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 Save Rural Hospitals

Rural hospitals are essential to the survival of small towns. When they close, emergency response times increase, families leave, and local economies suffer.

We will convert at-risk and closing rural hospitals into community-owned cooperatives, keeping care local and decision-making accountable to the people these hospitals serve.

Colorado will use farm revenue and interstate trade partnerships to help stabilize and subsidize rural healthcare costs, recognizing that strong agriculture and strong healthcare depend on each other.

We will establish regional partnerships with established hospital networks to secure staffing, supplies, telehealth access, and specialist care without surrendering local control.

Every Coloradan deserves timely emergency care, regardless of ZIP code.

Save our hospitals. Save our towns.

Protect Family Farms

Family farms are being squeezed by corporate consolidation and speculative land purchases that strip communities of control.

We will prevent corporate and foreign buyouts of Colorado farmland that undermine local food security and water rights.

Colorado will build a farmer-owned Farm & Freedom Cooperative Network to strengthen local ownership, bargaining power, and long-term stability for producers.

We will create direct trade agreements with partner states and cities that pay fair, premium prices to Colorado farmers, cutting out exploitative middlemen. We will use laws that help us regain sovereignty and science to increase supply. 

To keep farms viable across generations, we will expand housing options tied to farm cooperative membership, allowing workers and families to live where they work and stay rooted in their communities.

Farmer-owned. Community-run.
Never corporate-controlled unless the cooperative chooses it.

Housing and Stability

Communities cannot survive without stable, affordable housing.

Colorado will expand tiny-home, farmworker, and workforce housing modeled on proven cooperative projects such as Freedom Village.

We will use cooperative ownership structures to keep housing affordable long-term while securing real residency rights, not temporary solutions.

Housing development will be tied directly to agriculture, healthcare, and essential-service employment, ensuring rural communities can attract and retain workers.

Homes built by and for the community.

 Resilience, Access & Local Control

Keeping Colorado Stable When the Nation Is Not

Colorado’s strength comes from connection but between rural and urban communities, farms and hospitals, water and life, freedom and responsibility.

As national politics grow more volatile, Colorado must govern for stability. That means protecting essential systems (food, water, healthcare, and trade) from political interference, corporate concentration, and crisis-driven collapse.

This administration will focus on resilience over chaos, access over scarcity, and local control over extraction.

Building a Stable Interstate Economy

Colorado will position itself as a secure interstate trade hub, connecting rural and urban economies across red and blue states.

We will:

• Leverage constitutionally protected interstate commerce to safeguard food, medical, and critical supply chains
   
• Establish direct state-to-state and city-to-city trade agreements that stabilize prices and protect producers and consumers
   
• Prioritize essential goods- food, healthcare supplies, energy, and disaster resources
   
• Model cooperation on successful multistate climate, infrastructure, and emergency-response compacts
   

When others fight, Colorado connects and keeps families supplied.

Water Sovereignty for the Long Term

Water is life, agriculture, healthcare, and economic security. Colorado must protect it accordingly.

We will:

• Keep Colorado’s water rights under local and state control, protected from privatization and speculation
   
• Negotiate fair, enforceable agreements with neighboring states that respect Colorado’s long-term needs
   
• Invest in drought resilience, conservation, watershed protection, and infrastructure modernization
   
• Support farmers, ranchers, and municipalities without forcing land or water-right selloffs
   

Healthcare Freedom That Works Everywhere

Healthcare freedom means access in cities and rural towns alike, without fear, delay, or political interference.

We will:

• Defend reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy under Colorado law
   
• Guarantee emergency maternal and reproductive healthcare access statewide
   
• Prevent rural healthcare deserts by expanding community-owned cooperative hospitals and clinics
   
• Build durable partnerships with nonprofits, regional health systems, and partner states to stabilize care delivery

Climate Resilience & Disaster Preparedness

Colorado faces increasingly severe wildfires, floods, and droughts. Disasters that threaten rural towns, family farms, and critical healthcare infrastructure. Meeting this challenge requires a proactive, locally driven approach to climate resilience.

• Transform agricultural, housing, and healthcare cooperatives into disaster-ready community hubs with backup power, emergency supplies, and evacuation resources.
   
• Integrate disaster planning with water sovereignty, ensuring reliable access to clean water during emergencies.
   
• Keep rural hospitals open and prepared to serve as community safety and emergency coordination centers.
   
• Build statewide emergency networks that connect farms, hospitals, local governments, and families before disaster strikes.
   

Prepared towns save lives and protect the future.

Protecting Democracy & Election Integrity

As national efforts seek to centralize and politicize election administration, Colorado must remain a model for secure, accessible, and independent democracy.

We will:

• Guarantee safe and accessible voting for every Coloradan (rural or urban, red or blue.)
   
• Defend mail-in ballots and early voting so no eligible voter is left out.
   
• Block any attempt to interfere with Colorado’s election administration or undermine voter access.
   
• Create local election transparency systems that build public trust while protecting voter privacy.
   

Colorado will continue to set the standard for fair, secure, and accountable elections, regardless of political pressure from Washington.

Your vote is your voice and it will be protected.

  Technology & Transparency
Colorado’s rural communities deserve clear information, real accountability, and public trust when it comes to funding, healthcare, and infrastructure.
We will:

• Launch public open-data dashboards so Coloradans can track how state dollars are spent, in real time.  
• Provide clear, up-to-date reporting on rural hospital funding, farm cooperative support, and infrastructure investments.  
• Require measurable accountability standards for state agencies and publicly funded programs.  
• Use technology to connect rural communities, improving access to services, communication, and emergency coordination.  

Transparency isn’t optional.It’s the foundation of trust. 

 Protect Children from Coercive “Treatment” Programs

Colorado believes in healing, not punishment disguised as care.

Across the country, children and teens have been placed into remote or restrictive “treatment” or behavioral programs that operate with limited oversight, minimal due process, and little transparency for families. In some cases, these environments have caused long-term trauma rather than recovery.

Colorado must ensure that any program claiming to provide care to minors is truly therapeutic, clinically appropriate, rights-respecting, and accountable to the public.

Our Commitment

Colorado will protect children, families, and youth by ensuring that treatment never becomes coercion.

We will:

• Require clear, enforceable standards for any residential, wilderness-based, or out-of-home youth program operating in Colorado
   
• Guarantee due process, transparency, and meaningful family access for minors placed in out-of-home care
   
• Prohibit punitive practices that rely on isolation, deprivation, humiliation, or coercion under the label of therapy
   
• Ensure programs serving minors include appropriately licensed mental-health professionals and trauma-informed care
   
• Strengthen oversight, inspections, and independent reporting so harm cannot be hidden behind private contracts or nondisclosure agreements
   

Protecting Children’s Rights

Children are entitled to safety, dignity, and appropriate care regardless of background, circumstance, or identity.

Colorado will not allow:

• Behavioral control to replace clinical care
   
• Isolation or deprivation to be used as treatment
   
• Children’s voices to be ignored or silenced
   
• Private programs to operate without accountability
   

Children are not problems to be managed.
They are people to be protected.

Care Means Care

Outdoor education, recreation, and therapeutic programs can be valuable when they are voluntary, safe, transparent, developmentally appropriate, and clinically sound.

But when treatment removes rights, voice, or dignity, it becomes punishment and punishment traumatizes children.

Colorado will choose care over coercion, healing over harm, and accountability over silence.

 Veterans & the Rural Workforce

Veterans and rural workers are the backbone of Colorado’s communities. They deserve stable jobs, clear career pathways, and the ability to stay rooted where they live. We will:

• Create job pipelines linked to cooperative farms, hospitals, and disaster response systems, providing long-term employment and community benefits.  
• Offer transition and retraining opportunities for veterans entering agriculture, healthcare, infrastructure, and emergency response fields.  
• Expand workforce housing and training programs to keep families in rural communities.  
• Ensure no rural worker or veteran is left behind as Colorado’s economy evolves.  

Strong families. St 

 Safe Haven for Survivors

Colorado already stands as a national leader in protecting bodily autonomy, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQIA+ rights. While other states roll back protections, Colorado has chosen dignity, safety, and care.

Because of the protections Coloradans have fought for:

• Abortion remains legal and accessible
   
• Gender-affirming care is protected under state law
   
• Patients and providers are shielded from out-of-state retaliation
   
• Survivors can seek care and safety without fear of criminalization
   

For this, we say: thank you, Colorado.

But leadership requires vigilance. Rights that exist on paper must be defended in practice and strengthened to meet new threats.

We will protect and expand what Colorado has built:

• Defend Colorado’s safe-haven laws that protect people who travel here for abortion care, gender-affirming healthcare, and safety from violence or persecution and expand them where gaps remain.
   
• Strengthen privacy and non-cooperation protections so no state agency, hospital, or local government assists in out-of-state investigations related to pregnancy outcomes, abortion care, or gender-affirming treatment.
   
• Expand emergency and transitional housing, including tiny-home communities and cooperative, farm-based housing, so people fleeing danger have a safe, dignified place to land.
   
• Increase access to confidential, trauma-informed healthcare, including abortion care, reproductive healthcare, gender-affirming care, and mental health services, especially in rural and underserved areas.
   
• Ensure rural hospitals, first responders, and law enforcement are trained to protect survivors and LGBTQIA+ individuals, not criminalize them, with clear statewide standards.
   
• Invest in survivor-led, LGBTQIA+-led, and reproductive justice organizations that already do this work and know what communities need.
   

Making Protection Durable

Colorado will not backslide.

We will:

• Close loopholes that allow healthcare to be turned into surveillance
   
• Prevent forced cooperation with hostile states
   
• Ensure protections apply equally to minors, families, and undocumented individuals
   
• Build systems that work in practice, not just on paper
   

Colorado can continue to lead the nation by protecting what works, expanding what’s effective, and making these rights durable for the long term.

Build systems that work in practice, not just on paper
e opened the door and we will keep it open.

Recovery & Rehabilitation That Actually Works

We will:

• Expand voluntary, community-based drug rehabilitation programs that prioritize medical care, mental health support, housing stability, and long-term recovery, not incarceration.
   
• Invest in trauma-informed treatment models that recognize how poverty, disability, violence, discrimination, and untreated mental health conditions contribute to substance use.
   
• Ensure rehab programs are accessible to people with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, and people with complex medical needs.
   
• Support programs that are locally run, culturally competent, and accountable, rather than one-size-fits-all institutions.
   

Punitive systems don’t heal addiction. Care does.

 Protect Communities from Forced Detention

The Problem

Across the country, some states are adopting laws and practices that sweep up vulnerable populations (including unhoused individuals, people with mental health needs, immigrants, and peaceful protestors) under the guise of public safety or healthcare.

Recent federal actions have encouraged the expansion of forced institutionalization and detention-based “care,” particularly as rural hospitals close and community services disappear. When legitimate healthcare systems collapse, detention facilities too often become the default response.

These practices disproportionately harm:

• LGBTQ+ youth
   
• Pregnant minors
   
• Migrant families
   
• People with disabilities or mental health diagnoses
   

This approach does not make communities safer. It replaces care with confinement and strips people of due process.

Our Commitment

Colorado will not participate in programs or policies that forcibly detain or institutionalize people without due process, individual rights, and judicial oversight.

We will act at the state level to ensure that care remains care & not punishment by another name.

The Solution

Colorado will enact strong, enforceable protections that include:

• Due process guarantees, ensuring no one is forcibly hospitalized or detained without judicial review and individual rights protections.
   
• Sanctuary policies that protect vulnerable populations, including immigrants and LGBTQ+ youth, from discriminatory enforcement practices.
   
• Transparency and independent oversight for all state-run or state-funded facilities, including healthcare and residential programs.
   

We will also build real, community-based alternatives that address needs without coercion:

• Community-owned cooperative hospitals and clinics, not detention-style facilities.
   
• Integrated mental health services embedded in local healthcare systems.
   
• Housing-first solutions that provide stability for unhoused individuals before crisis escalates.
   

Colorado can choose care over confinement, rights over fear, and solutions that strengthen communities rather than criminalize them.

 
Police Education & Partnership, Not Abandonment

Police officers are often the first responders to addiction-related crises. They deserve training that keeps everyone safe.

We will:

• Require evidence-based education for law enforcement on:
   
  • substance use disorders as medical conditions
     
  • trauma, disability, and neurodivergence
     
  • de-escalation and crisis response
     
  • implicit bias and decision-making under stress
     
• Expand co-responder models that pair officers with mental health professionals, EMTs, or social workers.
   
• Create clear diversion pathways so officers can connect people directly to treatment instead of jail.

 Reclaiming Public Spaces Through Art & Innovation

Colorado can turn waste into wonder and public neglect into shared pride. Instead of treating litter and blight as shame, we can transform them into opportunity by inviting local artists, students, and volunteers to reimagine discarded materials as murals, mosaics, and public sculpture.

Community-led programs already show that beauty inspires responsibility. By pairing cleanup days with art grants, youth mural contests, and public installations, we can create cultural events that restore neighborhoods while strengthening civic pride and local economies.

This approach doesn’t just clean our communities, it reconnects people to place, especially young people who deserve to see themselves reflected in the spaces they live.

Building Circular, Self-Sustaining Cities

Colorado can lead the nation in closing the waste loop and building circular local economies that reduce costs and create value.

We will:

• Establish Compost & Soil Exchange Hubs in parks and near farmers’ markets, turning organic waste into free or low-cost compost for local gardens and farms.
   
• Support cities and towns in using repurposed materials for benches, bike racks, walkways, and public amenities through partnerships with makerspaces, trade schools, and universities.
   
• Invest in smart, sustainable infrastructure, including solar-powered compacting bins and rain gardens that capture runoff and debris.
   
• Launch Eco-Innovation Labs that convert hard-to-recycle materials into usable products such as public art, building materials, or insulation.
   

The result: public spaces that are cleaner, lower cost to maintain, resilient, and beautiful. Designed to sustain themselves over time.

Community Safety & Land for the People

Coloradans are asking for something deeply practical and human: safe places to live, heal, and build community without fear.

As governor, I will support voluntary, community-led housing and land initiatives by repurposing unused state-owned and tax-foreclosed properties and not to divide people, but to protect them and strengthen local stability.

This includes converting:

• Abandoned public buildings
   
• Closed hospitals and schools
   
• Underused state land
   

into community land trusts, cooperative farms, resilience hubs, housing, and cultural or healing centers, led by the people most affected by displacement, violence, or economic hardship.

These spaces will not be segregated or top-down government facilities. 

They will be:

• Locally governed
   
• Open and transparent
   
• Built on safety, self-determination, and shared stewardship
   

The state’s role is to make land available, provide legal protection and startup support, and then step back: trusting communities to lead, innovate, and care for one another.

 Workers’ Rights & Economic Dignity

Colorado’s economy runs on workers in healthcare, agriculture, construction, education, service industries, energy, emergency response, and the care economy. When work does not provide stability, entire communities suffer.

Economic growth should reward the people who create it.

We will:

• Protect the right to organize and bargain collectively, ensuring workers can negotiate for fair wages, safe conditions, and predictable schedules without retaliation.
   
• Continue increasing the minimum wage so it keeps pace with the real cost of living, as Colorado’s economy strengthens via pairing wage growth with the revenue-generating investments and cost-reducing reforms outlined in this plan.
   
• Phase wage increases responsibly, aligned with economic conditions, productivity gains, and improvements in affordability driven by expanded healthcare access, housing stability, and stronger local supply chains.
   
• Set strong labor standards for state contracts, prioritizing fair pay, worker safety, local hiring, and long-term job stability in all publicly funded projects.
   
• Support worker-owned and cooperative enterprises as proven tools for shared prosperity, local wealth-building, and community resilience.
   
• Tie workforce development to real stability, aligning jobs with access to healthcare, housing, childcare, and transportation so work actually supports family life.
   
• Strengthen protections for rural and essential workers, including agricultural laborers, healthcare staff, disaster responders, and infrastructure workers who keep Colorado running under pressure.
   

Dignity at Work

Work should provide more than a paycheck. It should provide security, respect, and the ability to plan a future.

Colorado will build an economy where:

• Workers have a voice
   
• Wages keep up with the cost of living
   
• Jobs are safe and sustainable
   
• Communities benefit from the value created within them
   

Strong workers build strong towns.
Strong towns build a strong Colorado.

Technology & Transparency: Water-Smart Data Centers and Accountable AI

Colorado’s water is not unlimited and neither is public trust. As AI grows and data centers expand, we need clear rules so critical infrastructure does not quietly drain local water systems or build unaccountable surveillance tools behind closed doors.

This administration will treat large-scale computing as public-impact infrastructure: transparent, water-responsible, and accountable to civil rights and disability access standards.

We will:

Water Use Transparency for Data Centers
Require large data centers and high-compute AI facilities to publicly report water consumption in Colorado, including total withdrawals, consumptive use, cooling method, and drought/peak draw periods, with clear, standardized reporting that is accessible to the public.

Public Dashboards: Water + Energy + Compute
Launch statewide open-data dashboards that show where major compute facilities are located and how they affect local water and energy systems, so communities can make informed decisions before approvals are granted.

ADA-Accessible Public Information by Default
Make accessibility non-negotiable: all state-published infrastructure data must be posted in 

ADA-accessible formats, plain language summaries, and machine-readable files so disabled Coloradans, rural communities, researchers, and journalists can actually use it.

Accountable AI in Public Services
If AI tools are used in government programs that touch healthcare, benefits, housing, employment, education, law enforcement, or emergency response, Colorado will require transparency standards: clear purpose limits, audit logs, bias testing, and public reporting, without exposing personal private data.

No “Black Box” Decisions About People
Prohibit high-stakes automated decision systems that deny, cut, or restrict access to essential services without meaningful human review, notice, and appeal. Technology will not replace due process.

Community Benefit Standards for Critical Tech Projects

Tie permits and incentives for major compute projects to measurable community benefits: water mitigation plans, energy reliability contributions, local hiring pipelines, and emergency coordination support.

Independent Oversight and Public Hearings
Create a Colorado Technology & Infrastructure Transparency Council to hold public hearings, review disclosures, publish findings, and recommend enforceable standards as technology evolves.

 Cannabis: Health, Freedom, and a Balanced Colorado Industry

Colorado was the first state in the nation to end cannabis prohibition. That leadership brought new revenue, reduced incarceration, created tens of thousands of jobs, and gave patients access to medicine that improves quality of life.

That success came from a mix of operators, small local growers, family-run dispensaries, multi-location businesses, and larger companies willing to invest early and take risk.

But legalization alone is not enough.

Without thoughtful policy, any industry (cannabis included) can tip out of balance, limiting competition, reducing patient choice, and weakening rural opportunity.

Colorado’s goal should not be to favor one business model over another, but to keep the cannabis ecosystem fair, competitive, and rooted in Colorado communities.

Cannabis must be protected as healthcare, agriculture, and personal freedom, not distorted by over-consolidation or federal rollback.

Cannabis as Healthcare

For many Coloradans, cannabis is not recreational, it is essential.

Patients rely on medical cannabis to manage:

• Chronic pain and autoimmune conditions
   
• PTSD and trauma
   
• Seizure disorders
   
• Cancer treatment side effects
   
• Sleep and anxiety disorders
   

We will:

• Protect medical cannabis patients from discrimination in housing, employment, and healthcare
   
• Ensure cannabis use cannot be used as grounds for family separation or custody penalties
   
• Defend patient access against federal interference and policy reversals
   
• Support research, physician education, and evidence-based cannabis medicine
   

Healthcare decisions belong between patients and providers, not politicians.

Cannabis as Agriculture

Cannabis is farming.

From large licensed grows to small family operations, cannabis cultivation supports Colorado’s agricultural economy and rural workforce.

We will:

• Recognize cannabis as an agricultural product, not a criminal loophole
   
• Support regenerative, water-responsible cultivation at every scale
   
• Allow farmers to responsibly integrate cannabis into diversified operations
   
• Apply clear, transparent water and land-use rules consistent with other crops
   

Healthy farms, large and small, keep rural Colorado alive.

A Fair and Competitive Cannabis Market

Legalization worked because Colorado allowed innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship to coexist. Going forward, the state’s role is not to pick winners but to maintain fair competition, prevent abuse, and keep opportunity open.
We will:

• Support small, local, cooperative, and independent cannabis businesses  
• Protect existing dispensaries and operators who follow the law and serve their communities  
• Prevent excessive license hoarding and anti-competitive practices  
• Ensure rural communities are partners in siting decisions and economic benefits  
• Direct cannabis revenue toward local infrastructure, healthcare, education, and housing  

A healthy cannabis market includes both local roots and operational scale as long as communities, patients, and workers come first.

Ending the Last Harms of Prohibition

Even after legalization, some Coloradans are still punished for cannabis, especially in marginalized communities.
We will:

• Fully expunge past cannabis-related convictions  
• End cannabis-based pretext policing  
• Prevent cannabis status from being used to deny services, benefits, or parental rights  
• Ensure no one is incarcerated in Colorado for cannabis  

Legal means legal.

Freedom Means Trusting People

Cannabis policy should be rooted in:

• Science, not stigma  
• Harm reduction, not punishment  
• Fair markets, not favoritism  
• Local decision-making, not federal rollback  

Colorado doesn’t need to be rescued from cannabis.We need to protect what works and keep it working for patients, workers, businesses, and communities alike. 

.

TABOR has reached the point where it actively prevents Colorado from fulfilling its own

constitutional obligations. When one constitutional amendment makes the rest of the

constitution functionally impossible to carry out, it must be challenged and reexamined.

TABOR does not merely limit taxes. It caps the state’s ability to fund constitutionally

required services like public education, civil rights enforcement, emergency response,

and healthcare, even when voters elect leaders to address those needs. It forces

refunds during crises, shifts costs onto individuals and local governments, and locks the

state into permanent austerity regardless of real-world conditions. 

That is not fiscal

responsibility. It is constitutional dysfunction.

As governor, I will treat TABOR as a constitutional conflict, not a sacred text. I will direct

a formal constitutional impact analysis to document where TABOR prevents compliance

with education mandates, civil rights enforcement, and public safety duties. I will support

and not obstruct litigation that challenges TABOR when it conflicts with other

constitutional requirements, and I will be honest with the public about the harm it causes,

especially to rural hospitals, schools, and emergency services.

Fighting TABOR means restoring Colorado’s ability to govern itself. Voters deserve a

state government that can respond to emergencies, enforce rights, and invest in the

future. When an amendment disables those core functions, leadership means naming

the problem and taking responsibility for fixing it.

 2A

Quick and honest:

• I own firearms
• I shoot
• I respect responsible gun ownership
• I believe civil liberties and due process matter
• I don’t think law-abiding gun owners are the problem

I also don’t believe the current system is working when it comes to public safety. People are dying, families are being wrecked, and pretending everything is fine isn’t honest either. But I don’t believe the solution is bans, registries, mass surveillance, or blaming gun owners.

My focus is on behavior-based, evidence-driven approaches that:

• Target credible threats
• Focus on violent behavior, not diagnoses
• Respect privacy and due process
• Avoid disability discrimination
• Don’t punish people who follow the law

If you have questions, criticisms, or want to challenge my views then I’m open to it.