State Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, D-Glenwood Springs, will face Carbondale Republican Russ Andrews in the November election for the House District 57 seat.
Velasco is seeking a third term to represent the district, which includes the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. Andrews, a financial adviser and conservative radio host who serves as secretary of the Colorado Republican Party, recently joined the race.
Andrews hosted a launch party for his campaign on Tuesday, where he was joined by U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction. Andrews is no stranger to the campaign trail — he ran in the competitive six-way Republican primary for U.S. House District 3 in 2024. Hurd was victorious in his quest for the Republican nomination that year, and bested Democrat Adam Frisch in the November general election to punch his ticket to Washington, D.C.
At 68 years old, Andrews said he doesn’t need a new career. He’s running “for the love of the game.”
This year will mark Velasco’s third campaign in state House District 57, which she first won in 2022. The district includes the entire Roaring Fork Valley, parts of Eagle County, and most of the Colorado River Valley, extending almost to De Beque.
Velasco serves on the House Appropriations Committee, the Transportation, Housing and Local Affairs Committee, and the Energy and Environment Committee. She touts bills she passed to improve drinking water quality in mobile home parks, strengthen communities against wildfires, and provide protection against extreme temperatures for outdoor workers.
“I also like to elevate and educate organizations and my colleagues about what it means to stand up for our rural communities,” Velasco said.
Andrews said he has reviewed over 1,000 of Velasco’s votes, calling them “salami slices of socialism.” While he criticized her lack of fiscal conservatism, Andrews said Velasco hadn’t done enough to support the Colorado Department of Transportation.
“This state has gone off a cobalt-blue cliff, with the car thefts, high school graduation rates, homelessness and affordability. That’s what one-party rule has done, and it needs to be rolled back,” Andrews said.
Velasco said she has “a track record of supporting the infrastructure projects in our communities” and said she would not support funding efforts for transportation that take money away from education or health care programs.
Along with supporting rural highways, Andrews said his priorities as a state legislator would be protecting the Second Amendment, reining in the state budget, protecting Colorado’s water resources, ending wolf reintroduction, moving more funding from urban to rural hospitals and putting a limit on abortion related to the stage of pregnancy (Colorado has no term restrictions on abortion).
“We need to fix those roads. That helps everyone, and it helps everything run more smoothly,” Andrews said.
Meanwhile, Velasco said her priorities in office would be to increase tax revenue for the health care programs through progressive income taxes and make communities more resilient against the effects of climate change.
“A big piece I have worked on since I got re-elected is climate adaptation … protecting and keeping our forests healthy, maintaining a healthy community, a thriving economy, and open roads. So I definitely will continue all my work as an environmentalist,” Velasco said.
Andrews concedes he has an uphill battle, though he says it’s not an unwinnable one. HD57 leans Democrat, with Velasco winning her 2024 general election against Silt Republican Caleb Waller by more than 10 percentage points. Andrews said he aims to flip independents, mobilize more Republicans to the ballot box and reach more of the district’s Latino voters.
As a Republican Party official, Andrews said he has identified 11 races in which GOP candidates might flip blue seats in the state legislature, and HD57 is one. Democrats make up two-thirds of both the state House and Senate going into the 2026 elections.
Andrews said his door would always be open to anyone in the district struggling with state agencies or regulations.
“If you ever get elected and someone comes to you for help, you’re their last chance, their last hope. You need to bend over backwards to help them,” he said.