creek County, Gilpin County, western Boulder County including the City of Boulder mostly west of Broadway, and rural Larimer County basically west of the major cities along Highway 287 (Berthoud, Loveland, Ft. Collins). It extends in Larimer County all the way north to the Wyoming border.

The party registration split for this district when it was formed in 2021 was 41.9% unaffiliated, 36.4% Democratic, 20.1% Republican, and 1.7% minor party, according to Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission data.

Lesley Smith, Democratic

Regent Lesley Smith

Lesley Smith is a current at-large (statewide) member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents. She is running to replace the current HD-49 Representative Judy Amabile, who is running for the Colorado Senate in SD-18. Smith has a degree in Aquatic Biology from the University of California-Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She worked for thirty years as a scientist and educator at the University of Colorado, and was elected to the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education (school board), serving for eight years. She has also served on the City of Boulder’s Water Resources Advisory Board (WRAB).

In short, Regents oversee the University of Colorado system and its roughly $6 billion budget, including its campuses in Boulder, Denver, Aurora, and Colorado Springs. Responsibilities include:

Hiring the President of the CU system
Oversight of CU’s financial status, facilities, and operations
Fostering a strong academic environment and student wellbeing
Review and recommendations regarding policies and procedures relevant to the Regents

Smith beat Republican Ken Montoya in the 2018 statewide Regent election by about 52% to 43% (there were two other candidates), and earned a six-year term. While with the Regents, she served on the Gender Equity Task Force for the Boulder campus’ Athletic Department, and she led the search for the current CU President (currently Todd Saliman) after former President Mark Kennedy left the position. She currently serves with the Regents’ Governance and University Affairs committees, as well as the CU liaison to the Auraria Higher Education Center.

For a few of her policy positions regarding this run for the HD-49 seat:

Supports better state funding for K-12 and higher education, and wants to limit “skyrocketing” tuition increases.
Intends to work toward making health care affordable for all Coloradans, “regardless of income.
Supports reproductive rights, including this year’s Amendment 79 to enshrine reproductive rights in the Colorado Constitution.
Intends to work on housing affordability, including potentially allowing local governments to consider rent control.

Campaign Website: https://www.lesleyforco.com/

Steve Ferrante, Republican

Steve Ferrante, the Republican nominee for HD-49, runs a small property management business in Estes Park. According to his website, he has served in law enforcement for 20 years, and is a pastor at Park Fellowship Church in Estes Park. He ran unopposed in the 2024 Republican HD-49 primary election, and has not run for other public office before.

For the condensed version of some of his top positions:

He wants to protect what he calls “the innocence of children,” including in areas such as sexuality and gender reassignment.
Noting that some public K-12 schools in HD-49 posted substandard test scores, he believes parents should have the option to use public funding for other schooling options, including “charter, private, religious, or home schooling.”
He opposes what he calls “punishing the successful” through excessive taxation and/or regulation.
To quote his website directly, he believes “Identity politics, labeling, and the demonizing of opposition have shut down civil discourse and our willingness to consider and value different opinions.”
He said he supports moving toward unity as a society, saying “we are better when we are united than when we are divided.”

Readers might actually find this linked story more interesting than parts of Ferrante’s website, as it tells tales of his missionary work in Africa and gives a little more information about his personal story. However, the story was from 2019 and doesn’t touch on state politics.

Campaign Website: https://electstevecolorado.com/

Richard’s Take

Vote Smith. She’s a candidate who will certainly hit the ground running in most areas relevant to state government, with deep experience in K-12 and higher education, science, and water issues. She’s also a studious type who will do the work necessary when she needs to catch up on the wider variety of State of Colorado issues. She’s already served in elected office for around 14 years, with three successful elections under her belt, not to mention her additional public service or work with CU and WRAB. I’ve met or read about lots of first-time state legislative candidates over the years, and Smith’s resume for this job is about as strong as you can ask for.

I have respect for Ferrante’s law enforcement service, but much of the rest of his website was extremely general with not a lot of specific policy proposals. Law enforcement issues actually come up frequently at the Capitol, and it’s good to have legislators with direct experience in relevant areas to help make sure that there are informed voices, not just philosophical or activist perspectives. I disagree with his support for K-12 private school vouchers, since the purpose of public school funding is to make sure a free K-12 education is available to all, regardless of family income, and vouchers would sap money from the system. However, I appreciate at least his stated sentiment about working toward unity and moving past political divisiveness. I wish him luck on that and hope lots of people join him, no matter what happens in the HD-49 election.