District 65: Candidates focus on issues impacting Northern Colorado's growing communities

Voters in Colorado’s State House District 65 will have the opportunity to elect new representation as the district shifts from primarily rural towns to encompass many of Northern Colorado’s quickly growing communities.

Republican Mike Lynch, who currently represents House District 49, is running for the seat against Democrat Lisa Chollet, a longtime Wellington resident who serves on Poudre School District's Budget Advisory Committee and Wellington’s Planning Commission.

Lynch was first elected to the Colorado Legislature in 2020 and has a background in business and military service. He is president of Western Heritage Co., a Loveland-based company specializing in customized metal casting and leather goods. Lynch spent 11 years in the U.S. Army and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Lynch said he believes his military and business experience have prepared him to make decisions in the legislature that won’t hurt the state’s small businesses and allowed him to take a “service-oriented approach” to public service. Lynch said he hopes to maintain the momentum he’s built through his first term to continue to fight major statewide issues like fentanyl deaths and water infrastructure.

Chollet was born in Colorado and has lived in the state her entire life. She has spent most of her later career in public service. In addition to being an active volunteer with PSD, she is a member of the Wellington Water and Sewer Rate Board. Chollet is a self-employed consultant in the construction industry and, earlier this year, she was one of eight candidates running for three open seats on Wellington’s Board of Trustees. She did not win that election.

Chollet said being an active member of the Wellington community has taught her a lot about building relationships with influential people and finding common ground on divisive issues. She said she hopes this background will help her get things done at the state level.

More:Colorado Proposition 123 would create affordable housing fund, decrease tax refunds

District 65 has shifted dramatically since 2020. The once-rural district encompassed eastern parts of Northern Colorado but due to redistricting has now shifted significantly west, covering the towns of Wellington, Windsor, Severance and Eaton. More than 44% of registered voters in the district are unaffiliated, though there are still more registered Republicans (37%) than Democrats (17%) with the remaining being registered to other third parties.

Candidates' top issues: Affordability, water infrastructure and rising fentanyl deaths

“Smaller communities are the ones that are seeing that massive growth and so the lack of attention in general to services, affordability and infrastructure is a huge problem in Northern Colorado,” said Chollet.

Chollet told the Coloradoan if she’s elected, she will try to build relationships with legislators across various committees to make sure smaller communities like those in District 65 will have a voice on major bills.

Chollet also touted her experience working with budgets and how she would find ways to cut unnecessary spending that could help put money back in the pockets of working families. More specifically, she talked about her experience figuring out how to reduce water and sewer rates for Wellington families.

“I believe in fiscal responsibility, I believe in making sure that every tax dollar goes as far as it can,” she said.

Lynch’s approach to affordability focuses more on housing by lowering the cost of construction.

Lynch said the state’s housing crisis can be chalked up to “basic economic principles of supply and demand.” If the state can make it cheaper for construction companies to build more houses at a more affordable rate, it will ultimately lower costs for people, said Lynch.

During a candidate forum with the League of Women Voters of Larimer County, Lynch said he is not in support of state ballot issue Proposition 123, which would dedicate state tax revenue to fund affordable housing projects.

“I don’t believe it’s the role of the government to provide housing for people,” said Lynch. Instead, he thinks addressing the root of the problem is more effective.

More:Colorado 2022 election voting guide: Top races, ballot issues impacting Larimer County voters

Chollet said she was in favor of the ballot issue and that it would help provide housing relief to Coloradans.

Both Lynch and Chollet said water and infrastructure are major issues for District 65. Chollet’s approach focuses more on lowering water and sewer rates in communities like Wellington and making sure smaller communities receive state funding to address repairs to roads and bridges.

With regard to infrastructure projects, Chollet said it’s about making sure smaller communities don’t get left out of major state funding.

"We need to be proactive and not reactive with growth in Colorado," Chollet said during the candidate forum.

Lynch told the Coloradoan that the state needs to be prepared for future issues related to water rights and retaining water to support agriculture. Lynch mentioned his support for the Northern Irrigated Supply Project, which has been in the works since the 1980s and seeks to build two new reservoirs to provide more water as communities in the northern part of the state continue to grow.

“We need to retain what we can, and it all starts with adhering to old law and being respectful to prior appropriations. We’ve got to be smart or we’ll lose the ag industry,” said Lynch.

Lynch and Chollet both listed crime and public safety as major issues for their campaigns, particularly as it relates to rising fentanyl deaths throughout the state.

Lynch said he championed legislation on curbing the fentanyl issue throughout his first term. He said he was one of the first legislators to introduce a bill on the issue, though he eventually had to remove his support and sponsorship for the bill because it didn't do enough.

Lynch said he believes the rise in drug use has to do with the state’s decision to decriminalize certain drugs. Lynch is referencing House Bill 19-1263 which reclassified possession of less than 4 grams of certain drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor drug charge. Lynch said the legislature had good intentions, but it “needs to go back and tweak some things.”

Chollet mentioned the bill during the candidate forum, saying it was a good first step but the state needs to do more to address the root cause of crime and drug use by providing more opportunities for rehabilitation and introducing legislation to address mental health issues.

Chollet also calls fentanyl a poison on her website, which says she is in favor of laws that will punish people who distribute the drug.

How candidates match up on relevant issues

Reproductive health care

Chollet said she’s not “pro-abortion” but she is pro-choice and a person’s right to make decisions about their health care is a “basic human right.”

Lynch said during the candidate forum that issues on abortion and health care got “mixed together.” He also called Colorado’s laws protecting reproductive rights “extreme” and said they “came without compromise.” Lynch did say the life of a mother is a different issue.

Gun laws

Lynch said he’s not in favor of additional gun laws. "We don't have a gun problem, we have a mental health problem," he said. “We need to get families back together to sit around the dinner table and discuss what we do with our time and with our guns."

Chollet said she’s in favor of laws that “make sense” like licensing and safety training for first-time gun owners.

Education

Chollet said the legislature needs to do more to fund education and, if elected, she would take her budgeting skills to the legislature to figure out how to "fully-fund education." Chollet also told the Coloradoan that when education funding gets cut it tends to happen in departments like integrated services, impacting “the most vulnerable students.”

Lynch said he’d like to see education run more like a business. He is in favor of school vouchers and believes parents have a right to choose where to send their children. ”One of the good things about COVID was that it energized parents to be less apathetic about education and question the way we do education,” he said.

More:Colorado ballot measure looks to fund free breakfast, lunch for all public school children

Background checks reveal criminal history, financial struggles

The Coloradoan performs extensive background checks on each candidate as part of our election coverage. In this race, research revealed seven felony convictions and one misdemeanor conviction involving Chollet ranging from 1993-2008. Chollet was also a defendant in nearly two dozen county, civil and small claims cases related to money and failure to pay rent throughout Arapahoe and Larimer counties. Those cases occurred between 1998 and 2019. Similar background checks on Lynch did not reveal any convictions or relevant cases in the state of Colorado.

Chollet's history does not exclude her from holding public office in Colorado. A person convicted of a felony cannot hold public office if they are currently serving a sentence or under probation. The only felonies that permanently bar a person from serving — even after the sentence is completed — relate to convictions of embezzlement of public moneys, bribery, perjury, solicitation of bribery or subornation of perjury, said Annie Orloff, director of communications for the Colorado Secretary of State.

Further research after the Coloradoan's initial conversations with Chollet revealed a series of criminal convictions that took place between 1993 and 2008 in Arapahoe County and one case in La Plata County during the same time period. Between this period, Chollet pleaded guilty to three separate counts of theft, three separate counts of forgery involving missing checks from business accounts she oversaw, unauthorized charges on company credit cards and stealing company-owned property. Chollet also pleaded guilty to one count of identity theft.

As a result, Chollet was sentenced to serve time in community corrections, the Colorado Department of Corrections and the Arapahoe County Jail. Chollet was also sentenced to pay at least $16,500 in restitution.

In an emailed statement to the Coloradoan, Chollet said she continues to take responsibility for choices she made "nearly 20 to 30 years ago" and has a drive to help others who have also struggled and made mistakes.

"When I accepted the nomination to run for this office, I did so knowing the good that could come from my experiences far outweighed the personal privacy I would have maintained if I had declined," said Chollet. "Mental health struggles and a broken criminal justice system are only part of my story. But it is part of the story for so many people. It is why I am running on a platform that includes reforming our prison system.

"My community work over the last 10-plus years demonstrates my resolve to use my experiences in a positive way," said Chollet.

"As a Legislator, my job will be to put forth policy that is informed by my experiences and hardships. With a system of checks and balances, I will reinforce the trust voters place in me through transparency and accessibility."

Between 2012 and 2019, Chollet was involved in a series of civil cases in Larimer County for failing to pay rent on various residential locations and a commercial location as well as vendors for a restaurant she co-owned at the time, Sips Grub and Pub, which opened in 2018 and shut down six months later, according previous Coloradoan reporting.

Chollet told the Coloradoan in a follow-up interview regarding the Larimer County cases that her family struggled from the 2008 financial crisis like a lot of American families and wasn't able to pay their rent after after her husband lost his job. "All of the progress we had made went away," she said.

Chollet also said she thought she had enough money at one point to open the restaurant and she saw it as a chance to better life for herself and her family. "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have done it," she said.

Chollet said her experiences have made her more relatable and that it's allowed her to see affordability through a lens most people don't.

"I know what it's like to count change to fill the gas tank or pay for medications," Chollet said. "I'm the most imperfect candidate there ever was."

Campaign finance and more about the candidates

Lynch has received a total of $37,287.90 in campaign contributions as of Oct. 17, the most recent campaign finance report deadline. Major donors to his campaign include the Larimer County Republican Party ($5,000), the Realtor Small Donor Committee ($5,350) and the Apartment Association of Metro Denver Small Donor Committee ($5,350).

Lynch has been endorsed by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Young Republicans and the Colorado Conservative Patriot Alliance.

His campaign website is lynchforcolorado.com.

Chollet has received a total of $15,475.57 as of the Oct. 17 deadline. Major donors to her campaign include the Poudre Education Association ($2,000) and the Weld County Democrats ($500).

Chollet has been endorsed by the Colorado Education Association, the Poudre Education Association and Larimer County Commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally.

Her campaign website is lisachollet.com.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Colorado House District 65: Mike Lynch faces Lisa Chollet