Voters in two swing districts will help decide the Colorado legislature’s future. The races have little in common.

In a swing district on the Western Slope, two Colorado state senate candidates — Republican Marc Catlin and Democrat Cole Buerger — are racing to the middle to court the unaffiliated voters they believe will decide the 2024 election.

In a House district in Colorado Springs — decided by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2022 — the candidates are taking a very different approach.

The incumbent, Rep. Stephanie Vigil, is a proudly progressive Democrat who eschews the term “moderate” and has backed bills to support low-income workers, immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and transgender rights. 

Her challenger, defense contractor Rebecca Keltie, is a far-right Republican who blames “illegals” for the state’s housing crisis and went door-to-door with an election denial conspiracy group following the 2020 election.

The two races are among a handful that will determine whether Democrats win a supermajority at the General Assembly, and with it a mandate to pursue a legislative agenda that prioritizes labor and environmental concerns over that of businesses, rewrites the state tax code to benefit lower income Coloradans, and promotes racial equity and LGBTQ rights.

Republicans, meanwhile, want to rein in what they see as years of state government overreach under Democratic control, leading to wholesale changes in how the state issues taxpayer refunds as well as what they consider intrusions on local control on issues like housing.

But the differences between the races also reflect sharply different visions of Colorado’s political future: one that sees compromise as the best approach to policymaking, and another that considers major disruptions to the status quo necessary to solve the state’s intractable challenges.

Housing and the cost of living

The Colorado Springs race provides voters a stark choice when it comes to housing policy.

Vigil, the Democrat, points to her bill eliminating minimum parking requirements along certain transit corridors as one of her proudest legislative successes. Urban planning experts and housing developers increasingly view minimum parking requirements as a key barrier to affordability, because local regulations often require far more parking than people actually use.

“Parking mandates are really onerous. It reinforces car dependency. It creates heat islands. It perpetuates sprawl,” Vigil said. “At a certain point we kind of have to work with the market to produce more of what people want and need. If we’re forcing them to accommodate cars more than they accommodate people, we’re not going to get there.”

She also supported House Bill 1313, Gov. Jared Polis’ signature land use effort, which requires a number of cities, including Colorado Springs, to zone for more apartments and townhomes near transit.

Keltie, a retired U.S. Navy veteran, calls both bills “out of touch” with what voters in Colorado Springs want. She predicts the parking bill in particular will hurt businesses, by forcing customers to compete with residents for limited spaces.

“That should have been something that each city can vote on themselves,” Keltie said. “But to make that an across-the-state bill, that was ridiculous.”

Her solution to the housing crisis starts with lowering taxes. “When people have money in their pockets, they can afford to do things like move out of their parents’ basement,” she said.

In Senate District 5, both candidates stress the need for local control of housing policy.

State Rep. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose, voted against Polis’ transit-oriented housing bill, as well as Vigil’s bill to reduce parking. But he supported a bipartisan measure, Senate Bill 174, that encourages local governments to study housing needs and create local plans to address them.

“We need to assess what we need,” Catlin said. “It’s better if local folks are sitting at the table.”

If the private sector can’t fill the need on its own, Catlin adds, the state should step in with financial assistance of its own.

Buerger, meanwhile, calls Vigil’s parking measure a “good bill” — for places like Denver. (It doesn’t apply to rural and mountain communities like those in his district.)

“I think that the problem and the fear from many, including myself, on something like a supermajority, is that we will get more one-size-fits-all policy out of Denver, and I am not a supporter of one-size-fits-all or top-down policymaking,” said Buerger, a small business owner from Glenwood Springs.

Both Senate candidates want to make it harder for condominium owners to sue over construction defects — an area of litigation that developers have long blamed for high insurance costs and historically low levels of condominium construction nationwide. (Housing experts largely agree that insurance costs influence condo construction, but say other factors, like the ongoing income that investors can earn from rent, also lead developers to prefer building rental apartments.)

They both also oppose making major changes to the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. But while Catlin voted against creating new tax credits for low-income families this year, Buerger said he favored those efforts by legislative Democrats.

Buerger also says the state should consider asking voters whether they want to raise taxes for certain services.

​​“I do think there are some opportunities where we should ask Coloradans, do we want more?” Buerger said. “Do you want to pay more dollars to make sure that we have a modernized road system or that we’re making sure that we’re finding and retaining good teachers that can live in our communities? But in terms of big reforms to TABOR, I’m not on board for anything that would be advancing a progressive agenda on that side.”

Two divergent races

In Colorado Springs, Keltie has leaned into issues that dominate politics at the national level.

The first issue listed on her campaign website is illegal immigration. She wants to repeal a state law prohibiting local law enforcement from reporting someone’s immigration status to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In an interview, she also blamed immigrants living in the U.S. illegally for the state’s housing affordability crisis.

“If you look at how many illegals that we have in the state of Colorado, they all need a place to stay, and that’s being paid out of our pocket as well, and they’re sucking up the housing availability,” Keltie said.

Housing experts say the large influx of migrants may play a small role in the rise in housing prices, but immigration is far from the primary culprit of a crisis that traces back over a decade to the drop in construction following the Great Recession.

Keltie has also spread misinformation about the 2020 election, repeating a false claim on Facebook in 2021 that Dominion Voting Systems machines were “NO GOOD!”

In another 2021 Facebook post, Keltie wrote that she “was out doing election integrity canvassing Saturday. All I can say is there was definite fraud found and affidavits required!”

The group she canvassed with, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, has been a supporter of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was recently sentenced to state prison for her role in a 2021 breach of her local election system.

Keltie told The Colorado Sun she had never been affiliated with the group, and merely volunteered to go with them “to see things for myself.”

When asked if she still thought the 2020 election was fraudulent, she replied: “Do I have a personal opinion that there are pockets of voter fraud in Colorado? Probably. I’m not naive.”

Vigil says Keltie’s focus on “wedge issues” like immigration is a distraction from the issues that the state legislature has the most control over.

“How do you serve the people of Colorado Springs well in a state where we’re the second biggest city and are often ignored and picked over?” Vigil said. “Do we want to elevate the city on the state stage, or do we want it to continue to be a place where we just bicker over wedge issues and don’t get anything done for ourselves and each other?”

Still, Vigil saw no reason to moderate her political views in order to appeal to centrists in one of Colorado’s closest swing districts. She supported bills to connect new immigrants with social services and to make it easier for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to obtain a driver’s license in Colorado.

“I’m interested in policies that support most working people and vulnerable groups in particular,” she said. “I’m always going to stand up for my values.”

Along the Western Slope, both candidates view their race as a referendum on Catlin’s experience.

The longtime representative says his relationships and expertise are an asset at the Capitol, while Buerger says Catlin’s influence is minimized due to his party affiliation.

“They (Republicans) basically can pass things that the majority party allows them to pass and claim bipartisan credit for,” Buerger said. “I’m running because I want to be able to play offense for the Western Slope, and I want to be able to actually shape legislation or stop bad legislation that doesn’t take into account the needs of rural Colorado.”

Catlin has more influence than most on his side of the aisle. He was the lone Republican to serve as vice chair of a House committee this year, the Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee.

He says rural Colorado has a lot to lose next year as lawmakers consider how to cut $900 million from the state’s budget.

“I think experience matters, and that’s one of the reasons I ran,” Catlin said. “I decided, OK, let’s see how we do and be able to continue the Western Slope message.”