It was all the usual chaos of a local political event Monday night at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, where the La Plata-Archuleta Cattlemen’s Association hosted a candidates forum.
Seated before a crowd of about 80, nine candidates running for elected office in two counties, the state House and State senate dodged microphone feedback as they answered a dizzying array of questions submitted by attendees before the event.
At first, the emcee threw questions before the panel and let candidates choose whether to answer them. Some were controversial and clearly intended as incendiary dog whistles; others referred to obscure legislative proposals that had died in committee; but some yielded productive exchanges, nods of mutual agreement across party lines or comic relief.
Archuleta County Commissioner Warren Brown, a Republican, fielded questions alongside his two unaffiliated challengers, Wayne Hooper and Kenneth Bowles.
La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka, the Democratic incumbent, and Republican challenger Paul Black also ran through a familiar set of talking points.
The two hopefuls running for House District 59, Ignacio Mayor Clark Craig and Durango School District 9-R board member Katie Stewart, also took questions alongside the candidates running in state Senate District 6, Republican Sen. Cleave Simpson and Democrat Vivian Smotherman.
Black and Salka agreed that the county’s budgetary constraints will be one of the biggest challenges that La Plata County commissioners must confront in the next five years. Black indicated that newly adopted oil and gas regulations are stifling development and thus driving revenue down and said fees, such as the recently implemented road impact fees, are “just a secret tax.”
Salka, in defense of the fees, noted that development expansion has an impact on roads, and that “there’s repercussions” if developers are not paying their own way.
In a moment of consensus and levity, the statehouse candidates offered succinct, albeit sparse, answers to a question about whether they would support any kind of law that restricted gun ownership.
“No, that’s a constitutional right,” Craig, a Republican, responded.
“Yeah, same, guns are tools here in Southwest Colorado,” Stewart, a Democrat, followed.
“I own a lot of guns,” Smotherman chimed in, followed by Simpson, who said “Ditto. Everybody should know my wife and I both own lots of guns.”
Several questions brought up gender identity and proposed or adopted legislation around transgender children participating in sports.
“This one is directed at me!” said Smotherman, who is a transgender woman, in response to the question about whether transgender children should be allowed to play sports on a team with cisgender children of the same gender.
The Colorado Republican Party attacked her in a transphobic email sent earlier this year without Simpson’s knowledge. Simpson called Smotherman to apologize that day and denounced the email publicly.
“We have the high school athletic association that set the rules. They monitor it, they follow it, I’m going to let them do that,” Smotherman said, noting that in general she would support legislation that protects transgender children’s rights.
Simpson, in a mirroring response, said he too wants to leave local issues to local leaders, adding “men and boys should participate in boys athletics and women and girls should be in girls athletics.”
Craig and Stewart butted heads in a brief moment of tension over a question about abortion access, specifically in cases of rape and incest.
Stewart, who described herself as “unabashedly pro-choice,” tried to leverage a concrete answer out of Craig, who had skirted the question, to a degree. Although he is anti-abortion, Craig said voters of Colorado have spoken, abortion access has been codified in law and he would rather have a conversation about “everything else that happens with reproductive rights and having the conversation about supporting a young mother.”
“Should a 14-year-old rape and incest survivor have access to that care?” Stewart pushed back, offering to yield her time.
“The voters of Colorado said yes,” Craig said.
Stewart pushed back, noting that the Roe v. Wade decision had been settled law for 50 years before it was overturned.
“I’m going to lean on my conservative values and try to do my best to choose life,” Craig said, eventually arriving at the conclusion that, in the rare example Stewart offered, “there needs to medical solutions for those problems.”
Ballots will begin to hit mailboxes the week of Oct. 11.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
