By Ellis Arnold, Boulder Daily Camera
Longmont political organizer Katie Wallace will fill the vacant state Senate District 17 seat left open after the resignation of embattled former state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis.
Wallace won the vote of a vacancy committee composed of Democratic party members, which met via a remote video conference Tuesday evening.
“I grew up in Lafayette and now call Longmont home,” Wallace said during the meeting. She described herself as a renter and referenced what she said is her grandfather’s experience with fascism.
Her grandfather “immigrated from a war-torn Poland after World War II, escaping a concentration camp and fleeing his home country to seek light against the darkness of fascism. Some 70 years later, his granddaughter has the opportunity to seek public office in this land of opportunity,” her campaign website said.
Jaquez Lewis resigned her state Senate seat Feb. 18, shortly before the Senate Ethics Committee was set to deliberate about whether she had mistreated her aides.
Jaquez Lewis recently came under investigation by the Denver and Boulder district attorneys’ offices, nearly a month after legislative staff determined the Longmont Democrat had likely forged at least one letter of support in an ethics probe.
By winning the vacancy committee vote, Wallace will replace Jaquez Lewis in state Senate District 17, which includes the Longmont, Lafayette and Erie areas.
In her address to the vacancy committee at its meeting, Wallace referenced the destruction the Marshall Fire caused and said the Sierra Club, an environmental organization, endorsed her campaign.
Wallace claimed years of “grassroots organizing in our neighborhoods.” She served two years “spearheading federal policy” for U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse and has worked as campaign manager for former state House Rep. Jonathan Singer and former Boulder County Commissioner Deb Gardner, according to her website.
Wallace won with about 59% of the committee’s vote, an official said during the meeting.
The following other candidates had thrown their names into the hat to compete for the state Senate seat:
• Andrew Barton, a political activist with Colorado Common Cause, a group that works on issues such as “defending the right to vote” and “making our government more accountable,” its webpage says.
• Justin Brooks, a former mayor of Erie.
• Kathy Hagen, who has served as the state legislative lead for Moms Demand Action, a group pushing for more-stringent gun laws.
• Julie Marshall, who served as the opinion editor for the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper before working as director for “western wildlife and ecology” at the Center for a Humane Economy, an animal welfare group, according to her website.
• Peter Salas, a former Boulder Valley school board member, former Boulder County Democratic vice chair and Chicano activist.
• Martha Wilson, a social worker and “public safety policy advisor” who partners with police, courts and community advocates to “make our criminal justice system more fair and accountable,” according to her website.
• Shiquita Yarbrough, Longmont City Council member whose campaign website also described her as a community advocate.
Barton garnered about 14% of the vote, about 10% went to Marshall, Salas got about 6%, Wilson and Yarbrough tied, Brooks got about 2%, and Hagen got about 1%, according to totals announced in the meeting.
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