An old adage insists that “all politics is local,” but it’s not true. The rapid advance of the internet age has flipped the adage on its head: these days, all politics is national. With Fox News, CNN, and Facebook blasting their signals into every corner of the once vast and untrammeled wilderness, truly local issues have fallen by the wayside. Now, local races are dominated by the headwinds of national political discourse, and local candidates are incentivized to rhetorically overextend themselves in service of signaling to the tribe. It is a politics of pantomime, with potholes and passing lanes supplanted by abortion and immigration as the issues du jour – in races for offices which will have no jurisdiction over either – and too few candidates speaking to the particulars and prerogatives of the positions they seek.
In other words, every local race has become a miniature presidential race, with voters often deprived of the chance to weigh the contenders based on their plans and fitness for the jobs they are actually running to perform.
It was a relief, then, when I spoke to a man in Alamosa this week who has avoided falling into that trap. His name is Rick Needham, and he’s a Democrat running for the Alamosa County commission for what appear to be all the right reasons.
As we spoke, I was struck by how truly local the focus of his campaign is – a complete reversal of the current era’s nationalization of local politics – and how the current all-Republican commission’s foray into national culture war politics played a role in inspiring it.
Some 200 miles south of Denver, roughly splitting the gap between Pueblo and Durango, Alamosa County is home to some of the state’s most striking beauty, the peak-ringed fields of the San Luis Valley, Great Sand Dunes National Park, and the Sangre de Cristo wilderness. The area’s natural beauty is supplemented by a rich history as an ancestral home of the Ute people, passed between Mexico and the United States in treaties before ultimately becoming part of the Colorado Territory in 1861. The modern county was created by an act of the state legislature in 1913.
Today, despite a luxurious natural and historical heritage, Alamosa County and its 16,000 souls are facing struggles. Geographically isolated and economically neglected, more than 18% of the population lives below the poverty line, nearly double the statewide average. By income, the county ranks 57th among Colorado’s 64 counties, with a median household income of $52,000, just over half of the statewide median.
A native of the Bay Area originally, Rick Needham first moved to the Denver area with his parents, where he attended Columbine High School before relocating to the San Luis Valley for college in 1975. For the 49 years since, Needham has called Alamosa County home.
“I married into the place,” he told me, laughing.
During his five decades in the county, Needham has put down serious roots: he’s had four children and four grandchildren in the area, obtained a masters in public administration from the local school, Adams State, and served the local community in various law enforcement roles for more than 30 years.
“I’ve been a dispatcher, a sheriff’s deputy, a police officer,” he told me. He has also been an EMT, a detective sergeant, and Chief of Police at different times, all part of what he sees as a long career in community service.
Now, Needham works on the other side of the law – or, the other side of the docket, as it were. “So, I retired from law enforcement,” he told me, “Now I do – it’s kind of weird,” he laughed again, “but I do criminal defense work now.” And he does that, too, as public service.
Needham does not work for a high-dollar law firm or some shady Saul Goodman type. He works as a contractor with the state’s public defender, running investigations to help defense attorneys exonerate wrongfully charged clients.
“Well, I’m familiar with investigations, as a detective sergeant for a number of years,” he told me when I asked how he made the career switch. “Now I help defense attorneys do their thing.”
The career path from law enforcement to criminal defense has left Needham with a view of people which struck me as both realistic and wholesome.
“You know, I had one view of people as a cop,” he said, “and it’s different now that I’m not.” He told me about how law enforcement brings you into contact with people on their worst days, and how the work he does now has allowed him to see the rest of the picture. “I guess I’ve had a chance to see the other side of how people are,” he told me, “and I have to say, they’re pretty cool.” He talked to me about generational trauma and cycles of abuse with both conviction and compassion.
Having spent decades earnestly dedicating his career to service, the idea of running for local office had occurred to Needham in the past – not least when he pursued and attained his masters degree more than a decade ago – but he never felt like he had the time.
“It’s something that I thought about doing quite a while ago,” he told me, “But, you know, with raising kids and all that sort of thing and going out there and having a career, it just didn’t fit.”
Then, earlier this year, the ever-threatening pall of national politics descended onto the local politics of Alamosa County, and Needham was forced to think about the idea again.
Over the last year, several Colorado county commissions have followed national right-wing theatrics over immigration to an offensive and nonsensical conclusion, declaring their jurisdictions “non-sanctuary” counties. In March, the all-Republican Alamosa County commission attempted to do the same thing, quietly scheduling a vote on a non-sanctuary resolution on the consent agenda before being forced by public pressure to open the resolution for public comment and discussion.
The public comment and discussion did not go as the commissioners had hoped – though it did, perhaps, go as they expected, given the attempt to conceal it beforehand. During the March 27 meeting of the Alamosa County commission, dozens of residents showed up to speak against the resolution, with only a small handful speaking in support of it.
“I really thought that was a divisive idea,” Needham told me. “Our community here is about half Hispanic, half Anglo, with a smattering of other races in it, and I think we’ve got a really, really cohesive community.”
According to the meeting’s official minutes, most commenters agreed with Needham. The minutes record multiple locals referring to the resolution as racist, ignorant, and divisive.
“Things like this just drive us apart,” Needham told me of the resolution, “and I don’t think we need that. We’ve got a lot of that on the national level and we don’t need it here.” Plus, he correctly added, “Immigration is not a thing for the county government.”
For Needham, the reactionary anti-immigrant sentiment wrapped up in the resolution – which referred to the “significant public health and safety risks” posed by immigrants – also hit on another level. “My wife is Hispanic,” he told me, “and so it felt personal to me.”
After the attendees’ near-unanimous opposition, none of the three commissioners motioned to take a formal vote on the resolution, which fizzled out with no action.
Commissioner Lori Laske, who brought the failed resolution before the commission, is now Needham’s opponent in the November general election.
Despite being inspired, in part, to run for office by the encroachment of national politics on local affairs, Needham’s plans for the office, should he win this November, have nothing to do with national issues. He is hyper-focused on the real day-to-day issues faced by his neighbors in Alamosa County, and on making sure the county government functions.
“We’re growing,” he told me, “So land use is a big issue for county commissioners. Potholes are another,” he said, citing the Holy Grail of practical government concerns. Alamosa County is more than half the size of the entire state of Rhode Island, its communities and economy held together in places by networks of unpaved roads – and no hope of paving them any time soon, which makes maintaining them even more vital.
“If somebody promised to pave every road in Alamosa, you’d know they were blowing smoke,” he said.
Beyond that, Needham is focused on the nuts and bolts of local governance; keeping the lights on. Despite being the economic engine of the entire San Luis Valley region, Alamosa’s county government has struggled to pay employees at rates competitive with the surrounding counties – much less the Front Range counties – which has led to difficulties attracting and retaining staff.
“We need to make sure that agencies are funded so they can attract and retain employees at a sufficient level,” Needham told me. “You have to have those seats filled or you’re not going to be able to provide those services. And if you overwork employees, their morale is going to be horrible, and they’re not going to do as good of a job as they could, frankly, because they’re exhausted.”
“Alamosa is the economic hub of the valley,” he said. “We should be able to pay our employees.”
Needham’s race is intensely local in another way, too: he knows his opponent, Lori Laske. He’s known her for years. “I actually live a couple doors down from her mother,” he told me. And, though he’s running against her for a number of good reasons, he means what he says about not wanting to divide the community, and he takes the same approach when it comes to discussing his opponent.
“I’ve known Ms. Laske for a long time,” he said. “I disagree with her politics, but I don’t think she’s a bad person by any means. I think she tries to do positive things.”
“I’ve been around a bit longer, I’ve got a little more experience than her on a host of issues – but do I dislike Ms. Laske? No, I don’t,” he told me. “It’s just one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Needham and Laske will face each other in Alamosa’s only contested commission race on November 5. If Needham emerges victorious, he will join the commission as the only Democrat on the three-person panel.
I couldn’t begin to handicap Needham’s chances of winning – Alamosa is a swing county, having gone for Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020, and I’ve been in Colorado politics too long to fall into the trap of prognosticating about southern Colorado voter behavior from Denver – but I’m glad he’s running. He’s refreshing, a reminder of what local government should be: boring, and effective. Rick Needham doesn’t want to bring national political rhetoric to Alamosa County, he just wants to fill the potholes and staff the agencies. He just wants to keep the lights on so that another generation can build lives and careers in the same community he has called home for 49 years.
He wants local politics to be local again.
