The Sandoval campaign has been trending in this direction. She's the top fundraiser in the field and has lately racked up victories at caucuses in Mesa, La Plata, Otero, Garfield, Ouray, Montrose and Delta counties. Yet defeating Boebert in the November 2022 election won't be easy. After all, redrawn district lines knocked out her best-known declared opponent, state senator Kerry Donovan, late last year, and the new-look CD3 is more Republican than the one that preceded it. Still, Sandoval has a plan to beat the odds and best Boebert, too — by appealing to people who may not always vote and are widely ignored by election-seekers.
A longtime community organizer, Sandoval noted during an interview with Westword last week that "40 percent of the district is unaffiliated," rather than identifying themselves as either Republicans or Democrats, "and they're going to be the key. I'm going to places like the Westside Mobile Home Park in Durango, where the people there told me I was the first candidate to ever come out to talk to them. And that's what it's going to take — for me to go to places where candidates and politicians don't normally go and meet those people where they are."
Turns out this approach is the same one Boebert credited after she outdistanced incumbent Congressman Scott Tipton in the 2020 Republican primary. In an interview with Westword that October, Boebert said that it “was very interesting when we went back and looked at the people who voted for me. When a political party targets voters with messaging, they give voters a number rating from zero to four — and the threes and fours are the people who usually show up to vote, so they usually target them. If they have enough resources and time and it will make a big enough difference, they might try getting those number-two voters, but usually not the zeroes and ones. But in my primary, the top voters were the zeroes and the ones — the people political parties never reach out to. I think that speaks volumes about what’s going to happen in November. People who haven’t shown up before are showing up because they understand if we remain silent, we lose by default.”
Sandoval (full name Sol Sandoval Tafoya) stressed, "I don't have any personal wealth. I can't say, 'Here's $100,000 for this.' I'm still struggling to pay my student debt" accrued while earning a degree from Colorado State University Pueblo. But through the end of 2021, according to federal campaign-finance figures shared by Ballotpedia, she'd collected $535,121, over $200,000 more than her closest rival, Colin Wilhelm. And while the next batch of figures won't be made public until later this month, she said, "we're past $700,000 and getting closer to a million. So we've had tons of support — but one of the proudest things I can share is that my average contribution is $27. This is a real grassroots campaign."
The top issues for Sandoval include protecting public lands, lowering education costs and forgiving student loans, attracting investment and supporting small businesses, protecting the state from wildfires, improving the affordability of health care, and fixing what she considers to be a broken immigration system — values that reflect the decade she spent as a social worker with the Pueblo County Department of Social Services. "I've listened to stories from individuals who aren't able to pay for their rent or their mortgage, and elderly people not able to live off their fixed incomes, and those are the people I'm running to help," she maintained. "I'm a candidate who's in it for valid reasons, not because she's trying to get likes on Twitter."
Indeed, Sandoval resisted the urge to blast Boebert for every divisive tweet, like the one in which she asserted that people should have to wait until age 21 before declaring their sexual identity. Instead, she focused on legislation: "Lauren Boebert's been super-busy voting down things. She voted no on I-70 improvements. She voted no on the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization. She opposes LGBTQ legislation," including the Equality Act, which she dubbed the "supremacy of gays and lesbians and transvestites."
Nonetheless, Boebert remains popular with CD3's Republican base, which has expanded thanks to redrawn district lines. That's why Sandoval hopes to create a coalition of Democrats, progressives and folks who have been left out of the political process. "Redistricting has included many historic Latino counties in the San Luis Valley, and as a Spanish speaker, I'll be able to communicate with them," she allowed. "All of my messaging is bilingual, and there are 180,000 Latinos in the district. So not only do we have the 40 percent of people who are unaffiliated, but we have all these naturalized Spanish speakers who are going to be excited when they see someone who's actually fighting for the working class, and who understands issues that impact everyday people."
Going into last night's assembly, the other Democrats in the fight were Wilhelm, Donald Valdez, Debby Burnett, Kellie Rhodes, Root Routledge, former Westword staff writer Scott Yates, Adam Frisch and Alex Walker. At least the last two will join Sandoval on the primary ballot: Walker and Frisch earned the Colorado Secretary of State Office's approval by way of successful petition drives. Yates also submitted a petition and is awaiting the results.
Walker's introductory campaign video featured a Boebert lookalike spraying sewage from a hose, a tactic that no doubt helped him collect the requisite amount of signatures, but Sandoval has no intention of using such gimmicks.
"I don't believe stooping to that level is going to be the solution," she concluded. "I feel like people are exhausted from the circus. They want someone who's going to be cool, calm and collected, and who'll do the job they've been hired to do. My job will be to serve, to listen and to work for the people, and that's what I'm going to do."
After the assembly results were made public, Sandoval issued the following statement:
First of all, I want to thank my fellow CD3 Democrats for supporting me. It will be an honor to earn your vote, and everyone’s vote, as the Democratic nominee for CD3.
I am the proud Latina daughter of a union family, working class immigrants and naturalized citizens who came to this country seeking a better life for themselves. I’m the first in my family to graduate from college and I will always fight for working families and better opportunity for all.
My campaign has been built and will be built on those values. As a community organizer, I can bring people together and my goal will be to unify everyone, not tear communities apart. And as a bilingual Latina I believe I can speak to every corner of this district and engage people who have felt left out and left behind for too long.
Onward to November — Together We Will!
