<\/p>\n
Democratic State Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush met with voters Friday afternoon at the Durango Public Library. The Steamboat Springs legislator addressed an eager crowd of more than 50 people, all of whom were in sync with her political platform.<\/p>\n
Bush announced Thursday that she will challenge U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, for Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District seat in the 2018 congressional race.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a representative who knows how to bring people together, rather than divide them. I\u2019m not in this for my ego. I am here to work for the people,\u201d Bush said.<\/p>\n
She said that much of her policy is focused on energy efficiency, renewables and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cInfrastructure is crucial. As many of us know, in many areas in the Western Slope, there is no broadband, and we need it for education and businesses. Agriculture uses the internet more than it ever has,\u201d Bush said.<\/p>\n
She stressed the importance of working together and listening to one another to find solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look at the evidence and not the ideology of left or right when I vote,\u201d Bush said.<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District is predominately rural and includes 29 counties over 54,000 square miles.<\/p>\n
An outspoken environmentalist, Bush said one of her goals is to protect wildlife, water and public lands.<\/p>\n
Many attendees voiced concern about health care, renewable energy, immigration and climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change is critical to the planet and to our country, but especially critical to our House district. Our lives here depend on snow and snow melt. \u2026 This in turn feeds into catastrophic wildfires,\u201d Bush said in response. \u201cIt is critical for us to have a policy as soon as we can. Many industrialized countries have adopted a carbon tax in recent years.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also addressed women\u2019s rights, calling herself a feminist and acknowledging the struggles women face daily, including harassment and a fight for equal pay in the workplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am your employee,\u201d she said to the applauding crowd.<\/p>\n
Last year, Tipton won re-election by about 15 percentage points in a race against former state senator Gail Schwartz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Steamboat state legislator running for U.S. House seat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69211","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=69211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69211"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}