Could Auon’tai Anderson Get Schooled in the House District 8 Race?

Auon’tai Anderson, vice president of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education, made headlines with his June 12 announcement that he was dropping his at-large boardmember re-election bid in favor of running for Colorado House District 8. That’s the seat now occupied by State Representative Leslie Herod, the recent mayoral candidate who’s term-limited.

But while the HD8 election isn’t until November 2024, the field is already crowded. Four other candidates have already filed paperwork for the race with the Colorado Secretary of State. Anderson feels confident about his chances, though. “People know my name in northeast Denver,” he says.

And how: The candidate has attracted plenty of publicity during his short political career, which began even before he was elected to the school board in 2021, when he was 21 years old. Still, his competitors have over a year to catch up. Here’s a look at three of them:

Lindsay Gilchrist

A Denver native currently living in Park Hill with her wife and three kids, Lindsay Gilchrist happened to announce her campaign for HD8 on the same day that Auon’tai Anderson revealed he was running. She’d always planned to announce around June 12, Gilchrist notes, “so this was not in response.”

Gilchrist has deep roots in HD8. She lives “just a block away from where my dad grew up, and my kids actually attend elementary school where my dad attended decades ago,” she says. And like her aunt, uncle and grandmother, she went to East High School.

“I feel really privileged to be running and representing HD8,” she says. “I’m excited about this community and HD8 in particular.”

Gilchrist wants to use public policy to “change people’s lives on a grand scale,” she says. “I strongly believe government is a place where we can come together and address some of our greatest challenges. … I have worked in and alongside government for my whole career, and have really enjoyed it as an opportunity to help people and improve people’s lives.”

After graduating from college, Gilchrist spent time in Eswatini – a country in southern Africa, though when she was there it was called Swaziland – out of a desire to see “firsthand what it looked like to implement U.S. [public health and public policy] programs abroad,” she recalls. After that, she got a job as a congressional aide in Senator Ted Kennedy’s office, where she worked until he passed away. “That was just an incredible opportunity to see firsthand what it looks like to actually get things done and to pass legislation…just a really unique opportunity that informs my work still today,” she says.

Gilchrist also worked with the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health and later got a master’s degree in public policy from UCLA. Since 2012, she has worked as the founder of her own company, which provides policy expertise and advocacy strategies to individuals, foundations and nonprofits.

She describes the people and organizations she works with as having their “finger on the pulse of the communities that they’re serving. They understand what programs are working and what aren’t.” So her role, she explains, is to advise her clients on how to navigate the world of policy and government to make their ideas a reality. She hopes to essentially continue doing this as a state representative, using her power as a politician to advance policies that people doing work on the ground have proposed.

“I think in general we are better served in government when we’re talking to people who are living that experience,” Gilchrist says.

Gilchrist says she also wants to make progress on criminal justice reform, safeguarding the rights of trans people and the LGBTQ community, furthering gun control measures and improving/ensuring child welfare in the foster system.

Herod “has done an amazing job as a legislator,” Gilchrest says, adding that she’s looking forward to connecting with her opponents in the HD8 race.

Victor Bencomo

Victor Bencomo describes himself as “a combat Navy veteran, proud Latino and Central Park resident who has served this country for 22 years.” He announced his campaign in December; his main goal in the House would be passing gun-control legislation.

Bencomo was born in California, then lived in Italy from the age of two to ten while his father was in the Air Force. Other than his own time in the military, he has lived in Colorado for the forty years since, including the past 22 in HD8. He has three kids who all grew up in Central Park.

“Being a veteran with 22 years of service, being trained on these weapons systems, being a gun owner myself, having ranchers as family in Nebraska, being a hunter [who believes] in the Second Amendment, I believe I bring a different perspective and a unique approach to gun violence and gun violence prevention,” says Bencomo. “To be openly frank, I plan on passing an assault weapons ban in the State of Colorado.”

After retiring from the Navy in 2013, Bencomo recalls, he was disillusioned by the number of veterans using firearms to commit suicide and the fact that more American civilians were dying from gun violence than soldiers had in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Working with Giffords – a movement started by former congresswoman Gabbie Giffords that aims to end gun violence in America – he founded Colorado Gun Owners for Safety. “We’ve now expanded this one little small chapter that started in Colorado to over thirteen chapters across the United States with 50,000 members,” he says.

Bencomo is currently the president of the Colorado chapter of Gun Owners for Safety. He does community outreach to help grow the group, organizes gun-safety education workshops and lobbies for gun-control legislation. He has been doing gun-control advocacy for seven years.

“I believe that weapons of war do not have a place in a civilian capacity, and we’ve proven time after time that we are not responsible enough to be able to handle those types of firearms in public,” says Bencomo.

In the most recent session of the Colorado Legislature, lawmakers passed four gun-control bills, and also considered a fifth that would have banned assault weapons; it failed in the House Judiciary committee on April 19.

“I think there were a lot of things around that bill that unfortunately didn’t really have the backing that was needed,” says Bencomo. “It came in toward the end of the session. There was some confusion on if it was going to actually be an assault weapons ban or if it was going to be a brace ban – there was a lot of confusion around there.”

Bencomo thinks that Colorado has the political appetite to approve an assault weapons ban, but the bill needs to be “comprehensive and viable for Colorado.”

Other areas he hopes to address as a legislator include the mental health and opioid epidemics, and education issues such as school safety, education funding and paying teachers a living wage.

“My community, my family, my friends, House District 8 [and] Coloradans deserve a legislator that has life experiences, that is mature, that is willing to bring statesmanship to the legislature and is ready to work day one on the hard issues that Coloradans are dealing with,” he says, with a clear reference to Anderson. “Without any type of controversy or political grandstanding.”

Herod leaving the legislature “is a major loss for us in House District 8,” he concludes.

Sharron Pettiford

The newest Colorado resident among the candidates, Sharron Pettiford came to Denver from Missouri four years ago. In 2018, she worked with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) to overturn a right-to-work law passed by Missouri’s legislature a year earlier that would have banned compulsory union fees.

She then moved to the Mile High City to work for the American Federation of Teachers and, later, Colorado Wins, a state employees’ union. In 2022, she helped Colorado Wins secure an across-the-board 3 percent wage increase for union members, among other things.

Pettiford calls advocating for working families “the core of what I do.”

She’s also been involved in organizing for the Democratic Party. In her native Oklahoma, she was the vice chair of her county party. Here in Denver, she’s a precinct organizer for the Democrats in HD8. Pettiford is president of the Colorado chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists as well, and says she has a background in “the court system, child welfare and mental health.”

Although she’s newer to Denver than the other candidates, that doesn’t make her less committed to the district. “I love the fact that when I came here, I was able to put down roots,” Pettiford says. “This is a place that I want to stay. Colorado is the way I want to live my life.”

She is running for the HD8 position because “we need a working-families champion,” Pettiford explains. While working people have plenty of sympathetic allies in the legislature, she says, none are as committed as she is. Beyond championing workers’ rights, Pettiford says she will make creating “housing accessibility” a top priority.

Pettiford describes her opponents as her “neighbors,” and says she looks forward to meeting with all of them.

“I appreciate the groundwork and monumental change Representative Herod has laid as a queer woman of color. She has been grace under fire,” Pettiford says. “I have had the opportunity to interact with Leslie for several terms now on historic legislation. I have found her to be accountable and open to change. I have watched her turn the corner with working families and become more authentic with her advocacy. I am confident the best is yet to come for her and our district.”

And ultimately, she concludes, “I’m running because I’m the right voice for House District 8.”

A fourth candidate for HD8, Christi Devoe, did not respond to an interview request.