{"id":62218,"date":"2018-11-07T07:04:45","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T14:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mclachlan-bests-independent-challenger-in-state-house-race\/"},"modified":"2018-11-07T14:04:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T14:04:45","slug":"mclachlan-bests-independent-challenger-in-state-house-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mclachlan-bests-independent-challenger-in-state-house-race\/","title":{"rendered":"McLachlan bests independent challenger in state House race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Barbara
Barbara McLachlan, left, celebrates with her daughter, Kate McLachlan, on Tuesday night at the Strater Hotel, where Democrats held a watch party.<\/span>Patrick Armijo\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

State Rep. Barbara McLachlan, D-Durango, cruised to victory in House District 59 with 56 percent of voters favoring her and 44 percent backing independent challenger Paul Jones of Gunnison, according to unofficial results from the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

In La Plata County<\/a>, 59 percent of voters supported McLachlan and 41 percent backed Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate District 59 voters putting their trust in me for another two years,\u201d McLachlan said Tuesday night at the La Plata County Democrats victory party at the Strater Hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll continue to work across the aisle and for Southwest Colorado, and I\u2019ll continue listening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Results in District 59 reported by the Secretary of State\u2019s election website<\/a> came from all the district\u2019s counties \u2013 La Plata, Archuleta, San Juan, Ouray, Hinsdale and Gunnison.<\/p>\n

McLachlan said the race was unusual as she faced an independent rather than a Republican.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very different race, because I didn\u2019t know what the voters were doing, and I had $300,000 spent against me, not from Paul Jones, but from Unite Colorado,\u201d McLachlan said of the independent expenditure committee that backed a slate of five independents running for the General Assembly across the state.<\/p>\n\n

McLachlan said as other independent candidates\u2019 chances across the state dimmed, Unite Colorado focused on her race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t keep up with that, so I just went door-to-door talking to voters. That\u2019s how you convince voters anyway,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A good night for Colorado Democrats talking control of the state Senate and electing Jared Polis as the next governor, McLachlan said, wouldn\u2019t change her efforts to work across the aisle in Denver.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to me to have Republican support on all my bills, because that\u2019s my district, and it\u2019s important to me to represent my district,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In an era of hyper bipartisanship, old-fashioned comity and working across the aisle took center stage in the campaign in which McLachlan, a retired teacher, faced Jones, a retired aquatic biologist.<\/p>\n

The unusual campaign came about after a failure of the Republicans to nominate a challenger to McLachlan.<\/p>\n

McLachlan, who retired from Durango School District 9-R, touted her strong bipartisan relationship with state Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, and state Rep. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose, in representing Southwest Colorado and fighting proposals that would hurt the largely rural 59th House District.<\/p>\n

She credits her 20 years as a teacher with making her a better listener as a legislator.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not a good listener, you\u2019re not going to be a very good teacher,\u201d she told The Durango Herald last month.<\/p>\n

But for Jones, bipartisan good will was not good enough. He chose to run as an independent looking for a new political era in which politicians move beyond party labels.<\/p>\n

\"Jones\"
Jones<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Jones said independents have a broader ability to reach consensus and broker deals among conflicted stakeholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, politics is divided into teams, and when you\u2019re a team player, it means you\u2019re focused on the team\u2019s ideals, whether Democrat or Republican. But we need to be willing to be able to sit down with anyone to craft solutions,\u201d Jones told the Herald last month. \u201cWhen you\u2019re on a team, you\u2019ve got a coach, and when you don\u2019t do what the coach says, you get benched.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Committee to Elect Barbara McLachlan has raised $108,710 for the current campaign and has spent $108,268, according to the latest campaign-finance documents filed Oct. 29. McLachlan\u2019s candidate committee listed $22,219 cash on hand.<\/p>\n

Jones for Colorado raised a total of $32,093 and spent $21,171. His campaign had $10,922 cash on hand as of Oct. 29.<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

56 percent of voters back incumbent in district-wide returns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[265,1722],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-62218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-politics","tag-regional-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62218","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=62218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62218"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=62218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}