Pueblo Republicans are gearing up for November elections with the Pueblo Pachyderms club hosting monthly lunch meetings with candidates. Last week, Colorado Senate candidate Dana Charles and Pueblo City Council incumbent Brett Boston addressed the Pachyderms.
“We have a lot of momentum in Pueblo County and I absolutely believe that Pueblo County is going to head red and we are going to get the [Senate District 3] seat back,” said Charles, a health care administrator and first-time candidate.
The state Senate is the Colorado GOP’s best hope to make significant gains, if only due to the chamber’s smaller number of seats. One of those seats is Pueblo’s Senate District 3 seat, currently held by Sen. Nick Hinrichsen (D-Pueblo). Hinrichsen was appointed to the seat in 2022 after LeRoy Garcia resigned for a job in the Biden administration. Hinirichsen won election to the seat in November 2022, defeating Republican Stephen Varela by 1,669 votes. Hinrichsen announced last month that he will not be seeking re-election. Democrats Aaron Gutierrez, an attorney, Taylor Voss, a former Pueblo District 60 Board of Education member, and Charles Perko, the United Steelworkers Local 3267 president, have all filed to run for the seat as well.
“We have three Democratic candidates that have entered the race, using that same old Democratic playbook that has been used for many, many years,” said Charles. “And I say, ‘Bring it on.’ Let them fight amongst each other, let them spend money and time and resources and we’re just still going to be here fighting the good fight. We’re going to put our head down and we are going to continue to campaign and work to get this seat back for Pueblo County. The circumstances are calling us to fight. I am a listener, I am conservative, and I won’t back down. This seat is too important to give up in Pueblo County.”
Charles blamed Colorado Democrats for a host of issues facing the state. “We are being invaded, unfortunately, throughout Colorado by lawlessness, by drug addicts, and by crime,” she said. “The Democratic Party sometimes can be radical. They have pro-censorship, anti-gun, open borders [policy positions], and many times are defenders of crime. I believe that enough is enough. Meanwhile, in Colorado, we are leading the pile in one of the least safest places to live. We have to stop passing legislation that is decriminalizing crime. We are hindering law enforcement, and I will always stand behind our law enforcement officers. We need to send a clear message in Pueblo County that if you commit a crime, you will be held accountable. We have a mental health and a drug crisis in Pueblo, as witnessed by the homeless. Many of these individuals need to be placed in facilities with long-term rehabilitation.”
Many homeless and low-income individuals are only able to access any form of rehabilitation through Medicaid, which is facing looming cuts as part of President Donald Trump’s budget reconciliation bill.
The most recent data on crime, both statewide and in Pueblo, show significant drops in homicides and other violent crimes over the previous year’s numbers.
“Over the last few months, I’ve heard from countless Coloradans who are terrified of what this budget means for their families,” said U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) in a May news release. “This bill means kids will go hungry, thousands of people will die without access to health care, and the progress we’ve made in fighting the opioid crisis will be erased. Hospitals and nursing homes will shutter, and the health care costs for all of us will skyrocket. All to give the wealthiest people in the history of the world more tax giveaways on the backs of the rest of us.”
Pueblo’s Congressman, Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO), raised concerns about the budget bill as well, joining an open letter urging fellow Republicans in the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives to preserve and strengthen Medicaid. Colorado’s federal delegation voted along party lines on the measure, with Republicans, including Hurd, supporting it and Democrats opposed.
“When it comes to some of these Medicaid cuts — and I don’t purport to be an expert in the Big Beautiful Bill at all — I think that we have to allocate funds for the people that actually need the funds,” said Charles. “I have a brother who has an intellectual disability, he has Down syndrome. He is a disabled individual and needs those IDD [intellectual and developmental disability] funds, and so what happens is that when we are giving money or utilizing resources to those who don’t necessarily need those funds, we are taking away from individuals who have to be supported with those funds. I think a reallocation of some of the things that are in the Big Beautiful Bill will be helpful, hopefully, in allocating monies where they need to go.”
Prior to and since Trump’s budget bill became law, disability advocates have repeatedly warned that it will slash those IDD funds that Charles says her brother needs.
Pueblo City Councilor Brett Boston, running for reelection this year, agreed with Charles. “A lot of the issues that we are experiencing in this community are because of legislation that is passed up in Denver that we have no way to fix,” he said. “You need to support candidates like Dana that will fight for this community. We need to get out the people that aren’t fighting for Pueblo. They’re doing things for the wrong reasons. I don’t know why they get into politics, but this legislation that they’re passing is handcuffing our police, it’s handcuffing our city council, it’s hand-cuffing our county.”
Boston said his focus would be on Pueblo’s economy. “I want to focus on economic development,” he said. “That is one of the biggest things that we are missing here in Pueblo, and I think there’s a lot of ways that we can impact that. The biggest way to start by doing that is we need to increase the tax base. We need to make Pueblo a better place for people that want to move to and stay. You hear about kids, a lot of Pueblo residents, what’s the first thing they want to do? They want to leave Pueblo. There’s not jobs here for them. It’s not an environment they want to raise a family in anymore, unfortunately.”
Among Boston’s suggestions for improving Pueblo’s economy is legalizing gambling, which drew a strong negative reaction from a member of the Pachyderms. “Here’s another idea that died once, but I want to revive it,” he said. “How about gambling in Pueblo? Think about all the possibilities, think about all the potential, the increased tax base that we can have from gambling on the River Walk. Now this isn’t something that I want to be over-saturated, but this is something that can help create another amenity in this community.”
Last year Boston joined conservative members of the Pueblo City Council, Regina Maestri and Mark Aliff, in voting to move forward an ordinance to ban abortion to a second reading. Boston expressed reservations about the ordinance, but voted to move the ordinance forward in the interest of democracy.
Boston said that in light of Colorado’s recently passed Amendment 79, Pueblo will no longer be attempting to ban abortion. “That was passed into state legislation that is a protected — City Council I don’t think had any reason to debate that, pending the state vote,” he said. “Now it is passed into the state [constitution], so I don’t think that has anything to do with us. I just don’t think that’s anything that our opinions really should matter on.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to provide additional context regarding Boston’s vote on last year’s anti-abortion ordinance.
