My story begins with access to rural health care. My parents lived in Sterling, Colorado, where my dad was the City Attorney, and my mom was a childcare provider. My mom needed emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy. It saved her life and made mine possible the next year.
We ultimately moved to be closer to care. I grew up in Highlands Ranch, in Douglas County, when there were wild horses. My parents were conservatives and taught me the importance of family, community, and serving others. I attended Douglas County public schools and earned a full academic scholarship to Johns Hopkins.
I am a wordsmith by trade. At the AFL-CIO, representing working people in every industry, I worked to help pass historic infrastructure and American energy legislation. Most recently, at the US National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, I worked for a Trump nominee on key workforce legislation that is re-shoring American manufacturing and expanding the map of American innovation.
Then, last fall, my mom called to tell me that she did not have long to live. She’d been caring for my dad, who had been battling cancer. With both parents facing terminal illnesses, I returned home to Highlands Ranch to provide end-of-life care for both my parents.
My dad’s union pension covered his treatment. Medicare provided both of my parents the care they needed and gave us precious time together in the comfort of our home. It was thanks to my own union, AFGE 3403, that I was able to drop everything to take care of my parents.
I’m running for the care and dignity of families in my hometown.
Before he died, my dad told me to run. That meant a lot, especially from a guy who voted Republican his entire life.
Lauren Boebert voted against lowering prescription drug costs, including the ones that extended my dad’s life, and I can’t let that stand.
Systems of support and care are missing, and economic hardship on middle-class families are mounting. We need new opportunities to meet people where they are. We need paths into the middle class and ladders up everywhere, and not always requiring a four-year degree.
With expertise navigating Washington and intimate knowledge of our district's needs, I promise you will be heard in Congress. As we rise to local challenges, from legislation I helped shape, I will work to bring home investments for union jobs, apprenticeships, workforce training, public education, and start-ups. I will fight with my whole heart to protect and expand access to reproductive and maternal care and protect Social Security and Medicaid.
Together, we can sustain our democracy and build a community that works for all of us.