Voters in Colorado House District 57 in November will choose between two candidates with differing ideas about what the Western Slope region needs from the state Capitol.
Democratic incumbent Rep. Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs is seeking a third term and is facing Republican challenger Russ Andrews of Carbondale, a financial adviser and secretary of the Colorado Republican Party.
House District 57 encompasses Pitkin and Garfield counties as well as the Eagle County portion of the Roaring Fork Valley and Dotsero.
The seat has been won twice by Velasco since it was redrawn in 2021, but Andrews sees the district as one that Republicans could flip.
The two candidates have diverging views on nearly every major issue in the race, from state funding and crime to housing and immigration.
Ultimately, voters will decide between a Democratic incumbent focused on environmental justice, affordability and social safety net programs and a Republican challenger who wants to reduce state spending, increase road funding and take a harder line on crime.
Velasco's path to the Capitol
Velasco grew up in a small town in Guanajuato, Mexico, and came to Colorado with her family when she was a teenager, after waiting more than a decade for a U.S. visa. Her family lived in mobile-home parks and Velasco learned English in high school and later studied culinary arts at Colorado Mountain College.
“Being in politics definitely was not my dream; it was not in the plans,” Velasco said. “As someone who is an immigrant and was newly arrived to the mountain area, I didn't know how to apply to college, so Colorado Mountain College was really a lifeline where I was able to work and go to school at the same time.”
Velasco began her career working as a chef, but she later shifted to running her own Spanish-interpretation business in Glenwood Springs. This eventually led her to train as a wildland firefighter and work as a bilingual translator with national incident management teams, including during the 2020 Grizzly Creek fire.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Velasco worked with a variety of local organizations to provide medical information in Spanish. This experience pushed her toward politics, as she saw Latino residents, many of them essential workers, make up a disproportionate share of local cases.
“I just saw how long-existing inequalities were elevated during COVID,” Velasco said. “I jumped in because I believed that we needed change.”
In 2022, Velasco unseated Republican incumbent Perry Will of New Castle, becoming the first Latino lawmaker to represent the district, and in 2024 she won reelection against Republican Caleb Waller of Silt.
Velasco sees her representation as critical in a district where about 30% of residents identify as Latino or Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey estimates.
“I'm proud to be an immigrant,” Velasco said. “I believe that we are strong because of our diversity here in our communities and across the state and across the nation.”
Andrews makes a second run for office
Andrews and his wife moved to the Roaring Fork Valley from the Philadelphia area more than 30 years ago and raised three kids in the community.
“We came out here to visit, and finally, I said, ‘The heck with this! Let's just move,’” Andrews said. “It's just the most beautiful place on the planet, and we love it here.”
Andrews has a background in marine engineering and regularly appears on a weekly political radio show on KNFO, but he built his career as a financial adviser.
His wife, Lori, has end-stage ALS, and he said their experience with the health care system has shaped his views on expanding access to clinical trials and redirecting more government funding to rural hospitals.
In 2024, Andrews ran in the crowded GOP primary for the 3rd Congressional District, but he lost to U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd of Grand Junction, who went on to defeat Democrat Adam Frisch of Aspen in the general election. Andrews initially entered the race to challenge U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who later switched to the 4th District.
Andrews said Hurd later recruited him to run for state party secretary, a position he was elected to in March 2025 at the GOP’s reorganization meeting in Colorado Springs. He joined the state party’s leadership amid ongoing turmoil and sees his role as a uniting one.
“This half hates that half, and that half hates this half, and I'm in the middle trying to put them all together,” Andrews said. “I’m an outgoing guy who can work with other people and reach across the aisle.”
As part of his efforts to revive his party, Andrews looked for Republican candidates for the most flippable state House seats, then he decided to run in House District 57 himself.
“People ask me why I'm running for office, and I tell them I'm either running for office or I'm running away from Colorado,” Andrews said. “I put people together who need help with people who can render help, and that really motivates me.”
Velasco focuses on environmental justice and social safety net
Velasco said her work over the past four years has centered on environmental justice, protections for workers and expanding social safety nets for families.
She sponsored legislation to preserve mobile-home parks as affordable housing and helped pass a law that gives the state authority to test water quality in these communities and force park owners to fix issues.
“People in our communities are seeing water that smells like sewage, gives their babies a rash and stains their clothes,” Velasco said.
Velasco is against the proposed expansion of the Rocky Mountain Industrials limestone quarry above Glenwood Springs and supports the recent bipartisan effort to take federal action.
She also highlighted recent inquiries from developers interested in building an AI data center in Rifle as an example of the need for communities and the state to set up guardrails. If she's reelected, Velasco plans to work next session with fellow legislators on strict regulations for new data centers that would require corporations to pay state taxes and contribute to local economies.
“I don't believe that we need to give these major corporations a 30-year exemption in state taxes when they're coming to take our resources," she said. “We have seen moratoriums across the state from individual communities and we want to make sure that this new industry is not destroying our communities and taking all our resources.”
For his part, Andrews said he wants to see technological advances that would allow data centers to use less electricity and water.
When it comes to worker safety, Velasco this year passed a bill to track heat- and cold-related illnesses on job sites and require employers to plan how they will keep workers safe.
“Working people are the ones that are seeing [and] feeling the effects from climate change,” Velasco said. “People can die on the job because of extreme heat or because of extreme cold in indoor and outdoor types of jobs.”
But Andrews has dismissed the bill, as well as an earlier version that Velasco sponsored last year that would have required employers to provide shade and water to their staff at 80 degrees and rest breaks at 90 degrees. That bill died in committee.
“I knocked on doors this summer and it was 104 degrees out, and I'm 68 years old,” he said. “Human beings have been working at 80-degree temperatures for millions of years.”
Paying for these priorities is another matter. Velasco noted that the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) limits how much revenue the state can keep, even as federal cuts shift more costs onto Colorado.
“Something that has been very clear to me is that in Colorado, we are a blue state with a red state's budget, and this is because of TABOR," she said.
Velasco supports Amendment 87, a statewide ballot measure that would amend TABOR and create a new graduated income tax to support education, health care and child care.
Andrews opposes the measure over concerns that it could ultimately hurt the economy and lead to less tax revenue.
“Supporting 87, if it passes, will drive wealthier people out of the state,” Andrews said. “Maybe that's part of one of the goals, but wealthy people pay taxes.”
Under the measure, households and businesses earning less than $500,000 a year would generally pay less income tax, while those earning over that threshold would pay more, although some estimates put that dividing line closer to $1 million.
“We would be raising funds through actually getting a tax cut; 97% of us that make less than half a million dollars would pay a little bit less,” she said.
During a regional election forum in Rifle on Sept. 28, Velasco, who identifies as queer, also urged voters to reject two measures on this year’s ballot that would restrict sports and surgeries for transgender youths.
"When we think about gender-affirming care, that's just healthcare, and we all have the right to healthcare," she said at the debate. “It's the job of the state to serve everyone that lives in our communities, no matter who they love, no matter their immigration status, no matter our ZIP code or the color of our skin, so I will continue to stand strong with our LGBTQ community.”
Andrews prioritizes roads, water and crime
Andrews said his top issues are transportation, water and public safety — and he has criticized Velasco's record on each.
When it comes to transportation and roads, Andrews wants to significantly increase the Colorado Department of Transportation's budget, which he said has shrunk even as overall state spending has grown. He said some of this money could be allocated locally, including to projects he would support, such as expanding the number of lanes on Highway 82 to combat traffic congestion.
Andrews said he would pay for it partly by not replacing state employees who retire, which could free up funds that the state would otherwise spend on staff.
“Have you driven on I-70 lately? I mean, it's a mess, you know, and rural roads wherever I drive, they're just a mess,” Andrews said. “We need to fix bridges, we need to repave and maintain a lot of our roads. … If you have poor transportation corridors, you're going to have less economic growth.”
Velasco has voted for some legislation to support transportation infrastructure, but she also voted for bills in 2025 and 2026 that reduced resources for the State Highway Fund, including a bipartisan measure last year that cut about $114 million over two years to help close a $1.2 billion budget shortfall.
“Our roads deserve investment, but it is important to protect the services that Coloradans rely on for their most basic needs,” Velasco said in an email statement Wednesday.
On water, Andrews wants the state to build new reservoirs to keep more water in Colorado and says Western Slope water should stay on the Western Slope.
“As far as I'm concerned, not another drop of water needs to go to the Front Range,” he said. “I'm shocked when I'm on the Front Range, and people have green grass in their yards — that shouldn't be the case.”
On energy, Andrews supports expanding natural gas production until small nuclear reactors become more widespread. He criticized Velasco for voting against classifying nuclear power as clean energy.
“Nuclear energy, I think, is the future of energy for the world, but certainly for our country,” Andrews said.
Andrews sees public safety as his sharpest contrast with Velasco and has repeatedly called her weak on crime. He highlighted that Velasco was the only state lawmaker to vote no on a bipartisan bill this year that increased minimum sentences for crimes involving the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
“My opponent has a horrible track record of protecting criminals from our justice system, and we need to roll back some of that,” Andrews said. “So that's another thing that's kind of forced me to run.”
In her Oct. 7 email, Velasco said she opposed the bill because it limited judges' discretion in sentencing and ignored an opportunity to connect victims with “support services or monetary restitution.” She was also among some Democrats who opposed a 2023 law making indecent exposure in view of a child a felony, saying it could be “misused as a way to harass people experiencing a mental health crisis, homeless people without access to a restroom and transgender folks who use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.”
Different views on housing and immigration enforcement
Although both candidates agree that housing is one of the region's most pressing concerns, their proposed strategies further highlight their divergent views on the state's role in solving this challenge.
“When I ran for Congress,” Andrews said, “I sat down with mayor after mayor after mayor, county commissioner after county commissioner, and the first word out of 99 out of 100 of their mouths would be ‘housing.’”
To tackle the issue, Velasco wants to repeal Colorado's ban on rent control so local governments can create their own rent-stabilization programs. She also wants to keep passing protections for mobile-home park residents, including limits on rent hikes after a park is sold.
“I continue to see the wealth inequality in our district, which is one of the widest in the nation,” Velasco said. “I believe that when we put our most vulnerable first, we all win.”
Andrews said he would loosen state building regulations and encourage higher density with larger apartment developments, mostly deed-restricted for local workers.
“A large portion of the cost of building a new house in this state is due to regulations,” Andrews said. “But not all 8.1 billion people on the planet can live in the Roaring Fork Valley.”
He also blamed rising housing costs partly on immigration under former President Joe Biden, claiming that an increase in people coming to Colorado put a strain on the state’s lower-income housing stock. Nationally, economists have disagreed on how much the recent immigration surge affected housing prices, which had already been rising sharply before Biden took office due to a range of other factors.
When it comes to local law enforcement’s ability to assist with federal immigration efforts, Andrews argued that the state should not hinder U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting people who have been arrested or charged with a crime.
“I really think we should be focused more on criminals,” he said. “If they’re a felon, they need to be rounded up and sent home.”
Andrews said people who have been living in Colorado without legal status for a long time and haven’t committed a crime should be able to stay.
“I do think that there should be a path to residency for somebody that's been here for 15, 20 years, they've raised their family, they've paid their taxes, they've obeyed our laws, even if they came here illegally,” he said. “That way, they can stop looking over their shoulder, hoping that ICE doesn't come and grab them.”
This year, Velasco sponsored a bill, signed into law in June, that requires regular health and safety inspections of detention facilities, and in a rare point of agreement, Andrews also said he had no objection to this kind of legislation.
“Go and inspect it all you want — I don't believe people should be treated inhumanely at all,” Andrews said.
State laws passed in recent years also limit local police’s ability to assist federal agents with civil immigration arrests, unless they have a criminal warrant.
Velasco helped strengthen this legislation last year by further limiting the sharing of immigration status data and barring local law enforcement from honoring ICE detainer requests without a judicial warrant. She also wants to make it more difficult for ICE agents to make arrests inside local jails.
“Federal immigration authorities already can cooperate with local law enforcement on criminal activity, and they will continue to do that," Velasco said. “But it's important to me that people are safe to go to work, to pick up their kids from school, to go to their doctor's appointment, to pay for their speeding ticket in court and make it home safe — that is also public safety.”
A Democratic-leaning district, two strategies
The contrasts between the two candidates will play out in a district that has shifted significantly in Democrats’ favor in recent years. Before the latest redistricting in 2021, House District 57 was a Republican-leaning district that covered Garfield, Moffat and Rio Blanco counties.
The new map swapped Moffat and Rio Blanco for Pitkin County and part of Eagle County, and the state's nonpartisan redistricting commission projected that the district would lean Democrat by nearly 16 percentage points.
Velasco won by about 8 points, 54% to 46%, in 2022 — and by just over 5,000 votes, or about 12 points, in 2024. That's a clear edge, but a smaller one than the commission projected.
According to the state’s voter registration statistics for September, about 54% of the district's active voters are unaffiliated, 23% are Democrats and 20% are Republicans.
With more than half of the district's voters unaffiliated, both campaigns are competing for independents, and Andrews is betting that his ground game will help close the gap.
Andrews said his campaign will continue door-knocking until Election Day, and he has been attending local parades and running ads on Spanish-language radio stations.
“It’s the little things like the yard signs; we have 300 in the ground right now,” Andrews said. “We have banners everywhere, we have volunteers working to help and I'm doing every interview.”
Velasco, who knocked on doors across the district during her first campaign, said she is spending more of this race campaigning statewide for other candidates and ballot measures such as Amendment 87. She said her record over the past four years has built trust with local voters.
“These last four years have really allowed me to create good relationships with local residents and elected officials,” Velasco said. “I think people see the work I’m doing in our communities and have felt a lot of support.”
As of Oct. 8, Velasco had outraised her opponent with $44,660 in total campaign contributions, compared to Andrews’ $18,875, according to state campaign finance filings.
The outcome of the race will decide how a diverse district shaped by a mix of resort wealth, rural agriculture and energy economies, and a large immigrant workforce is represented at the Capitol as lawmakers face another budget shortfall next year.
Ballots for the Nov. 3 general election must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Drop-box and vote-center locations are listed on the Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle county clerk-and-recorder websites.
