U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is a powerful voice for all of Colorado.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette is a powerful presence in Washington, D.C., for all of Colorado, not just her left-leaning, Denver-centric district.
DeGette is the chief deputy whip for the House Democrats, which means she takes a lead on rounding up votes on important party issues, but while she’s at it, she can whip up a few wins for Colorado, too.
She is Colorado’s senior member of Congress, having served for 20 years.
Charles “Casper” Stockham, the Republican challenging DeGette, is a political novice, but he has done a good job of talking about issues like poverty and homelessness that disproportionately impact certain parts of the 1st Congressional District — including Five Points.
Those issues are important and his candidacy has helped bring them to the forefront.
DeGette has big plans for the next two years, not the least of which is picking back up the idea of comprehensive immigration reform from where the U.S. Senate left off in 2014.
We’d like to see her go back for another two years and help get something done on immigration. She has expressed a willingness to compromise with Republicans on the issue.
But DeGette has other big plans too.
She is hoping to get her 21st Century Cures legislation through the Senate. The bill passed the House with broad bipartisan support a year ago.
It is a big lift politically because it is a huge bill that will restructure the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to get drugs from the earliest stages of research through the approval process much more quickly. DeGette, as a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has long been an advocate of reform in the health industry, including stemcell research.
DeGette wants to fight for funding for mental health and opioid addiction programs because she said major recent efforts on both of those fronts lacked funding they needed to have an impact.
Although DeGette is in a safe seat, she has been working hard and appears to be effective. Congress can be painstakingly slow and a safe incumbent can win the slow grind. It took her seven years to help reform how the Environmental Protection Agency regulates chemicals — but the bill became law in 2016.
DeGette deserves another two years in office and we wish the entire Colorado delegation luck, too, as they try to secure two new federal judges to help with the case backlog in this booming Western state.