El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams, the Republican candidate, was brought up on a zoo in the hills of Virginia. His father was the facilities manager and a civil engineer who oversaw the 3,000-acre facility in the Shenandoah Valley.<\/p>\n
Williams, 51, described his roots as humble.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lived along with the third-largest herd of P\u00e8re David\u2019s deer in the world, and European bison,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
University of Colorado Regent for Congressional District 2, Joe Neguse, is a first-generation American whose parents fled a war-torn country in east Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey taught us at a very early age how important it is not to take for granted the sacred freedoms that we have in the United States of America that don\u2019t exist in a lot of places in the world, and it begins with a right to vote,\u201d 30-year-old Neguse, a Democrat, recently told The Durango Herald.<\/p>\n
Other candidates running are Amanda Campbell, American Constitution Party, and David Schambach, Libertarian.<\/p>\n
The secretary of state is responsible for overseeing elections and business filings, among other administrative areas.<\/p>\n
The \u2018Honey Badger\u2019 factor<\/p>\n
Whoever wins the election will replace Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Republican who gained a reputation as a partisan. Gessler passed on re-election this year for a failed run at governor.<\/p>\n
For Williams, separating himself from Gessler is something Democrats don\u2019t want him to succeed at. But Williams said he doesn\u2019t have to stretch too far.<\/p>\n
He laughed that in 2012, Gessler\u2019s office sued his office because Williams canceled primaries that were uncontested.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that he already has relationships with clerks, having reached out to La Plata County Clerk & Recorder Tiffany Lee Parker, a Republican, who he expects to have a good working relationship with, if elected.<\/p>\n
Contention over reform<\/p>\n
But Neguse believes Williams and Gessler have similar agendas.<\/p>\n
He said that Williams and Gessler opposed House Bill 1303 in 2013 that expanded voter registration through Election Day and required clerks to mail ballots to all voters. Democrats touted the measure as an opportunity to expand voter rolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was proud to support those measures,\u201d said Neguse, pointing out that only a handful of clerks opposed the reforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a few folks who opposed it, one was our current secretary, and the other was my Republican opponent, who stood side by side in opposing those reforms,\u201d Neguse said.<\/p>\n
Williams said he opposed HB 1303 because it limited local control.<\/p>\n
\u201c1303 does not give local elected officials the ability to make adjustments based on actual voter desires in their community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Is voter ID necessary?<\/p>\n
Another distinction between Neguse and Williams is over photo identification in order to vote. Williams believes it is necessary to curb fraud, but Neguse just doesn\u2019t see a problem, noting only isolated incidents.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people in Colorado vote honestly, but I think almost all people in Colorado want those elections run honestly, and that means you have to have protections to ensure it is a fair election and it\u2019s an honest election,\u201d Williams said of voter ID. \u201cIt\u2019s a safeguard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neguse, however, worries about disenfranchising certain voting blocs with voter-ID laws, including the elderly and indigent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m far more concerned with the hundreds of thousands of Coloradans in our state who are eligible to vote who aren\u2019t doing so \u2026\u201d Neguse said. \u201cI\u2019d like to work with the county clerks and other stakeholders to figure out ways we break down barriers to the ballot box so that we can encourage and empower those folks to ultimately participate in our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judging experience<\/p>\n
Williams said Neguse lacks the experience to administer elections. Neguse\u2019s background is in law and politics.<\/p>\n
Williams, also an attorney, has administered several elections, including a historic recall election in 2013. He is also a certified elections registration administrator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the only candidate running who has actually run elections, and not just for Republicans in El Paso County, but Democrats in the San Luis Valley chose me to run their election because they trusted me, and I did it right,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
But Neguse said he is right for the job because he does not have a long experience in party politics. Williams once served as the chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party. Neguse said the secretary of state should be nonpartisan and apolitical.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, I believe my background speaks to my ability to work on a bipartisan basis with others to come up with ways in which we can make it easier and more accessible for citizens to participate,\u201d Neguse said. \u201cThat is the key difference between me and my opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Political affiliation: Republican
\n Key issues: Experience administering elections, history of collaborative work, understanding of the importance of elections
\n Occupation: El Paso County clerk and recorder, certified elections\/registration administrator, attorney
\n Residence: Colorado Springs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Political affiliation: Democrat
\n Key issues: Increase voting accessibility, empowering people to vote and run their businesses, run a bipartisan secretary of state\u2019s office
\n Occupation: Attorney
\n Residence: Broomfield<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams, the Republican candidate, was brought up on a zoo in the hills of Virginia. His father was the facilities manager and a civil engineer who oversaw the 3,000-acre facility in the Shenandoah Valley. Williams, 51, described his roots as humble. \u201cWe lived along with the third-largest herd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,308],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-117361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-local-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117361"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=117361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}