Candidates discuss borders, environmental justice
Yadira Caraveo, Barb Kirkmeyer face off during Latino issues forum
The two women vying to represent Colorado’s newest congressional district, created just last year by a statewide redistricting commission, were quizzed on Latino issues Thursday night in a district where Hispanics account for nearly four in every 10 registered voters.
State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, who has served nearly 20 years as a Weld County commissioner, said for voters in the 8th Congressional District north of Denver it comes down to “inflation and the cost of living and how much everything is costing.”
Kirkmeyer, a Republican, said it is costing the average person nearly $12,000 more to live in Colorado this year than it did two years ago.
“This is hurting people,” she said. “It means that they’re losing at least one month’s paycheck trying to pay for things like food, electricity, housing and their utility bills.”
State Rep. Yadira Caraveo, who is a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said she was prompted to run for public office after noticing “that the American Dream that I had lived was slipping out of the fingers of the families that I saw” in her medical practice.
“What I would focus on is the same needs that every community around has — the ability to have a fair shake at living in Colorado and living your dream,” the Democrat said.
Both candidates appeared at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley on Thursday night as part of a forum hosted by the Latino Action Council, as the election lurks less than three weeks away. The 8th Congressional District, which covers big chunks of Adams and Weld counties and a sliver of Larimer County, is considered one of the closest U. S. House contests in the nation.
It also has a nearly 40% Latino population, the most of any congressional district in Colorado by a large margin. The candidates were asked about border control, environmental justice and the recent dissolution of Roe vs. Wade with the U. S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June.
“I am a pro-life candidate — I always have been,” Kirkmeyer said matter-of-factly about an issue that Democrats are hoping will energize voters who might otherwise sit out the election. “I do not support taxpayer-funded abortion at any point during the pregnancy …”
As a doctor, Caraveo said, “I fully understand that this is a medical decision.”
“The government should not be interfering with this right,” she said. “I will make sure that in Congress one of my goals is to make sure we codify Roe vs. Wade and give this right back to a woman.”
On immigration, Caraveo put emphasis on “a path to citizenship” as a priority in reforming the system. As a child of immigrants who was able to make it to medical school on her father’s construction worker salary, she said the issue is personal for her.
“We need to provide that path to citizenship for those people who are here now — for 11 million people who have contributed to our economy, who are part of our community, who have paid their taxes and really need a form to legalize their status,” she said.
While acknowledging the need to consider the needs of “Dreamers,” or children who entered the United States as minors, Kirkmeyer said conditions on the southern border under the Biden administration are “just unfathomable to me.” The first move, she said, is securing the border.
“I can’t believe it. It’s appalling to me,” she said. “The humanitarian crisis that is happening at our border is also appalling to me. We need people coming through the front door — not through our backyard.”
The candidates squabbled over whether the state’s 2019 oil and gas reform bill was a good idea or not. Caraveo, who supported the measure in the Colorado House, called it “a moderate and common sense bill that gave control back to local communities.”
Kirkmeyer, an oil and gas proponent and a fourth-generation Coloradan who grew up on a dairy farm, countered that the bill was anything but moderate. She said from 2006 to 2019, the district added 100,000 people, drillers completed 15,000 new wells, and emissions still decreased 20%.
The election is Nov. 8 and ballots began landing in Coloradans’ mailboxes this week.