State GOP chair visits NE region
Has visited 40 counties in four months in office to discuss pressing issues of the state
It would be virtually impossible to match the travel regimen of Kristi Burton Brown.
The Colorado Republican Party chairwoman had pledged to visit every county in Colorado within her first year. She was elected by party leadership March 27 and Monday concluded her fourth month in office with visits to four Northeast Colorado counties. She has now visited 40 Colorado counties since her election and many of them several times.
“I think it is a reminder of the diversity we have in
Colorado,” Burton Brown said. “We’re not just an Interstate-25 corridor state.”
She visited Sterling in Logan County, followed by stops in Julesburg in Sedgwick County, Holyoke in Phillips County and concluded her visit Monday to Northeast Colorado with an evening stop in Morgan County.
“We’re meeting with our Republican county chairs, party officers and some elected officials about the main issues facing their counties,” Burton Brown said.
The most recurring theme she has heard?
“Democrat policies of our state are pricing people out of Colorado,” Burton Brown said. “Some think inflation and cost of living is just an urban issue, but it is not.”
From community to community, she has heard concerns with affordable housing for job seekers or those wishing to return home, to the costs agricultural pro
ducers experience, she says, all caused by “elistist policies passed by people who have never lived in rural Colorado.”
A focus of Burton Brown’s visits with Republican officials in each county has been discussion as to “making sure Boulder doesn’t run Colorado anymore.”
Discussion as she has visited counties throughout the state has also included the election of local officials – such as city councils and school boards.
“Everyone says these are non-partisan positions, but we know they actually are partisan,” Burton Brown said. “They are influenced by their own political leanings.”
So, she has encouraged conservatives in all areas of the state to run for these positions.
“There’s every reason for Republicans to run for those offices and support candidates – to run their cities and schools responsibly,” Burton Brown said.
She’s seen a growing interest in school board seats through the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“A lot of parents are jumping in to run,” she said. “I think they began to see what their children are being taught. A lot of parents don’t agree with what is happening in their school districts. They have taken it upon themselves to run for these seats.”
Another concern in rural counties throughout Colorado, Burton Brown says, is the Bureau of Land Management. She opposes any effort to move the BLM headquarters back to Washington, D.C., and the effort to place Tracy StoneManning as its director, a person she has described as an eco-terrorist.
“I believe that Colorado ranchers, loggers, farmers and outdoors enthusiasts all deserve a leader at the BLM who isn’t an extremist, and who hasn’t collaborated with eco-terrorists to injure and maim their coworkers,” Burton Brown said in a statement last week.
She’s calling on U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Denver, and U.S. Sen. John Hickennews looper, D-Denver, to oppose both the move of the BLM and the proposed director.
“It is wrong to pull BLM out of a western state.
BLM lands are 99 percent in the West,” Burton
Brown said. “Having it here in Colorado gives far better representation. It’s a partisan move, not representative of the west, to move it. absolutely should oppose this move, being from a western state like Colorado. At the least, opposing Tracy Stone-Manning would be a start.”
She credits the long-term work of former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, for locating the BLM headquarters in Grand Junction just two years ago.