The sixth of seven children, Julie was born on the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona and raised in the borderlands of south Texas. Her mom, Gloria, was an elementary school teacher and her dad, Mario, was a rancher. Together, they taught Julie the value of hard work, honesty, and the importance of lifting as we climb. Julie’s organizing career began while a student at Yale University. In 2005, she organized a 58-member coalition of working-class families, unions, community organizations, and environmental activists to ensure that tax dollars were spent on affordable housing, a clean environment, and jobs that paid a living wage.
Reproductive rights are under attack across the country. Julie proudly sponsored the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codified in Colorado law each person’s ability to make reproductive healthcare decisions free from government interference.
Julie is tackling Colorado’s housing crisis head-on. She lives in an affordable housing unit and knows how transformative housing stability can be for families and communities. Since getting elected, Julie has:
Allocated over $500 million to incentivize affordable housing
Strengthened protections for renters and tenants
Reduced state barriers to develop affordable housing
Julie worked in the immigrant rights movement for over a decade, and has seen the consequences of our broken immigration system far too many times. She knows the vibrancy that new Americans bring to our state and communities. Her immigration works includes:
Preventing ICE from raiding state databases for immigration enforcement
Expanding in-state tuition to every high school graduate, regardless of immigration status
Establishing a statewide Office of New Americans
Every Coloradan deserves clean, healthy air to breathe. But unfortunately, our air quality is often among the worst in the nation. Poor air quality disproportionately impacts working-class Coloradans and communities of color. Julie has worked to clean up our air and water by:
Establishing statewide monitoring and health-based standards for deadly air toxics
Eliminating dangerous “forever” PFAS chemicals from our water supply
Securing over $100 million for clean-air investments
There are many ways to ensure that individuals who commit crimes can repair the harm done to society, and locking someone up in a cell is rarely the most effective. Julie has focused her criminal legal reform efforts to:
Repeal the death penalty in Colorado
Re-write Colorado’s misdemeanor code and sentencing guidelines to be more just and humane
Strengthen the rights of children, immigrants, renters, and people with intellectual disabilities in court
My mom was born and raised in rural Gardner, Colorado, and she dropped out of high school, but never stopped learning. Mom obtained her GED, went to Adams State and became the first in her family to graduate from college, and instilled in her kids the power of education as a first-grade teacher. I graduated from Yale thanks to my mom’s encouragement
Our Colorado economy is booming, but our state’s education system is ranked at the bottom. We must fund preschool and kindergarten to ensure every child is prepared for success. Let’s actually fund our K-12 education system, so that we no longer have half the school districts in the state operating on four-day school weeks. Our state university and community college systems are a treasure – and we must ensure they are affordable, because Colorado’s youth deserve access to training in the skills our 21st century economy needs, but without incurring a lifetime of debt.
My fiancé Ben and I are a one-car family, and just like every other resident in SD34, we can attest that traffic in Colorado is out of control! Solely expanding highways that cut into historical low-income neighborhoods, pollute our air, and degrade the health of our communities is not going to magically solve our gridlock problems. It’s high time that we build a 21st-century transportation system so that Coloradans are not spending half of our lives stuck in traffic.
Public transportation also means economic freedom. Colorado must prioritize systems that give residents affordable, convenient options. We need to expand light rail, dedicated bus lanes, and bike lanes. We also have to make housing more affordable so that families can live in the communities that they work. All these things will make us a smarter and more efficient city and state.
Healthcare is a human right. I have too many friends and family whose livelihoods have been determined not by their work ethic or their education, but by their (lack of) access to quality, affordable healthcare.
As your next state Senator, I will fight like hell to pass and implement universal healthcare so that no Colorado family has to worry about potentially suffering mountains of debt in order to live a healthy life. I will lead the fight to protect Medicaid expansion and CHIP, and I will fight the Trump administration on any attempts to cut Medicare for seniors and disabled residents.
Every Coloradan has the right to live their lives with dignity and with equal treatment under the law.
Having worked in a law firm alongside both defendants and victims for the past five years, I recognize that there are many meaningful ways to ensure that individuals who have committed crimes are able to repair the harm done to society, and that locking someone up in a cell isn’t necessarily the only or the best option.
A criminal conviction has long-lasting and profound impacts on an individual’s life, far beyond the actual days spent in a jail or prison cell, and as a state, we spend many more dollars incarcerating people than we do educating people. It’s time for us to end mass incarceration and overhaul how we think about community safety. Let’s invest our dollars in rehabilitation and rehabilitation, and remove barriers to employment for individuals who have successfully repaid their debt to society.
We have to protect the rights of Coloradans to love and marry whomever they want. We also cannot allow business and organizations to discriminate against a person because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. As a state Senator, I will fight against any bill that strips hard-fought rights from our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, because all Coloradans should live in a world where they are respected and can live their full selves with dignity.
Having been in the immigrant rights movement for the past decade, I have seen the real-life consequences of our broken immigration system far too many times. I have seen the heartbreak and worry that a family faces knowing their loved one could be taken from them at any moment.
In Colorado, we must ensure that local law enforcement is not being co-opted by Trump’s ICE agents, so that immigrant communities can trust and cooperate with local authorities in order to keep our communities safe. I will also fight back against any legislation that tries to take the state backwards on immigration policy.