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Republican Caleb Waller of Silt has announced he’ll be running against incumbent Democrat Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs in the House District 57 election this November.
The state house district encompasses Pitkin and Garfield counties as well as a portion of Eagle County in the Roaring Fork Valley and Dotsero.
The Colorado Republican Party encouraged Waller to run for the position after State Sen. Perry Will unseated him on the GOP primary ballot in the Garfield County Commissioner race during the Republican assembly on March 23.
“I'm a fast moving guy,” Waller said, “and so when I see an opportunity to be plugged into the community and serve, I'm the first to jump to my feet and say, ‘Let's go for it.’”
The 33-year-old works in real estate and hospitality, and lives in Silt with his wife and seven kids.
If elected as a state lawmaker in November, Waller said he’ll be guided by the idea of “freedom over force” — and would mostly leave issues like affordable housing up to local governments.
“So we empower the residents of the Western Slope to have the freedom and not be concerned about the legislative branch passing laws that are gonna infringe upon their personal freedoms and private property rights,” Waller said.
Waller is against certain decisions he sees as infringing on these rights, like the state reintroducing wolves, but respects that it was approved by Colorado voters.
“When you get elected, there's a handbook that's given to you,” he said. “The first chapter in that book is professionalism and decorum … and the second emphasizes the fact that you represent everyone in your district, not just those who voted for you.”
Waller was also a supporter of the conservative American Birthright curriculum that was proposed at the Garfield Re-2 School District, but he says issues like that and other topics of debate, such as restricting certain books at libraries, should be left up to local officials.
Waller was in attendance at many of the recent meetings over book restriction at the Garfield County Libraries, and he said there is a lesson to be learned, even at the state level, about the need for civil dialogue.
“I believe the library situation could’ve been brought about in a civil manner to where there was opportunity for there to be some discourse like, 'Hey, how can we recognize that the library needs to be a free place where we're not going to ban any books, but at the same time, we want to make sure there's age appropriate content being presented to kids?’” he said. “But for some reason, people on both sides are more interested in fighting about issues than they are actually coming to the table with solutions.”
Incumbent Democrat Elizabeth Velasco also believes in the value of bridging political divides and passing bipartisan legislation, but she said there are some lines she won’t cross.
“You know, our freedoms are at stake, our access to reproductive rights, even our access to books, our access to clean air and clean water,” Velasco said. “So I want to work with everyone that wants to get things done, but [I] will not do that by compromising our community.”
Velasco came to Colorado from Mexico with her family when she was 15 years old. In 2022, she unseated incumbent Republican Perry Will and was elected as the first Latine lawmaker to represent House District 57.
“I do feel like my campaign brought a lot of resources to the district and we flipped the seat from Republican to Democrat,” she said. “I am not looking to have a nasty campaign, but I will elevate the differences and continue to elevate the good work that I've done.”
Velasco hopes to continue passing laws that benefit a diversity of communities across the Western Slope and the state by improving things like language access, wildfire resiliency, and water quality at mobile home parks.
“I feel like since my first year, I was not afraid to do the big things, you know, and legislate with my values,” Velasco said. “And I continue to not shy away from the hard things and have been very proud of that as a new legislator.”
Some of the bills Velasco has backed at the state House this session include legislation to improve safety along I-70 and protect cultural and religious expression at school graduations — as well as a bill that would create infrastructure for emergency grants to support new immigrants arriving in Colorado. These issues will continue to be top priorities for the legislator, if she is reelected.
As the race heats up in the coming months, Waller and Velasco both said they look forward to participating in candidate debates and hearing from voters about the issues that matter most to them.
