{"id":40143,"date":"2022-06-09T19:41:11","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T01:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-commissioner-forum-is-tonight-in-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:53:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:53:40","slug":"montezuma-county-commissioner-forum-is-tonight-in-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-commissioner-forum-is-tonight-in-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County commissioner forum is tonight in Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Emily
Emily Rice\/ The Journal<br><br>Emily Fish of Cortez drops off her ballot in the drive-through box behind the County Clerk\u2019s office during the November 2017 election.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The League of Women Voters will host a candidate forum for Montezuma County Commissioner District 1 candidates at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Empire Electric Calvin Denton Room, 801 North Broadway, Cortez.<\/p>\n

The Republican candidates are incumbent Jim Candelaria and challengers Tim Lanier and Elizabeth Tozer.<\/p>\n

\"Jim
Jim Candelaria<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tim
Tim Lanier<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Liz
Liz Tozer<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

They are on the Republican ballot for the June 28 primary election. The winner will go on the November general election ballot and likely will win the seat.<\/p>\n

No Democrats are running. Unaffiliated candidates could petition onto the November ballot, but none have said they would run.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Clerk Kim Percell said 18,398 ballots have been mailed.<\/p>\n

For the forum, 10 questions on local issues were presented to the three candidates in advance, said Karen Sheek, president of the Montezuma County League of Women Voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to give them time to think about the important issues facing this county,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Questions focus on the county\u2019s challenges, including wildfire mitigation, a proposed county sales tax, economic development, the fentanyl crisis, government collaboration and the labor shortage.<\/p>\n

Each candidate will have two minutes for an opening statement, then two minutes to answer each question. The candidates also will give closing statements.<\/p>\n

Afterward, members of the audience will be allowed to ask questions.<\/p>\n

Sheek said the forum is only for the contested District 1 commissioner seat.<\/p>\n

Republican Gerald Koppenhafer is running unopposed for the District 3 seat of the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners and will be on the November general ballot. He was appointed to replace the late Commissioner Joel Stevenson.<\/p>\n

Once elected, Koppenhafer will serve the remainder of Stevenson\u2019s term, which expires in 2024.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican candidates for District 1 will be asked about local issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,308,109,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-local-elections","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40143","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=40143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84559,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40143\/revisions\/84559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40143"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}