This year, El Paso County voters have a real chance at electing Democrats to the Board of County Commissioners, which has been dominated by Republicans since the Nixon Administration.
Redistricting in 2023 provided El Paso County Democrats with two newly competitive districts — Districts 3 and 5 — and one district — District 4 — hovering between safe Republican and competitive. District 4 consists of southeast El Paso County — Security, Widefield, and Fountain — as well as the Ivywild neighborhood on Colorado Springs’ westside. Two-term Fountain City Councilor Detra Duncan is hoping to be District 4’s next Commissioner.
“I’ve been living in Fountain for 37 years,” she told supporters during her Aug. 27 campaign launch. “I have been all over this community. I have been serving in different capacities, volunteering, and I can tell you that I am a dedicated leader and that my time spent as County Commissioner will be dedicated to the underserved needs of District 4.”
El Paso County, the largest Colorado county in terms of population, has gone through an intensive period of growth and development in recent years, which Duncan says has left District 4 behind. While new hospitals have been built in northern Colorado Springs, leaders in southeast El Paso County have been asking for a hospital for years now.
“County commissioners don’t build hospitals,” said Duncan. “But I’m sure that as county commissioner, if I went to a meeting with doctors, entrepreneurs, and say, ‘We need a hospital in District 4,’ we can make it happen. That’s what we need to make happen. There [are] no primary care doctors. There are no rehab doctors. There are no mental health therapy [providers]. We are so underserved when it comes to health care.”
Duncan also noted that the lack of health care is complicated by the prevalence of food deserts in the district. “We have a community of 35,000 people, and they don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Duncan. “We live in an area where we have the land, we have agriculture available, but it’s not available to us. We have to have people who are serving our community as county commissioner, [who are] going to take care of the people that they serve.”
Duncan also raised concerns about the pace of development in El Paso County. Recently in District 4, the Colorado Springs City Council voted against a proposed annexation of Amara, a 3,200-acre area south of the city near Fountain, for the potential development of nearly 10,000 homes. Years earlier, Fountain passed on the plan due to concerns about water.
“We have to have people that are thinking about our needs,” said Duncan. “We don’t have enough water. We have PFAS in our water. We have areas that can’t be built on because we don’t have enough water taps. Where is the forward thinking?”
PFAS refers to a group of industrial chemicals known to cause kidney cancer, liver damage, and other health concerns that have largely phased out of industrial use in the United States, but are still found in the fire retardant foam used to fight petroleum-based fires. Due to the number of military bases in El Paso County, the presence of PFAS chemicals has been a serious issue for years.
Duncan’s opponent is Republican Cory Applegate, who currently serves on the Fountain City Council. Applegate did not respond to an emailed interview request, but did appear on the Richard Randall show on Aug. 30 to discuss efforts to make Fountain a non-sanctuary city.
“We’re thinking about possibly doing a resolution to say that we’re going to be a non-sanctuary city,” said Applegate. “So as long as the federal government doesn’t want to do their job, they don’t want to enforce the problems at the border, they don’t want to build Trump’s wall, they don’t want to keep an eye on who’s coming across. We’re just going to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to nip it in the bud.’ It’s going to start at the city level.”
Applegate blamed Denver for Colorado’s immigration woes. “Denver enacted that problem in the first place,” he said. “They wanted to be a sanctuary city, they wanted that sanctuary status. They wanted to sit there and say, ‘Hey, look, we’ll house illegals. We’ll house people that don’t have citizenship, don’t have a green card, don’t have basically any credentials to be here. So us putting our foot down in Fountain is basically — that’s the first level of the deterrent right there.”
In February, El Paso County Commissioners held a press conference to oppose offering aid to migrants, which led Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade to issue a statement in an effort to defuse the situation. “We’re not in crisis mode,” said Mobolade. “Twenty-one families [arrived in Colorado Springs]. Denver is dealing with 40,000 families. They’re in crisis. I just want to make sure that we are ready if indeed that crisis ends up meeting our city.”
