Democrats in El Paso County were hopeful that during this election cycle, the first since redistricting in 2023, they would get at least one candidate onto the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners. Their hopes did not materialize, as both Democratic candidates Naomia Lopez and Detra Duncan were defeated by their Republican opponents.
County commission
DAVIS: Keeping Local Politics Local in Alamosa
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.